To Make Something

Dead as the father has been made by the son—twice over, no less—the son cannot banish the father. The son remains, therefore, haunted by what he is not making. Or, that he is Not. Making. Something.

That Morse Industries is saved for late industrial capitalism, that it will continue to make something is not, as one might be tempted to argue (contrary to Stuckey’s firm belief), due to Vivian’s arrival in Edward’s life. The vulture capitalist losing his way from Philip Stuckey’s mansion to the Regent Beverley Wilshire and landing up, after midnight, in the bad part of town, is not the road to Damascus, not of the late industrial capitalist variety, anyway.

Whatever role Vivian plays is a philosophical one. It is Vivian’s refusal to disarticulate the moral from the ethical that enables her to bring to life what has long been latent in Edward, longer than even fourteen and a half years. Latent in Edward are the residues of a dead father who continues to haunt the bastard son. Vivian functions as the spur of ethical discomfiture and difficulty that has long been brewing in Edward.

However, ethical catalyst—of sorts, the spark that lights the ethical fire, if you prefer—though she be, Vivian can have no place in the patronymic drama, and certainly not in its resolution. The patronymic, the bastard son determined—unsuccessfully, of course—to shuck off the father’s imprint on him. In order to do so, the son must contain the confrontation with the father. Above all, it must be private, though its effects will show themselves to be intensely public. And, the patronymic drama, against the backdrop that is the absent presence of the dead father, must be staged through the surrogate, one who is, of course, never acknowledged as a surrogate, as substitute for the absent-present dead father.

Edward and James Morse face off in private after Edward has cleared the boardroom of everyone. Edward asks everyone to leave him and James Morse alone. Stuckey, understanding himself indispensable to Edward, remains seated and is visibly upset (the fraternal rejection of Stuckey? Or, the loss of the love object for Stuckey? Both may very well be true) and can hardly bring himself to leave. Edward is happy to allow David Morse to remain, but James Morse, recognizing the significance of Edward’s need for complete privacy, has his grandson leave. David makes a graceful exit, unlike the churlish, spurned Stuckey.

James Morse is expecting a struggle, and he is ready for combat.

But Edward surprises him. Morse Industries will not be spared this hostile (but not too hostile) takeover, but it will be allowed to continue to build ships. To make the things it has been making for forty years.

As James Morse, full of goodwill having been spared the guillotine that is vulture capitalism, says to everyone upon their return to the boardroom: “We’re going to build ships, great big ships.” Stuckey, as one might imagine, is not best pleased. Edward has betrayed not only Stuckey but the very im-moral principle upon which their relationship is founded: Not do unto others, but undo (unto) them; what they have built, have made. “Greed,” and destructive destruction, “is good.” It is the supreme principle.

The key articulation, the signal exchange, between Edward and James Morse, however, is not Edward’s betrayal of the principle of destructive destruction. It is rather that moment when, grasping that Morse Industries has been granted, against all his and his grandson’s expectations, a new, economically viable lease of life, James Morse—standing face-to-face with Edward—says, almost quietly: “I’m proud of you, son.”

For the briefest of moments, the patrilineal line has been restored.

The bastard son, in saving the surrogate father who is not a surrogate father but is a surrogate father, reclaims for himself a father of/from the industrialist era.

Is this all what the bastard son wanted all along?