About that anti-Semitism problem

There is not a lot to say about the narrative structure, or the characters, or the writing in this famous novel. It's a seminal tale of intrigue, a classic early story of an innocent man drawn into dark doings of murder and espionage, and finding himself pursued by both police and enemy agents.

It's told well with a minimum of fuss. The characters are quickly established, tending towards British upper-class and lower-class stereotypes (nothing in-between). The fast-paced plot keeps you turning the pages.

It's somewhat old-fashioned now and the climax is a bit of a drag by today's standards. No last-minute twist in which it's revealed that some high-ranking British authority whom our hero trusts is in on the black plot. But it must have be a thrill to readers of its time, imagining themselves the everyman hero, Richard Hannay, brought face to face with evil in the cloak-and-dagger world, a world they could suppose co-exists unseen with theirs, behind the headlines and the political cover-ups. Much more would be made of this by many writers to come. And it would serve as the basis for numerous films.

The one aspect of The Thirty-Nine Steps that does get discussed today is its alleged racism, specifically anti-Semitism. Most notably the late novelist Mordecai Richler caused a stir by pointing to the most offending passage, a speech by the character Scudder early in the novel:

"...The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him.  Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und zu Something, an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English.  But he cuts no ice.  If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes.  But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake.  Yes, sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife into the Empire of the Tzar, because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga."

Besides noting that bath-chairs with eyes like rattlesnakes are hard to find these days, one should immediately realize that this is dialogue from a character and by itself could show only that Buchan included an anti-Semitic character in his novel, not that the novel or the novelist is anti-Semitic.

Buchan's defenders have also pointed out that in this passage and in other lines just before this passage, the character explains that centuries of persecution of the Jews have led to this situation. But this defence is naïve. Noting the Jews have historical reasons to seek revenge would not justify spreading hateful conspiracy theories that the Jews secretly rule the world.

A more effective defence is to point out that this character's racist assessment is not adopted by the narrator nor verified in the novel's development. In fact, the Jewish-anarchist-capitalist plot (there's a weird combination for you) is discredited in the novel, in favour of a simple matter of international espionage by Germany against Britain. Moreover, one of the characters we're obviously meant to admire, Sir Walter Bullivant, refers to Scudder's "odd biases" about the Jews and says Scudder was off-track in his conspiracy theories.

For some critics this comes too late in the novel and is too slender to offset the effect of the earlier, more elaborated alleged anti-Semitic speech.

Also worrying is a throwaway remark the narrator makes about halfway through:

...I was desperately hungry. When a Jew shoots himself in the City and there is an inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was 'well-nourished'. I remember thinking that they would not call me well-nourished....

I really don't know why a Jew is mentioned here. I can think of both innocent and malevolent interpretations of this sentence. Just as with Shakespeare's depiction of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, one can put bits of evidence together to show the author is a raving racist or put other interpretations together to show he's an humanitarian.

In these situations, the only fair course is to consider the work as a whole, to determine whether it is hurtful toward one group of people or is meant to heal divisions among us. In the case of Shakespeare, there is no doubt that The Merchant of Venice is a work of understanding, of promoting mercy among humankind. With The Thirty-Nine Steps it is not so easy to say. At best it is neutral. At worst it reveals unattractive prejudices prevalent at the time. I doubt anyone is going to become an anti-Semite after reading Scudder's diatribe, but it does provide some ammunition to anti-Semites willing to take support from out-of-context quotations. You can argue about whether Buchan can be held accountable for that. 

Buchan was obviously a very conservative gentleman and likely as insensitive to racial stereotypes of the time as he was to the class stereotypes in his novels. Today a writer would be more careful—as soon as the keys J-E-W are pressed on his word processor he would immediately consider the ramifications and misunderstandings that might be associated with them. And this is a good thing. Whether Buchan was innocently unaware of the impact of his characters' remarks or he was presenting hints of his own secret views, I do not know for sure. Buchan as a public figure was noted as an opponent of Nazism and a supporter of Jewish causes, at least in his later life, so I lean towards the more benevolent interpretation. But who knows what lay deep in his heart in 1914 when he was writing The Thirty-Nine Steps?

In any case I do not find this novel anti-Semitic in its overall thrust. As a product of the late-twentieth century however, I am sufficiently concerned to be on the lookout for any additional evidence either way. And that too is a good thing.

© Copyright 2002-2004 Eric McMillan. All rights reserved.

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