Chapitre IV. La multiplicité des voix narratives

Reading The Rifles may be quite a chaotic experience for those who expect a smooth journey through the legends of Captain Franklin and his crew. There can be no doubt that William T. Vollmann’s project is not that of writing a historical novel. Combining fiction with historical events, the writer challenges any categorization of his book. To quote his own terms, Vollmann wants to offer his reader a “symbolic history”, which is more akin to a vision than a historical account; a collection of tales narrated by a teller rather than a historian. Questioning the relation between history and truth, Vollmann is concerned with the way literature mediates the past. As a way to protest against a one-way perspective on history, the author suggests parallel and fictitious discourses on the past. The point of this chapter is to prove that these variations on the past are made possible by the constant confusion and multiplication of narrative voices.As a background to his experiment, Vollmann chooses Captain Franklin’s fourth expedition to the Arctic, a XIXth -century outline which constantly collides with the XXth-century narrative of John Subzero, a Franklin epigone who is merely wandering about the ice shelf, spending some of his nights with an Inuit girl named Reepah. Trying to evade both time and space, Vollmann chooses the Arctic setting to allow the possibility for history to be reinvented on these white and virgin lands. The image of melting ice is also frequently used as a metaphor for the short-lived voices that decline soon after they are heard.To prove how dangerous a unique perspective on history can be, Vollmann first embodies what he means to decry. In the first pages, the author is omniscient, exercising a full control over his characters in a godly manner. However, his authority gradually fades away so that in the end, Vollmann, the author, enters the world of his own fiction to become Vollmann, a character. This inherent dichotomy rules over the composition of the whole novel which is mainly built on a system of pairs. Actually, the first couple to be considered is that of John Franklin and John Subzero. According to Inuit traditions, both are supposed to be twins even though a century separates them. The narrative thus irregularly shifts from Franklin to Subzero, and the author sometimes steps in to create a trinity of voices. The narrative takes us on a timeless expedition which constantly disturbs and challenges ourreading.The mediation between the two centuries is very often made possible thanks to Reepah, the Inuit woman who connects the two men while she is engaged in a love story with both of them. The climax of confusion is reached when Vollmann stages the three of them in the same scene. Their conversation is all the more difficult to follow as the author proceeds to a constant shift between two different settings. As we stroll down the streets of New York with Subzero and Reepah, we are taken aback when we discover at the end of the same sentence that Reepah is actually enjoying a feast with Franklin and his men.Vollmann does not deconstruct narrative voices simply for the sake of formal experimentation. What lies behind this project is the denunciation of white men’s behaviors towards the natives of America. In fact, the omnipresence of Reepah almost makes her the protagonist of the book. Her haunting presence throughout the centuries proves that she no longer is the forgotten mistress of two white men. Resurrecting her voice is a way for Voltmann to resurrect the voice of those who were oppressed and silenced by white people. Instead of praising Franklin’s courage, Vollmann imagines that his numerous expeditions were not prompted by noble reasons but by basic instincts: adultery lies at the core of Franklin’s journeys. However, Vollmann does not indulge in the narrative of a romance. The author allows Reepahto take her revenge on white men who considered her both as a curiosity and a lover. That is why Vollmann gives her a fatal name, Reepah being close to Reaper and announcing the possible deaths of the two white men. In a final confusion of voices, it seems that Subzero is about to die while Franklin, on his way to rescue him, eventually comes across his corpse. Subzero is dead, Franklin is resurrected, and an unending cycle is born. Any attempt at defining a linear chronology is thus doomed to fail. Voices call on each other regardless of the centuries while the ice shelf looks like a giant cemetery where ghosts can run free. The possibility of rebirth seems to be one of Vollmann’s major literary principles. The anxiety of ending the book is always pushed aside, just as any closure on the historical discourse is always dismissed.

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