45 pages • 1 hour read
Herman KochThe Dinner
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Blood
In the text, blood is a metaphor for the penchant for violence shared by Paul and Michel. Not only do Michel and Paul both commit acts of violence, their shared blood suggests that this tendency might be hereditary, a social disconnect passed down from one generation to the other compelling Paul and his son to imagine and act upon terribly violent thoughts.
Blood appears when characters lose their grip on their violent tenancies. When Paul is talking to someone he dislikes, he imagines punching them in the face. But his imagination goes further. He describes how the blood spurts and the teeth break, detailing the way in which blood becomes evidence of his strength and power. But most of these thoughts remain inside Paul’s head. On a number of occasions, they manifest as reality. If Paul’s actions are believable, he hospitalizes Michel’s principal and attacks Serge with a pan. On both occasions, imagined blood becomes real blood. The transition from imaginary to real—the way in which violent ideations become real attacks—appears through blood. Actual blood appearing signifies Paul’s most violent thoughts becoming reality.
This is a trait Paul has in common with his son. When Michel returns from his meeting with Beau at the end of the novel, one of the very first things Paul notices is the dried blood on Michel’s hand. He actively looks for it, searching for the sign of imagined violence turned real. It is a shared moment between father and son, in which the presence of blood has brought them together. This takes place against the backdrop of Paul’s recent discovery; he has found an old medical document which—following a blood test—confirms that Michel likely shares the mental health issue that afflicts Paul. The blood they have spilled becomes consecrated in the blood that they share. A predilection for violence is hereditary, and the moments when Paul feels closest to his son come from their proximity to blood. As such, blood symbolizes the close bond between family members that the characters are fighting to protect.
The Restaurant Menu
The structure of the novel follows the restaurant menu: aperitif, appetizer, main course, dessert, and digestif. The amount of exposition available, and the rising scale of action, mirror these courses. The main course, for instance, contains the most information about Paul’s history, the attack on the homeless woman, and the background for the dinner itself. Just as this is the largest course containing the centerpiece of the meal, corresponding sections of the narrative contain the most information and the most insight into the characters.
The use of the restaurant menu becomes a repeated motif throughout the novel. It drags the attention back to the meal itself when Paul is in danger of distraction by his own memories. At times, for instance, he will describe an event in the past and will only return to the present by the arrival of a new course. The sudden jump from a description of a violent thought Paul has about a figure in his past to the floor manager describing the next course creates an amusing juxtaposition, creating the sensation of Paul jumping back into his present after becoming lost in his thoughts. The structural device of the restaurant menu anchors Paul to a specific moment and prevents his narration from straying too far from the eponymous dinner.
But there are also emotional and thematic interactions between the meal served by the restaurant and the narrative. The main course is the best example of this. When the floor manager serves the main course, Paul steps outside. He forsakes the serving of the meal in favor of a conspiratorial meeting with Michel. Paul prioritizes his relationship with Michel over everything else, whether it is social expectation, manners, or his brother and sister-in-law. The way in which Paul puts Michel first foreshadows his final decision, preempting his choice of ignoring the murder and the morality in favor of his son’s future. Just as Paul ignores the serving of the main course, he ignores his moral responsibility. In both situations, he emphasizes the importance of his family. That Claire joins Paul and Michel outside during the main course symbolizes the way in which the unity of the family takes priority over social expectations. All three are together, their unity more important than anything else.
Photographs and Videos
In a novel with an unreliable narrator, the idea of truth becomes difficult to quantify. Trying to find an objective truth is difficult when Paul happily lies, misremembers, and fails to mention so much. As such, photographs and videos play an important role. Physical media, though still observed from Paul’s perspective, attempts to establish an objective truth in an unreliable world. The moments when Paul confronts physical media are those when he has the most doubt about his son, when he comes his closest to a moment of moral introspection. He watches the videos on Michel’s phone, for example, and seemingly takes offense. Though Paul frequently imagines scenes in which he mercilessly attacks people (and, supposedly, acts on these fantasies), even he is upset by what he sees. Likewise, when he views the CCTV footage on the television and YouTube, Paul must confront an objective reality that his various neuroses and mental health issues cannot ignore. Photographs and videos break Paul’s cognitive dissonance and provide moments of objective truth which he must confront.
But because Paul must confront these objective truths, it does not mean that he reaches a moral conclusion. At the beginning of the chapter in which Paul describes the attack on the homeless woman, he prefaces the story by stating “these are the facts” (71). This is as close as Paul comes to admitting to the audience that there is any doubt over his interpretation of events. The only reason that he is willing to admit this is because there is undeniable video evidence of the story that he is describing. Paul cannot lie about the images, to himself or the audience. Thus, he sticks to the facts. However, he reacts to these facts in an immoral manner. This demonstrates that—even when confronted with an objectively objectionable situation—Paul is capable of ignoring the truth and altering reality in order to suit his existing biases. The video shows Rick and Michel killing a woman, but Paul, in the aftermath, finds himself attempting to empathize with the killers rather than the victim. To this end, photographs and video demonstrate the true unreliability of Paul’s narration by providing an objective point of contrast.
