40 pages • 1 hour read
Ethan CaninThe Palace Thief
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Comradeship and Rivalry
The stories in this collection universally feature a pairing of men with different temperaments. While the external relationship between the men is one of comradeship and collaboration, their interpersonal dynamic is a fight for supremacy. Considering the stories take place in the decades that comprise the Cold War, this is a clear allusion to the conflict. Just as the United States and the USSR were fighting for influence using varied and sophisticated tactics rather than outright military confrontation, the men in Canin’s stories are engaged in a perennial contest of one-upmanship and undermining.
In a collection where the Heraclitan prophesy that “character is fate” (105) is referenced in every story, all the protagonists are nominally aware of an established hierarchy and the domains that they occupy. Roth knows that his hard work may be admirable, but it pales in comparison to Peters’s wealth and status. William knows he is the reliable, communicative child, while his brother Clive is the strange, unapproachable genius. Wilson grudgingly accepts that he is of an old, outdated generation, while his son, Brent, is of the new. Finally, Hundert knows that he is simply the educator of powerful men, rather than a man of significance.
Literal and metaphorical contests set up situations where the men must impede on their archetypical rival’s territory. For example, when William’s father drunkenly declares, “I only have one son left” (103), William worries that Clive is the chosen one. In the style of the myth of Cain and Abel, which recalls the family’s disinherited Jewish religion, William decides that there can only be one “ascendant” son (116) and hopes something will remove Clive from the spotlight so that their parents’ love will be exclusively for William. This wish is realized twice: when Clive’s sexual orientation is exposed and, later, when he dies. Ironically, it is when William truly becomes the only son that he renounces his childhood desire.
“Accountant” features a similar ironic twist to the quest for status. When Most Valuable Player is awarded to Peters, even though Roth knows he deserves the honor, the latter sees it as another example of how Peters unfairly comes out on top. Roth seeks to redress the balance by stealing the prize leggings and dissolving the potential partnership between the men’s companies because, from his perspective, beating Peters in this respect is a means of correcting the wrongs. Roth believes he would rather face a lifetime of professional punishment than lose this contest. However, it is not long before he realizes this irrational behavior did not fulfill his need for recognition. In fact, it made him even more jealous of Peters’s ability to live the life he wants, not the life he thought he needed to live, the way Roth did.
While the first two stories assert that there can only be one winner, the second two hedge their bets. In “The Palace Thief,” Hundert creates a world where two can win—a rightful winner by way of talent and an illegitimate winner who benefits from status and dishonorable means. Hundert ensures that Sedgewick undeservedly earns a place in the Mr. Julius Caesar competition, but upon discovering that Sedgewick is cheating, he alters the quiz so that the deserving Mehta is awarded the laurel garland. However, he does nothing to actively dissuade Sedgewick from cheating; perhaps because Hundert cheated to get Sedgewick into the contest in the first place.
This allows Sedgewick to continue taking shortcuts in life. To show the cyclical nature of this kind of dynamic, the Mr. Julius Caesar contest takes place again with the same results. However, Sedgewick still comes out on top when, after losing to Mehta a second time, he reveals that his politics are founded on notions of rivalry and scarcity: “We have opened our door to all the world […] and now the world has stripped us bare” (216). The typical populist politician, Sedgewick’s whole idea of the world is founded on an intruder taking what is rightfully his.
Finally, “City of Broken Hearts” aims to redress notions of scarcity. Wilson believes there are no women like his ex-wife Abbie and finds little satisfaction in dating. His son Brent, who holds an ideology in direct contrast to his father’s limited ideas, tries to force Wilson to realize this is not true: “[M]aybe you’re looking in the wrong places, Dad, maybe you’re looking the wrong way, but they do exist” (144). Brent wants Wilson to open his mind because, while life did not go the way he planned, he does not need to remain stuck in resentment. The men’s battle of ideas reaches a truce, when Brent sets his father up with Margaret, who they both deem as a suitable replacement for Abbie. However, Wilson continues to hold his ex-wife in a regard all her own, feeling remorse when he buys Margaret flowers from the same shop he used for Abbie as though the former is less deserving of this treatment.
Overall, the stories show that the situations in which men encounter each other are built to engender rivalry; however, the ways in which this rivalry is enacted and circumvented are as varied as the characters themselves.
The Appearance of Power
This a crucial theme in the stories, though they are divided on how it manifests. While some stories provide an archetype of a powerful man, others have a more questioning approach.
In “Accountant” and “The Palace Thief,” Peters and Sedgewick stand out as the most powerful, both in terms of money and social status. They are white and middle class, with charming, extroverted personalities that mask their shortcomings. They also use humor to gain the support of their peers, which gives the reader a break from the stuffy narration of Roth and Hundert. For example, Peters smooths over Roth’s gaffe by telling Willie Mays, “[T]hey may sock you, Willie, but I’d give anything to be in your shoes, my friend” (46), while Sedgewick challenges Hundert by asking, “[I]f it’s such a serious class, then why’re they all wearing dresses?” (173), referring to his classmates wearing togas.
