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Christopher BrownMenippean SatireDr. Robert S. Dupree16 December 2008
Exuberance in the Face of the Ultimate and Inexorable Pancake: Un-certainty
Uncertainty and ineffability are doubtless the primary themes of 
TheThird Policeman
; the unnamed narrator repeatedly confronts unspeakablewonders and peculiar objects that elude his comprehension. Recalling Dio-genes and the skepticism of the cynics, the world that the narrator experi-ences is often beyond comprehension; unlike the cynics, the narrator stub-bornly insists on reasoning through the illogicalities of the policemen, only tofind that the world around the barracks remains beyond feasibility. When thecyclical amnesia of the plot deposits the narrator exactly where he started,O’Brien dashes any hopes for a resolving denouement. Many Menippeansatires are contemplations of epistemology, notably
Don Quixote
and
 Alice inWonderland 
, but the peculiarity of the Menippean variety is a salvific aspectthat other satire usually neglects. These Menippean satires are not cynicallyskeptical of all epistemology, however, they depict a diligent search for abetter foundation: “Bakhtin emphasizes that such carnivalesque subversionsof authoritarian discourses in the Menippean satire are not pure mockery, butopen serious dialogues” (Booker,
Flann O’Brien
144). Despite Hugh Kinner’s judgment that “
The Third Policeman
is after all far from deliberate enough tobear any great weight of interpretation” (69), I believe it is O’Brien’s re-sponse to the technological dilemma of the early twentieth century, particu-larly Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which claims that the closersomething is investigated, the less it can be fully known. In
The Third Police-man
the redemptive key to the absence of a concrete epistemological found-ation is exuberance and humanity—traits personified by the eponymous thirdpoliceman, Fox.One of the most striking features of 
The Third Policeman
is the incon-sequentiality of finding, near the end, that all but the first sixteen pages takeplace in Flann O’Brien’s idea of hell. The grotesque mystery of the book isthat the “something” that “happens” in Old Mather’s mansion is a bomb thatblows the house, along with the narrator, “to bits” (O’Brien 23, 197). The ma- jority of the book is set in hell—irrational, cyclical, ineffable, but ostensiblyreal and only recognized for what it is at the end. Bakhtin writes that
menip- pea
use “the most daring and unfettered fantasies…in which to provoke andtest a philosophical idea” (Bakhtin 94). As with every novel—and particu-larly one that opens with the words, “Not everybody knows how I killed oldPhillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade”—the reader enters Col-eridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” before turning the cover (O’Brien 7).O’Brien’s trick in
The Third Policeman
is to have this preliminary“suspension” carry over into the underworld, and then into the depths of 
 
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eternity, while each level really ought to be accompanied by a new layer of “suspension,” because each departs from the belief-system or rules of thepreceding environment. But when the reader finds he has been reading at alevel more unbelievable than he had presumed, it blurs the boundaries of thefirst “suspension.” Deep into the book, Sergeant Pluck tells the narrator thatdeath “is an inferior phenomenon at best”—if believing he is alive while he isdead is a transparent detail, the narrator might as well be real as fictive(O’Brien 102). In this way, the fictional experience of the narrator is madedubiously factual to the reader, and the “philosophical idea” outgrows theconstraints of the fictional plot.In
Flann O’Brien, Bakhtin, and Menippean Satire
, M. Keith Booker delin-eates Flann O’Brien’s satire on traditional epistemology and “pragmatic”solution to the resulting “negativism or nihilism” (62), interpreting the circu-lar fate of the narrator as the result of his quest to find “a final Truth” (49).Likewise, de Selby’s critics are inconclusive because of the “futility of allquests for certain knowledge” (53), and the repeated images of infiniteseries calls “into question the human ability ever to reach an epistemologicalbottom” (57). Booker admits that “it is highly appropriate that [PolicemanFox] be the title character” (48), but he does not develop the redemptivepower of Fox, who is, indeed, the exuberant hero in the face of skepticism. The narrator and Fox represent two ends of the spectrum of truth andpretense. Fox is perfectly unassuming—when he apprehends the narrator forbreaking windows, he states, “if it was nothing else you have no light on yourbicycle and I could take your name and address for the half of that” (O’Brien180). The narrator, contrarily, is a fabricator: “I would be crafty. In the morn-ing I