About Kattigan and the doll
(stick with me, I promise I'm making a point here)
When I was in college I read a short story by the Spanish author Ana Maria Matute that has always stuck with me. In the story, a man is visiting the village he grew up in. This man has spent the last fifteen or twenty years away from the village, herding sheep in near complete solitude. He had left when he was still a youth, a teenager at the oldest, and spent decades barely ever even speaking to anyone, sleeping on the ground, caring for animals. He didn't hate this life, but he also hadn't chosen it for himself. He was poor, and his family sent him off to do this.
When the man came back to the village, he encountered someone he knew from childhood. The friend started telling him about having gone to university, and his new job, I forget what it was but lawyer or banker, something high status. The friend was just excited to see him, and didn't seem to notice the differences between them, but the man couldn't stop fixating on disparities between their lives. He keeps staring at his friend's hands, and then down at his own. His friend had clean, thin hands, dexterous hands. The man's hands have become thick and calloused from work, and he described them like they were so thick and gnarled they didn't seem human anymore.
And the man is so overcome with a sudden pain and a sudden rage, he kills the friend. But the way the story is written, the audience sympathizes with the man, the murderer. The whole point is that we realize in the same moment he does what has been done to him. In the comparison between him and his educated friend, we realize how his family abandoned him, but framed it as giving him gainful employment. We realize how his humanity has been stripped of him by being left out there, alone, his own hands turning slowly animalistic, just because no one valued him enough to send him to university, or even just talk to him and make sure he's still part of the community. He was left in the wilderness, and everyone acted like it was fine, and he suddenly realized it wasn't fine and never had been.
And that brings me to Kattigan and the doll.
The minute Robbie started describing the doll, how it looked fine from the outside, but the back is all rotted out, I thought - that's him. Kattigan is the doll. And I immediately thought of this story by Ana Maria Matute. The way that solitude is a form of dehumanization. Obviously I don't know what's going through Robbie's head, but to me, Kattigan is the man from the story. He was out in the wilderness, alone, for so many years, and it seemed fine. Everything seemed fine. Until suddenly he's back in the city, seeing people he used to know. People he used to be on the same footing as. And realizing he's different. They've all grown and changed, and he's... animalistic. Not actually an animal, Kattigan is a person, I don't want to get into hairy implications here. What I mean is, like the man in the story, he suddenly sees the ways that isolation has led to dehumanization. Like the doll, he feels like when people look at him, they see a normal surface, something that looks just fine, but really, it's all rotted out beneath. He feels like he's hollow inside, and trying to hide it.
And I thought it was an absolutely brilliant moment of roleplaying from Robbie. What a powerhouse of an actor and storyteller. I can't wait to see where he goes with Kattigan.
(here's a link to the story if anyone's interested, it's called Pecado de Omision (sin of omission). It's in Spanish, but it's quite short and worth the read if you can read Spanish)
