To give concentration to his disgust, he chose the selective treatment described here, and triumphantly drew his readers into the mayhem with the involvement of a horrified and unwillingly fascinated witness.

Greek and Roman societies alike provided Mitchell with an example of the kind of imposed slavery which he thought he saw in a more abstract form in his own society in the 1930s. Slavery of the mind is something which obviously angered him in his late teens, working in the poorer areas of Glasgow: in Scottish Scene in 1934 the anger he felt at the enslavement of a generation to poverty and despair is barely in control, giving ‘Glasgow’ more power than most of his polemics. For Spartacus and his band slavery has been of the body, but not of the spirit; the attack on a morally rotten Roman (or Greek) society is the coming of the historical moment where the free spirit allows the slaves to fight.

It is notable that Spartacus is about that moment of confrontation, the moment when a society loses control; it does not suggest a perfect or guaranteed moment of successful confrontation, the historically correct moment, for of course the rebellion – splendid in conception and gloriously described as it is by Mitchell – is a failure. The last paragraphs of the book suggest that history’s moment has not come; perhaps a few generations off, a rebellion of a different kind may work. The recreation of the events of 73 BC is one of splendidly caught excitement and confrontation followed by an ambiguous final authorial statement (a technique Mitchell used to end Grey Granite). Like Grey Granite, Spartacus leaves the reader with unanswered questions rather than with a programme for historical or social reform; the author’s deepest interest was obviously with the engagement itself, and he accepts Spartacus’ defeat as historical fact. That the struggle took place, and would continue in some form, is as far as Mitchell’s involvement goes. The real involvement is with the reader in the events of the moment.

Reader involvement

Two main techniques give Mitchell’s account an air of the spontaneity of rebellion and revolt. One is the character of the central protagonist, war-wounded, remote, inhumanly controlled, a leader who is not understood by the followers who are prepared to go to their deaths for him. Spartacus may fascinate, but he also puzzles. By his own admission he ceases to be a statesman (S 161) in anger, he turns from Rome when he has it in his sights, he shows human feeling when it is least expected and inhuman fierceness of purpose when it is needed. Initially Kleon’s puppet (or so it seems), Spartacus develops a character of his own, one which commands respect from the other figures in the story and consistent attention from the reader. By keeping the reader at a distance from the central character, Mitchell gives the activity of the book a sense of historical unexpectedness.

The other technique is already familiar, that of the narrowing of narrative perspective. By deliberately depriving the reader of extensive areas of alternative information – Roman strategy, psychological insight into character, flashback or forward – Mitchell keeps the reader on edge for the information of the moment, which is all the reader possesses.

Both techniques serve a common end. The novel was, after all, written in haste at a period of Mitchell’s life when he had limited time for research and writing, and by narrowing the canvas of his historical description he contains the necessary material and gives immediacy and focus to the progress of the rebellion. It has also been suggested that, by filtering out the normal emotions of sympathy and disgust through the hardening effect of war and repeated suffering, the novelist induces in the reader a mood in which the described emotions of the historical protagonists can be felt and understood, even if not accepted.

It is in the light of this analysis that Kleon the mutilated Greek emerges as a splendid narrative device, closer to the reader norm than many, yet decisively separated by the terrible injury so often mentioned by Mitchell. Even the late incident with Puculla, while serving to humanise a character too often seen as unnaturally self-contained, merely redeems rather than humanises. To some in the camp he is an object of sexual ridicule; to others such as Gershom, his harking on Plato’s perfect state is mere madness. He is admired for his efficiency and his loyalty and the reader grudgingly offers identification with someone who can read and understand, within limits; while the Gauls worship the sun, ‘Kleon, Gershom, and the Ionians did not worship, knowing the sun to be but a ball of fire three leagues away.’ (S34)

Kleon has specific strategies: ‘Spartacus and the slaves are one . . . for the Leader is the People’(S 81) and he even wildly considers taking command should Spartacus be killed (S 172); but with maturity Spartacus distances himself from Kleon and all advisers, and finds a life and leadership all his own, increasing the admiration of a readership who can only mourn his passing:

We come to free all slaves whatsoever . . . in the new state we’ll make even the Masters will not be enslaved. We march with your Lex Servorum, but we do not march with your Plato. (S 190)

The Platonic model clearly rejected, Mitchell blends the vision of the gladiator with ‘a great Cross with a figure that was crowned with thorns’, and the dying Kleon ‘saw that these Two were One, and the world yet theirs: and he went into unending night and left them that shining earth’. (S 287)

The reader is being urged, strongly, to accept an identification of Christ the freer of slaves with Spartacus a generation before – Spartacus killed before his time. The future is theirs. Their time is not now. Again, Mitchell stops short of detailed interpretation: his intention is not to make sense of history, but rather to reflect the ambiguity of randomness of the historical process seen from Mitchell’s complex viewpoint.

Style

Spartacus is told with Mitchell’s characteristic verve and economy, for he was a writer who experimented through the short story to find a mature and very recognisable narrative style early in his career.