Ben, in the World

Ben, in the World is a novel written by Doris Lessing, published in 2000, in which she stages a parody of the 'objectivity' of the narrator's voice. The story delves into the life of Ben Lovatt following the events of the first book dedicated to this character, The Fifth Child.

Plot

Ben, in the World takes place a number of years after the events in The Fifth Child. Ben Lovatt, now eighteen, lives with an elderly woman in Mimosa House. When it comes to the point that the elderly woman can no longer take care of him, Ben sets out to find his place in the world. Knowing he would not be welcomed back by his family (and not wanting anything to do with them), he goes off on his own, first around England, then to southern France, Brazil, and finally to the Andes Mountains.

Characters

• Ben Lovatt. The fifth child of Harriet and David Lovatt, born different.
• The Lovatts. Ben's family. Consists of his mother Harriet, father David, and his siblings Luke, Helen, Jane, and Paul.
• Mrs. Biggs. An elderly woman who looks after Ben for a while.
• Rita. A courtesan that Ben becomes interested in.
• Johnston. The owner of a minicab company and Rita's pimp.
• Alex. A film director and producer interested in making a movie about Ben.
• Teresa. A courtesan turned actress interested in helping Ben.

Reception

In his review for The New York Times, Michael Pye said the book "lets you see things as Ben sees them, as you have not seen things before. The book shares that uncanny effect with the best fiction."^[1] In her analysis of Lessing's experimental comments on literary genre, Susan Watkins argues that by exaggerating the picaresque, Lessing forces her readers "to ask a series of questions about the meaning of the distinction between the animal and the human." Watson finds that Ben is "a marginal figure, critical of society but unable to find a place outside it", like a picaro hero. Lessing uses the figure of Ben "as a way to comment on a society experiencing intense social upheaval." While the traditional picaro is a semi-outsider, Ben is much more isolated. Furthermore, it is far more in doubt if he is able "to survive by his wits and turn a series of exploitative situations to his advantage (another feature of the genre)." Watkins observes that in Ben, in the World prolepsis is used to a humorous effect by which the 'objectivity' of the narrator's voice is being parodied. The device of omniscience is exaggerated so that the reader is made to see how naive it is to believe in what the narrator relates. Another effect of this is, according to Watson, that the reliability of perception is questioned and that any 'commons sense' judgments about Ben's alleged difference from others are called into doubt.^[2]

By its depicting an outsider, Ben, in the World has recently been seen as comparable to Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) by Herman Melville, to The Metamorphosis (1912) by Franz Kafka, to The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus, to Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell, to The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison, and to Unaccustomed Earth (2008) by Jhumpa Lahiri.^[3]

References

External links

• PBS interview with Lessing

Works by Doris Lessing
Novels	The Grass Is Singing Martha Quest The Golden Notebook A Proper Marriage A Ripple from the Storm Landlocked The Four-Gated City Memoirs of a Survivor Shikasta The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five The Sirian Experiments The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire The Good Terrorist The Fifth Child Ben, in the World The Sweetest Dream The Cleft
Short stories	"Through the Tunnel" "Flight"
Collections	Prisons We Choose to Live Inside The Grandmothers: Four Short Novels
Autobiography	Under My Skin Walking in the Shade
Science fiction	Canopus in Argos The Making of the Representative for Planet 8
Other	Alfred and Emily