Campbell's Trunk

Okay, we're about to get bleak.

You may remember Campbell's manuscript trunk. It's where he keeps all of his old papers. He likes to look at it. Actually, what he really likes to do look inside it and go, "These pieces of paper were me at one time" (22.15).

Um, yeah, that's not creepy at all.

This trunk is more like a crypt than anything else. Yeah, we know that some creep named Bodovskov totally ripped off Campbell's materials and made bank off them, which leads Wirtanen at one point to suggest that Campbell is living on through his work. But no. That's not actually happening. And why isn't it happening? Because Campbell is dead inside.

We're not making that up:

I passed my hand over the manuscripts. 'And in it were these,' I said. I remembered the trunk now, remembered when I'd closed it up at the start of the war, remembered when I'd thought of the trunk as a coffin for the young man I would never be again. (22.27)

Campbell has spent so much of his life writing plays—both for the stage, and for himself to perform in real life—that in fact, his life is really just a bunch of papers. He's never been himself—except perhaps with Helga, when the two were alone; he's just been playing various roles. He's got nothing real now, and it's pretty much his own doing.

So sad. Kind of. Maybe.