The explanation of Terry Hayes’ novel I Am Pilgrim

Two women recommended this book to me mentioning that there are all the things that interest me, like WTC and terrorists and secret agents and Holocaust and everything. So, I read the book, and after reading decided to write the first and definite interpretation of this novel, as if anybody would like or need any interpretation to a thriller.

            I prefer thrillers that do not need or admit any interpretations. We have in Finland one of the first class thriller writers, Ilkka Remes. His characters totally lack all psychological dimensions, but the plot is good. That is why one cannot stop reading before coming to the last page and while Remes is Remes, it is never a disappointment. Several of the older Remeses are very good indeed. Too bad that they are not translated to other languages, which is caused by the sad fact that foreigners are foreigners and though Tom Clancy can be as stars and stripes as he wants, the blue and white Remes would not appeal to people with a selective view of who can and who cannot be patriotic. Really, it is not the patriotism, it is the good plot and the totally flat characters that make his books so good reading.

            But Terry Hayes is different. Pilgrim is not a book that one reads on one sitting. Admittedly I read novels largely for improving language skills and for that reason in some odd language, but language is not the reason why the book does not move smoothly – it has many flashbacks and some are irritating the reader. Or they are irritating a reader who has looked into such conspiracy theories that the book touches, like the Holocaust and the WTC and terrorism and all that. The first question that came to my mind after reading a hundred or two hundred pages was that how can a script writer of Mad Max 2 be so naive. Mad Max 2 is one of my favorite movies, though I have to confess that after watching Mad Max 3, the stupid one with Tina Turner, again, the third part of the series seems to be the best. It is because in that movie intelligent dwarf Master controls idiot giant Blaster and it looked like an analogy in the second watching. Too bad that one could not learn much from the movie, but Master went to join the children in the desert oasis.

           When I read the book to the end I realized, or thought I realized, that this is a psychological thriller. Or let us say, an intellectual pseudo-psychological thriller, by which I mean that it can be interpreted by using pseudo-psychology, that is, this phony psychology that you can mostly see in the movies and what is inspired by such intellectual giants as Freud and what does not have much to do with reality. Having watched so many second rate Hollywood movies, I am a world-class expert on pseudo-psychology and can explain Hayes’ book, even without asking the author. Indeed, fiction authors never confirm or deny interpretations of their works. Fact book authors often try, but readers just understand the books the way they like.

            Let’s go to the book. I will not tell the plot, let us say it is a reasonably good thriller and if you want to know how the plot goes, buy the book and read it. I focus on the interpretation. There is the hero, who has a mother complex because his step mother never loved him. Because of this complex he has developed the Holocaust complex: he identifies his real mother with the characters in a photo, or was it a drawing, where a mother and a child walk to the gas chambers. As the story happens soon after the WTC attack and that was 56 years after the Second World War, and the hero is not over sixty, his real mother was not killed in a gas chamber, but he transfers his feelings of loss to the photo or drawing. This Holocaust complex is the reason he kills people, enemies of the USA, or was it some another country. Anyway, Arab terrorists are such enemies. He has transferred the hate Jews have towards Nazis into a firm belief that Muslims want to kill Christians and especially Americans because the USA supports the victims of the Holocaust.

           The hero also has a grandiosity complex and he believes that he is the best secret agent ever and has written the best book on criminology. Healthy young men of course all have a grandiosity complex as it is a direct result of hormones, but the hero is not that young. Very few adult men actually believe in this intellectual superiority nonsense. They do not really think they are geniuses even if a very nice woman would say so, unless of course the woman is a school girl and the man is a girl catcher. Though many men might pretend that they believe as a part of the game, but that is another thing. They do not believe it. Please, write a fact book and then see if it still feels to you as the best book ever written on the topic. But the hero of Pilgrim thinks so, therefore that is intended to demonstrate a grandiosity complex.