In terms of physical appearance, Hundert acknowledges that Sedgewick’s strong features give him “the dangerous element of natural leadership” (174), implying that his dominance over the other boys is a given. Roth, however, is baffled by how Peters’s eternal baseball cap wearing enables him to get ahead. He interprets Peters’s cap as a mark of immaturity and low ambition, so he is frustrated when “a smiling portrait of Eugene Peters wearing his baseball cap began to appear” (5) in news announcements. He cannot fathom the “connection […] between automobile-parts and our national pastime” (13). Here, Roth fails to recognize that the baseball cap is an effective marketing strategy because it holds good associations for the average consumer.
In contrast, Roth’s smart suits make him appear overly formal and communicate that he is the servant of an old-fashioned company. Similarly, Hundert’s formality, both in his speaking style and approach to education, casts him as old-fashioned and irrelevant. The popularity of men like Peters and Sedgewick can be viewed in terms of historian Warren Susman’s understanding of the 19th century’s culture of character giving way to the 20th century’s culture of personality. In the culture of character, traits possessed by Roth and Hundert—reserve, conscientiousness, and a sense of justice—were valued; in the culture of personality, they were overshadowed by showier traits such as risk-taking, charm, and confidence.
The remaining stories in the collection also show that a powerful appearance is in tune with the times, though they make less definitive conclusions about the relationship between style and power. Aging fathers Simon and Wilson both dress in styles popular within their sons’ generations. Simon exchanges his marine uniform and business attire for purple ties and bellbottomed trousers to counter his anxiety that he will become irrelevant. However, a simple change in appearance is not enough to quell his old-world ideals. His default is to turn to a punishing paternalistic type of power when he finds out that his son Clive is gay.
Meanwhile, Wilson’s “younger-looking […] hipster” clothing (121) and baseball kit serve as an attempt to be relatable to his son, in addition to fitting his own perennial ideal of the youthful sports fan from the good old days, when his nuclear family was intact. While Wilson is negotiating his own appearance, he notices Brent’s new ear piercing and worries that his son has given up the power and privilege of looking like an unequivocally heterosexual man. However, the earring proves irrelevant to Brent’s success with women as his seriousness and sensitivity give him the power to enter zones devoted to the opposite sex, such as The Sanctuary women’s shelter and their less tangible “secret communication” (155). Brent’s example shows that physical appearance matters less than attitude when it comes to the power of relevance. In a less showy and more authentic manner than Peters and Sedgewick, Brent proves that personality and the illusion of being one’s full self is key to power.
The Presence (or Absence) of Women
The stories in the collection center on men’s relationships to themselves and other men. The women in the stories are secondary characters whose speech and actions are apparent, but their thoughts are not. The final story does not even feature any named female characters. Still, the presence of women—of lack of one—in the stories is interesting because of the cipher-like, symbolic role they play.
A chief function of women in the stories is as a consolation prize for a lost dream. In the simplest case, one Margaret is a consolation prize for Abbie leaving Wilson. When Wilson sleeps with Margaret, “he held her as though he might have been holding his wife of thirty years” (162), attempting to recreate the comfortable conjugal feeling he had with Abbie. He even takes up his routine of buying flowers from Panos, the Greek florist, thought he “couldn’t help thinking he was crossing [Abbie]” (165) with this act because he also used this shop to buy flowers for her. Now that he has crossed the line between the past and the future, he realizes that his ideal state, being part of a nuclear family with Abbie and Brett, is consigned to the past.
Meanwhile, Sandra in “Batorsag and Szerelem” acts as a consolation prize for both brothers. As Clive’s supposed girlfriend, she is the foil for Elliot, the boy who truly fulfils Clive’s desires. Then, when William feels uncertain of his parents’ preference for him over Clive, he responds to Sandra’s advances to step on Clive’s territory and come of age in a way he thinks his elder brother never will. Despite her prominence in the lives of the two brothers, Sandra’s true feelings about the situation are unknown; in this story of fraternal rivalry, they are irrelevant.
Roth’s relationship with women involves an indulgence of the irrational, emotional side that he gave up. Around the time he decided to get married, Roth took the two women he was dating, LeAnne and Scheherazade, to see the symphony orchestra. While LeAnne read the program notes and knew about music, it was Scheherazade’s “full streams of tears” that “touched a part of [him] quite deeply” because he has “never cried at anything” (9). While the latter’s temperament seems to keep the spirit of his forfeited dream alive, it is no satisfying substitute because, following their wedding, he feels “gloomy” and “doomed” (11). Scheherazade’s “capricious” spendthrift ways become the accompaniment to the career that keeps him away from his authentic preference for “uproar and disorder, a life of music” (61).
Finally, “The Palace Thief,” which features no named women, is emblematic of the narrator’s indifference to them and the distraction and family life they represent. Hundert boasts about being a strict teacher who knows that a nurturing attitude “would only hold them back, would keep them in the bosoms of their mothers so long that they would remain weak-minded” (184). This shows his disparagement of women and feminine values, which he believes threaten his male students’ learning aptitudes. The environments of St. Benedict’s boarding school and the Roman history Hundert teaches are almost exclusively male, which can be taken as a subtle confirmation of his sexual orientation. While the story’s all-male environment could seem surreal and old-fashioned to a modern reader, the closed-circle relationships between Hundert and his former students are a more familiar trope of the patriarchy and privilege that still largely informs the highest institutions of power.
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