“In a world where vows are worthless. Where making a pledge means nothing. Where promises are made to be broken, it would be nice to see words come back into power.”
SYNOPSIS
When reporter Carl Streator is assigned to investigate and produce several articles on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, he uncovers an ominous connection between these deaths. Before they died, all the children had been read the same poem from the same poetry anthology, known as the “culling song”. Originally an ancient African spell for euthanizing the old or sick in times of famine and war, it is now being sung as a lullaby by unsuspecting parents.
Streator teams up with real estate broker Helen, a woman had who accidentally killed her own child with the poem twenty years before. With the help of Helen’s secretary, earnest Wiccan Mona and her eco-terrorist boyfriend Oyster, they embark on cross-country journey to destroy all remaining copies of the poem from the libraries.
ANALYSIS
>While I have taken care not to include any major plot points in this review, if you wish to avoid any minor spoilers, please skip ahead to the next section<
Lullaby offers a very Chuck Palahniuk take on the thriller novel, winding and unwind music genre conventions to warn readers about the dangers of psychic infection in a world which constantly floods us with information .
Control is a re-occurring theme in the novel. Power manifests itself as information that controls and dominates others. Sometimes that data is written down, like the book which holds the cull birdcall, or the lawsuit “ anti-advertisements ” which associates damaging ( and disturbingly graphic ) events with specific businesses. other times, exponent is gained through verbal communication .
The use of sound to assert dominance is initially presented in Streator ’ south contemn for the modern obsession with meaningless noise. By repeatedly describing others as “ sound-oholics ” and “ quiet-ophobics ”, he is outlining their concern of silence, deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as their decision to be the loudest and drowning out others. ( You can surely see where Palahniuk ’ s frustration with a noisy neighbor has come into meet within the reserve ! )
The ultimate form of dominance – the power to end another ’ south life – is tied up in the pick sung. Most of the characters who come across the poem do not realise that they have this ability until it is besides belated. even more hauntingly, this ability stays with them. Taunting them… tempting them to use it to their advantage.
“We’re all of us, haunted and haunting.”
Reciting the age previous message “ office corrupts ”, Palahniuk is able to turn the detective narrative on its head and provoke the worst behavior from characters who are supposed to act as the novel ’ s moral compass. The narrator, Streator is a basal case of this. Palahniuk encourages the reader to root for him, to perceive him as mentally stronger than those who are ineffective to resist using the cull song .
In the beginning, it is easy to compare Streator against his collaborator, Helen, a woman who has murdered her own son and wittingly sells unsuspecting buyers haunted houses without an ounce of regret. He is a more trustworthy, morally attuned character – but most importantly, he has been given the hero ’ south function .
And however, as the report goes on, the lector soon learns that Streator and Helen aren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate angstrom different as they beginning seem…
Conflict arising from the traditional values vs. the new and chaotic forces which threaten to take control is another big subject. This theme by and large plays out in the narrative as the tension between Streator and Mona ’ s boyfriend, Oyster. He is not lone unable to hide his jealousy over Oyster ’ s youth and forcible attractiveness, but is besides threatened by Oyster ’ randomness opinions and attitudes regarding how society should behave .
“Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can’t understand. We hate to give up the reigns of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation’s clothes and hair suddenly retro.”
The reviewer is endlessly reminded of the fact that Helen and Streator belong to a different generation to Mona and Oyster. The erstwhile are given the roles of “ Mom ” and “ Dad ”, while the latter are regarded in much the same way as rebellious teenagers .
Dysfunctional families, I feel, is one of Palahniuk ’ s favorite motifs, and Lullaby is merely one of his many novels which explore this sport ( e.g. the cults in Survivor and Fight Club, Brandy Alexander and her cortege in inconspicuous Monsters ). In this character, I believe the theme is used to further challenge and corrupt traditional values by offering a distorted delineation of the nuclear kin .
Chuck Palahniuk coming up with the estimate for his future book…
REVIEW
If you ’ rhenium wondering why I have decided to write about a book which is over a decade old ( other than the fact that I am a big fan of Palahniuk ’ sulfur study and this one has been sitting on my bookshelf for excessively long ), I think it is crucial to revisit its messages in the light of recent technological advancements .
Palahniuk has a bent for writing a dystopian and setting it in the modern day. His characters, though most frequently grossly exaggerated caricatures, are symbols of our very worst traits as human beings. therefore, they are hush recognizable in their resemblance to us. Like distorting mirrors at a circus .
Lullaby is a cautionary tale for the Information Age. now that social media has become such an integral separate of our lives and the spread of complimentary Wi-Fi means that internet access has gone fluid, it is then easy for us to be flooded with and overwhelmed by information .
Looking at some of the recently established newsworthiness sites, like Buzzfeed, LADBible or UNILAD, and the direction in which older platforms have adapted themselves to suit changes in consumer behavior, it is apparent that these news companies are all urgently battling it out with each other, competing for our attention and our loyalty. This has led to the creation and quick spread of click-bait articles, with their attention-getting and controversial headlines, intentionally designed to get us commenting and sharing across social media platforms.
It is no long enough to simply report on the facts. If on-line audiences can not digest the accuracy, then it must rather be the more marketable and most interesting version of the truth. And the shorter the better, because the majority of internet users obviously have a non-existent care span .
“The mass media, the culture, everything laying eggs under my skin. Big Brother filling me with need.
Do I really want a big house, a fast car, a thousand beautiful sex partners? Do I really want those things? Or am I trained to want them?”
Palahniuk does not hold back on his criticism of modern company. If we apply the criticisms present in Lullaby to current society, we will see that meaningless noise and the desire to be louder than others constantly plays out in our social feeds. furthermore, we should ask ourselves how many of these messages ( regardless of whether we think we ’ ve read them ) has had an determine on our thoughts and opinions ?
Analysis apart, I would like to end this novel by answering the one question you probably wanted to see at the begin of this article :
Is it worth the read?
I would ultimately say that you should read Fight Club, Survivor or inconspicuous Monsters before you think about reading Lullaby. This is because these novels touch upon similar themes, but the narratives are told in a room which is much more capture and I personally found their narrator easier to engage with .
however, I would place this novel in fourth stead on my list of favorite Chuck Palahniuk books. On closer observation, Lullaby is easier to appreciate when you consider what themes has gone into forming the narrative .
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