Passion in the Face of Death
In Bel Canto, the proximity of death
and suffering makes people love more passionately. We learn that
Hosokawa’s love for opera grew in part from his hard life in post–World
War II Japan. Simon and Edith Thibault renew their love for each
other in what they call a “godforsaken country.” Most centrally,
the hostages and the terrorists grow to love one another in the
face of death and danger. The characters in Bel Canto must
live for the moment, since their situation is uncertain and death
could come at any time. They find that under these circumstances,
they crave love and friendship. The first time Watanabe and Carmen
kiss, they do not make great plans for their future; they talk about
the likelihood that they will be separated.
The specter of death also sharpens the characters’ appreciation of
beauty and art. The first time Kato plays the piano, he plays “the love
and loneliness that each of them felt, that no one had brought himself
to speak of.” Coss sings “as if she were trying to save the lives
of everyone in the room.”
Patchett suggests that the drone of daily life makes it
hard to live passionately. In order to get through the days, people
put aside thoughts of loss, vulnerability, and death. They behave
calmly and conventionally, and mute the desire to live and love
with intensity. In Paris, a city of elegant women, Thibault saw
his wife as just one of many elegant women. In Japan, Hosokawa spent
most of his day fulfilling his duties as businessman, husband, and
father. He shoehorned his passion into the little time he devoted
to opera. It takes a hostage crisis to teach the characters in Bel
Canto to live and love fully.
The Strangeness of Fate
In the world of Bel Canto, fate exists,
and people are at the mercy of destinies they can’t control. In
the fifth chapter of the novel, we learn that Father Arguedas is
“only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his
destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand.”
Like Arguedas, Watanabe marvels at the strangeness of fate. It seems
almost impossible that he, a highly educated and well-traveled professional
from Japan, would meet Carmen, a terrorist from a remote village
in Latin America. But not only do Watanabe and Carmen meet, they
fall in love. Watanabe often thinks about how strange it is that
they should have found each other. Thibault, similarly, is amazed
by the unexpected twists in his marriage. First he rediscovers his
love for his wife, and then he loses her company after being taken
captive.
The Basic Human Impulse Toward Civilization
Many novels explore humans’ base impulses toward violence
and power. Novels like The Lord of the Flies suggest
that our darkest impulses lurk just beneath the surface and will
spring out if given the chance. In Bel Canto, Patchett
suggests just the opposite: that our strongest impulses are not
barbaric, but civilizing. At the beginning of the novel, the characters
are caught up in daily struggles for fame, for money, for power.
But once captivity removes these struggles, people gravitate toward
art and culture. The hostages and the terrorists read, sing, learn
languages, cook, watch TV, play chess, play sports, garden, and
fall in love.