would go to the barracks and report the theft of my American goldwatch. Perhaps it was this lie which was responsible for the bad things thathappened to me afterwards. I had no American gold watch” (36). Likewise,the narrator’s motive for the murder is, ultimately, his unhesitating confid-ence that his “De Selby Index” “is useful… and badly wanted,” thus justifyingmurder for the sake of knowledge (14). Policeman Fox occupies the otherpole, and the differences between the two accentuate Fox’s humility and hu-manity.De Selby, the fictional philosopher, is one target of O’Brien’s satire of skepticism, but the mockery is ambivalent. While the narrator declaimsagainst the critics of de Selby, the philosopher himself is an icon of playfulfoolishness that O’Brien seems to appreciate and whom the narrator idolizes.De Selby’s most notable trait is an inventiveness that materializes in theoriesof physics that are tinged with atomic science and unearthed conundrumslike Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the hare (O’Brien 50). Although Bookerwrites, “the great scholar seems distinguished by an unparalleled lack of anycommon sense whatsoever” (“Science, Philosophy” 40), the narrator’s opin-ion concerning one passage of de Selby depicts another perspective: “[somecritics think] de Selby was permitting himself a modicum of unwonted levityin connection with this theory but he seems to argue the matter seriously
 
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enough and with no want of conviction,” which demonstrates de Selby’s de-votion to his work (O’Brien 94).In terms of modern science, de Selby’s theories are, frankly, wrong.Charles Kemnitz, who goes to great lengths—though perhaps his “farfetched”argument goes “too far” (Booker,
Flann O’Brien
55)—to prove O’Brien knewmodern theoretical physics, quotes a letter: “Mr Sheriden, who of courseknew O’Nolan [O’Brien’s real name] well during university days and everafter, said that yes, O’Nolan had been intensely interested in modern physicsas an undergraduate and it was entirely possible that
The Third Policeman
was based on relativity theory” (57n). However, de Selby claims that theworld is sausage-shaped and that sleep is a succession of mild fainting fitsdue to the asphyxiation that occurs when the thick night air erupts from min-iscule volcanoes. De Selby’s theories are absurd, but there is more to themthan a perversion of the nascent theories of relativity and recent subatomicfindings. O’Brien was not ignorant or superstitious; that de Selby seems so isnot simply a satirical jab at science. Booker writes, “De Selby's theory is non-sense, of course, and his experimental results quite impossible” (“Science,Philosophy” 42). Two alternative evaluations prevail: comic relief and analo-gical interpretation. De Selby, despite bouts of narcolepsy and a crippling“condition of the gall-bladder,” pursues his research with gusto, and his forti-tude while examining every slide of a motion picture individually is both im-pressive and hilarious (O’Brien 93n, 50n). His scholastic buffoonery is en-dearing because he takes such joy in it. The analog between de Selby’s ab-surd theories and science is that, noting how Newtonian physics was beingoverturned by relativity theory, one must wonder how seriously to take thenew science, which cannot be proved to be any more infallible than the old.O’Brien does not condemn de Selby for being a sadly deluded physicist, oreven a pretentious philosopher. De Selby is not a stuffy critic; instead, he is arather endearing mad scientist, and it is his epistemologically self-confidentcritics that O’Brien satirizes throughout
The Third Policeman
.The ineffability of the world of the policeman that repeatedly pains thenarrator demonstrates that “For O’Brien there are more things in heaven andearth than are dreamt of in our philosophy or science” (Booker,
Flann O’Bri-en
65). The narrator is insatiably analytical and endeavors to comprehendeverything he encounters—an attitude that is often the cause of the psycho-somatic pain that arises in the presence of such oddities as MacCruiskeen’smatryoshka-like boxes. Booker notes that “The narrator here is showing atypical human discomfort when coming face to face with the bottomlessnessof infinity,” which, to quote Jorge Luis Borges, “is a concept which corruptsand upsets all others” (
Flann O’Brien
58). The narrator’s discomfort,however, is due to his insistence on understanding the workmanship of theboxes; he whistles common tunes to comfort himself and disguise his pain,and does his best “not [to] believe they are there at all because that is a sim-pler thing to believe than the contrary,” i.e., that each is a flawless simulac-rum of the preceding box (O’Brien 74). Feeling he must comprehend the situ-ation, the narrator cannot let the boxes simply be, and pains himself in trying
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