FREE ESSAY ON THE GO BETWEEN

THE GO BETWEEN

This book is a fiction, it's a memory story: a man in his sixties looks back on his
boyhood of the middle class boy recalling the events that took place on a summer visit to
an aristocratic family in Norfolk in the 1900's. The author uses double narrative, the
young Leo's actions told by the older Leo, and it shows us how it has affected his life
First, I'll expose you the main characters, their functions and relationships, then I'll
give you a small summary of the story, followed by the main themes and their symbolic
elements, and finally the style of the book.
Leo Colston has two different aspects, he's the narrator of the book, a man of about
sixty year old, and he's a "dried up" man inside. 
Leo is a young boy of the middle class. He lives alone with his mother in West Hash, a
little village near Salisbury. His father was a bank gardener in Salisbury is dead, Leo
thinks he was a crank, he didn't want his son to go to school but his mother always
wanted him to go so as soon as he died, he went. His mother liked gossip and was very
sensitive to public opinion, she needed social frame, and we can easily imagine her
pleasure when her son has been invited to spend a summer to a rich friend. He has also an
aunt, Charlotte, a Londoner. He and his mother were living on her money, the pension from
the bank and the little; his father had been able to put by. Leo attends to the same
school as upper class boys, such as Maudsley (he doesn't remember his name probably
because he has never been a special friend to him but while reading the diary he
remembers his name was Marcus). Leo used to write his feelings and the happenings of each
day on a diary. He believed he had magical powers and was able to cast spells. When he
was at school, two boys who had annoyed him had an accident and he believes it is due to
what he wrote on his journal. When he went to Brandham Hall, he was naive and innocent.
He didn't know anything about love and sex. He naturally felt in love with a beautiful
lady, as any young boy would have done. He's curious about sex even if he doesn't know
what it is. The lack of father is especially important at that point; those explanations
should be made by the father "it's a job for your dad really..." At the end of the story
he has discovered what he wanted to know but the outcome is devasting for him, he'll be
haunted all his life by the ghost of Ted. He'll feel guilty all his life; his freshness
and purity are gone. 
Marian Maudsley is the older sister of Marcus. She was a very beautiful woman with grey
eyes and blond hair. Being a young woman of high class, she's expected by her family and
society to marry Lord Trimmingham. But is having a passionate affair with a farmer Ted
Burgess. They are both in love one with another and years later she still thinks that it
was they "were made for each other". She knows what she had to do and eventually marries
Lord Trimmingham. She stayed loyal to him all their life after Ted's death but when she
married him she was pregnant. 
Ted Burgess is a farmer on the Maudsley property. He's in love with Marian and wants her
to escape with him. He tries to explain to Leo what there is underneath love and the
meaning of words like "spooning" but then realising he can't; tells him that its his
father's job. He's so desperate of having lost that he committed suicide. 
Discovering an old diary, Leo, now in his sixties, is drawn back to the hot summer of
1900 and his visit to Brandham Hall. He was a young boy of 12, invited to spend the
summer school brake with a more affluent friend: Marcus. He fell in love with Marcus
older sister, Marian. She was having a passionate affair with Ted, a farmer, but she was
engaged with Lord Trimmingham. She exploited Leo who's a messenger between Ted and
herself. She took care of Leo, buying him the clothes he needed, talking to him (she was
the only one except Marcus)...In exchange he asked Ted to explain him physical love but
Ted refused. The boy had only a shadowy notion at first about the significance of the
messages but he soon realized that it was love messages. Disillusioned, he took his
revenge changing one of the messages. The day of Leo's birthday, Marian is late and her
mother goes to look for her: the lovers end up to be discovered. Pregnant, Marian is
humiliated in front of everybody. Ted committed suicide. Leo is disappointed about life,
fidelity and love. Remembering that summer, he wants to know what happened to Marian and
goes back to Brandham Castle. There, he's charged of his last message: telling to
Marian's grandson how beautiful and true her love with Ted was. The narrator has never
married; perhaps does he still love her?
There are a lot of important themes in this book, the most evident is the discovery of
sexuality and of the grown ups world of a teenage boy, the loss of his innocence. He is
scarred sexually and emotionally by his summer experience. At the end of the book, he has
turned into an emotionally hollow adult. 
Another main theme is past and memory, L. P. Hartley begins The Go-Between: with The past
is a foreign country. They do things differently there. This book is memory like in The
Glass Menagerie; it is a look through the dusty memory of a sixty years old man. 
Another key theme is class distinction and its warping effects upon the life of one small
boy. He's from a disadvantaged family and is invited in an aristocratic family. The
father and the fiance are aware of the girl's affair with the farmer, but do nothing
about it. They are confident she will do the right thing in the end, and she does. Why
don't you marry Ted, the boy asks the young woman. Because I can't, she replies. Then why
are you marrying Trimmington? Because I must. She understands, and she is tough enough to
endure. Indeed, at the end of the film she turns up years later as an old lady very much
in the image of her mother. 
An extra theme is man-woman relationships and love. Marian and Ted are in love with each
other and have an ardent affair together. Lord Trimmingham probably loved her too because
he married her although she was pregnant and Leo felt in love with her as soon as he saw
her. 
The diary is a symbol of the past and of the doom that chose him that summer, it's like a
pact that he signed, dreams and freshness gone for adult revelations. In the Zodiac on
his diary, Leo is Mercury (virgin), messenger of the Gods, mercury also gauging the
ever-rising heat of the summer, and of those passions of the adults circling around him.
Being Robin Hood in his suit of green to his Fair Maid Marian, but green also meaning
innocence and naivety. Misunderstandings, the hero, disfigured, his face unable to reveal
what his heart feels. The poisoned plant "Atropa Belladonna" is also a symbol.
"Belladonna" means "Beautiful woman" which can be interpreted as a foreshadowing, a
beautiful woman will be deadly to someone. This can be understood at two levels, first
Ted is physically dead then Leo as a child dies and only remains a destroyed and
disillusioned boy.
Imagery is strong, and wonderfully intertwined between the lines. Hartley's skill lets us
see the characters through the eyes of a boy, standing on the precipice of adulthood and
yet still living within a life of childhood fantasies where his world does make sense. He
does not understand the machinations of the adults around him. Passion, deception and
innocence are overlaid with strong imageries. The elder Leo's adult perceptive overwhelm
when you start the reading of the novel. This book is based upon flashbacks. The point of
view changes between the young boy and the old man. The story takes place in the
aristocratic England of the beginning of the 20th century. The children were the ones who
suffered directly at the hands of class snobbism, of course, and sometimes their
personalities were marked for life
This book has all the essential elements of a great novel: innocence, love, passion,
deceit, lies and death. It's a nostalgic and bittersweet tragedy, a memory book. It was a
simply beautiful book, I understand better why this book won the Heinemann Foundation
Prize of the Royal Society of Literature. While reading I could really feel like this
little boy. You can't read this book without being completely filled up with Leo's
dilemma. I'm glad to have read it.