Kavalier & Clay Part 3 - An Exercise in Futility

In Part Three, though Joe and Sammy have achieved victory in their initial battle to make the Escapist into a reality, they find themselves quickly embroiled in conflicts on other fronts. 

While he was immensely satisfied by the Nazi-beating of his initial cover drawing, Joe struggles to feel the same way about his subsequent efforts. No matter how many strokes he makes with his pen, he fails to see any meaningful progress made in the fight against Nazism. He declares the Escapist "an impossible champion, ludicrous and above all imaginary." For himself, he reserves the label of "'Idiot'" (168). On the scale of the entire war, it seems to Joe that his funny-book making is entirely ineffectual. But on a smaller scale, he still maintains hope that he may find a path to the United States for his family. He visits, "Whenever he found himself with an empty morning or a week between issues" (177) various agencies and organizations around New York, earnestly arguing the case of the Kavaliers of Prague. However, he soon discovers a similarly frustrating lack of progress is to be made on that front. Even worse than a lack of progress, though, is a piece of knowledge acquired at an appointment with the German Adjutant Herr Milde: his father has died of pneumonia. Though clearly this illness is a fact of life completely out of Joe's control and totally unrelated to the actions of the Third Reich, in his state of grief he is unable to sort out his jumbled emotions of futility, rage, and despair. The only thing he can think to do is head north of the border to enlist in the RAF because, as he tells a direction-giving bar patron, he is "tired of waiting" (187). 

Many of Joe's emotions throughout this part can be attributed to a case of mental illness nearly identical to survivor's guilt: the key difference being that with the exception of his father, his family is still alive. He expressed all the way back at the novel's outset his regret for having left his family in the cold manner that he did, and also his at once somber and sarcastic remarks to Kornblum that "'My family's entire fortune has been spent...All to ensure that I, the lucky one, can be sitting on this train, you see?'" (17) show a feeling of unworthiness often shared among survivors of catastrophes. While Joe holds on to perhaps an unreasonable amount of hope of a reunion (not to fault the man; who wouldn't try to believe anything but the possibility of never seeing their family again?), his feelings of frustration and guilt due to his inability to actually make such a reunion happen drastically affect his mental well-being. He begins to engage in self-destructive tendencies disguised under a facade of anti-German bravado: picking fights drunk on the street, at football games, and actively searching for altercations in predominantly German neighborhoods. Perhaps he feels that with each German blow landed across his stubborn jaw, he gets to share in his family's suffering at the hands of their oppressors. This sentiment would also serve to explain his continued persistence despite his self-acknowledged lack of meaningful progress. His family are stuck in Prague fighting every day to retain their lives and dignity, so what right does he have to live a carefree life doodling away in a city so far away from home that he could easily pretend said home, and the family it contains, never existed? 

This ever-present swirling storm of guilt, fear, and anger rears its head again towards the part's conclusion, as Joe and Sammy wrestle with Anapol and Ashkenazy over figures relating to the Escapist's upcoming radio show and their new creation, Luna Moth. As at the end of Part Two, one element of these negotiations becomes the cousins' anti-Nazi campaign. Upon receiving a period of one hour to make a decision, Joe immediately exclaims, "'I don't need an hour...The answer is no. Forget it. You are cowards, and you are weak, and no'" (285). Without the ability to draw Nazis getting their heads smashed in by the righteous forces of the League of the Golden Key, Joe is liable to encounter the exact opposite of the problem the cousins had when creating the character: Joe would find himself with a "why" that consumes his every waking thought, but with no conduit by which his ardent fervor for Nazi destruction could be channeled.

However, thanks to the intervention, information, and advice of George Deasey the cousins' fight is able to go on.