           The grandiosity complex is further elaborated by having the hero invent a theory how a flash of magnesium light prints a photo on a mirror. Regardless of if very strong light under some conditions might change silver compounds in a mirror, I am sure that the reader is expected to think that the hero’s theory is highly unlikely to be true. It reminds of some other highly unlikely theories, like the official theories of the fall of the WTC buildings and the Holocaust. I think that is what the author tries to say. He cannot be so naive as it may look: there is a comment that in the WTC temperatures stayed at 2000 Fahrenheit for 100 days, he must understand that it contradicts the official theory.

            There is one unlikely theory that fits even better to the magnesium flash. In the end of the book the hero reads the part of Jesus’ resurrection from the Gospel of Mark. One common layman theory how the Turin Shroud image was formed is that it was made with a magnesium flash. I even elaborated this theory in a post: my conclusion from the theory was that it is the best rational explanation I can come up with and the other theory is a miracle, with the comment that the magnesium theory is unlikely to work. It is not that strong ultraviolet light could not imprint pictures. It does, wood and carpets get lighter in sun light. It is just that the needed light intensity seems very high. I have never seen mirrors get lighter in sun light. Therefore the theory in the book must be intended as a part of the hero’s complex. This complex is closely related to resurrection. In the end the hero experiences resurrection: he is able to leave his past life and start a new life. The super-hacker Battleboi has a similar experience after getting an amnesty.  

            That explains the hero. The enemy Saracen also has a complex: his father was beheaded in Saudi Arabia. That is the reason he become a mujahid and wants to ruin America. His wife was killed by Israelis, but that did not change him, it was the death sentence of a strict orthodox Muslim country. His fault was that he loved his child, so the hero threatens to kill the child and the hard mujahid reveals the whole carefully planned plot. As a part of the plot this solution is too simple and unbelievable. It has to have some interpretation. There is one. The author tells of a WTC hero who ordered people to carry an invalid and caused the death of some of the healthy carriers. In the same way the child has a Down syndrome. It looks like the author tries to say that you should not sacrifice healthy for the weak and love is a weakness, though the hero uses it as a tool: love is strength as long as it is the enemy’s love for his own and you can blackmail him with that.

            That is a cynical view, but certainly intended and what else to expect from a script writer of Mad Max 2. This cynical view is shown in the end: a murderess is let go free, the hero does not much care and the FBI agent, the WTC hero, who cares, cannot do anything. The world is corrupted and the strong live in that world. The book includes more cynical hints: the murderess abuses a new law that lesbos can marry and immediately kills her partner, and the hero inherits a garbage place full of modern art. He even writes a testament where he donates the whole collection to a museum of modern art under the condition that the Holocaust drawing will be on constant display.

           We should of course expect from a script writer or Mad Max 2 that the hero of Pilgrim is an anti-hero. This he is, he assassinates people, blackmails them and threatens to kill a child. The book mentions that the USA tortures terrorists, the US friend Saudi Arabia tortures anybody, Israel bombs Gaza and that Gaza is as it is. The book has some comments like this, but covered in a rather patriotic thriller with many Holocaust references, and there is even a secret tunnel made by Nazis. For many readers the book for sure associates Nazis with Muslims and the innocent victims with the always innocent victims, but I think the author intended that the book is interpreted.

            If a book is written in a way that it requires an interpretation it automatically follows that every interpretation can be denied – that is the whole intention of writing in that particular way. Because of this logical reason we can never claim that the proposed interpretation is the correct one. I cannot prove that anything I have written here was ever intended by the author and an author of a book that needs to be interpreted would never confirm that there is an interpretation.

However, I dislike such books. I have long enough studied other books which have a hidden meaning, such as some Biblical prophetic books, to know that nothing can be proven, but that is not the reason I dislike such books. It is another reason. Far from being a sign of talent or intelligence of the author, a book that needs to be interpreted is simply a symptom of an ill society: why cannot the author clearly say what he means? In a healthy society people read thrillers like those by Remes that have no hidden interpretation. That is why they are more to my liking.