The Informer · Chapter
XIII explained
After Gallagher leaves the inquiry room, Mulholland organizes a drawing of lots among three men—Hackett, Flynn, and Curley—to determine who will carry out a violent act.
What happens
After Gallagher leaves the inquiry room, Mulholland organizes a drawing of lots among three men—Hackett, Flynn, and Curley—to determine who will carry out a violent act. The men are deeply anxious and reluctant, revealing their contrasting personalities and backgrounds. Hackett is a good-natured docker who joined the Organization out of hero-worship for Gallagher, Flynn is a dour, philosophical revolutionary with a bizarre personal belief system, and Curley is a nervous, extreme Communist theorist. The drawing proceeds with tension and cowardice, ultimately assigning the short match to Hackett.
Themes in this chapter
Violence and Revolution
The chapter centers on the selection of a man to carry out a violent act, highlighting the psychological burden and moral ambiguity of revolutionary violence.
Fate and Inevitability
The drawing of lots symbolizes the role of chance in determining life-and-death outcomes, underscoring a sense of inescapable destiny.
Loyalty and Comradeship
The men's obedience to the Organization and to Commandant Gallagher, despite personal fear, reflects the complex bonds of loyalty among revolutionaries.
Characters to notice
- Bartly Mulholland
Oversees the drawing of lots with deliberate, serious demeanor; asserts authority over the nervous men.
- Peter Mulligan
Referred to as Peter Hackett; a young docker chosen for the first time, known for his good nature and fits of rage and remorse at home.
- Dart Flynn
A dour, fleshy revolutionary with a private philosophy about sharing souls with animals; lacks moral sense but is respected for courage.
- Comrade Curley
Nervous, pale, and consumptive-looking; a crank obsessed with extreme Communist theory and bloodshed.
Key passages
“He had also worked out an amazing system of philosophy, based on the premise that each human being shares his soul with several different animals.”
Flynn believed that every person's soul is connected to multiple animals, and that discovering these animal counterparts could lead to happiness and immortality.
Reveals Flynn's eccentric and isolated inner world, contrasting with his outward revolutionary role.
“The proletarian watchwords are 'revenge' and 'bread.'”
Curley claims that the working class's true rallying cries are vengeance and sustenance, not abstract ideals like justice or liberty.
Highlights Curley's extreme, bloodthirsty interpretation of Communist ideology.
“He was not the stuff of which the other sort of revolutionary is made either. He belonged to the Organization simply because the rest of 'the boys' belonged to it, and out of fanatical hero-worship for Commandant Dan Gallagher.”
Hackett joined the revolutionary group not out of political conviction, but because his friends were members and he idolized Gallagher.
Explains Hackett's lack of ideological commitment and his motivation rooted in social conformity and personal admiration.