Concrete Island

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So, the superstructure that facilitated his dual existence took him out of the equation into a third plane of existence where he is forced to confront the desolate, jagged landscape he created for himself.

The man was about fifty years old, plainly a mental defective of some kind, his low forehead blunted by a lifetime of uncertainty. And reflecting on his urge to humiliate both of these outcasts, Maitland can’t help reflecting that he, too, is not the great white success he likes to think.

Their presence had brought out unwelcome strains in his character, qualities irrelevent to the task of coming to terms with the island.

All of this is overgrown by long swaying grass and castles of wild nettles, lush greenery which leads Maitland, as he develops a fever, and becomes dehydrated, to really think of it as an ‘island’. Ballard seems to have had a real interest in people regressing to a primitive state/escaping from civilized society. The exploding air reflected from the concrete parapet seemed to detonate inside Robert Maitland's skull. In what I suppose was a shocking scene for 1974 Maitland asserts his authority when Proctor is lying drunk on the grass after drinking one of Maitland’s last bottles of wine, by undoing his flies and urinating all over the mental defective.

G Ballard explored those almost fifty years ago in his urban disaster trilogy, which Concrete Island is a part of. To access your ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose. Through these bribes Maitland persuades Procter to lead him to the secret food source – a nearby garbage dump. The modern psychoplay that Ballard orchestrates impresively is what makes this one a notch above "High-Rise"; portrait of a decomposing soul via modern Everyman. I dabbled with the idea that all things being equal, the upper-middle class guy is always going to outfox those on the margins of society.