Traces of Rebecca are found throughout “Rebecca”: her handwriting, her furs, her ostrich-feather fans, her azalea perfume, her beauty, her cruelty, her secrets, her lies. At Manderley, her husband's country house, her evening dresses seem to flutter forever in the wind. “Her footsteps echoed in the halls, her scent wafted up the staircases,” writes Daphne du Maurier. Among other things, she intrudes on the twisted love affair of the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. But Rebecca herself, who dies before the novel begins, does not appear in person.
Donald Trump speaks to reporters next to First Lady Melania Trump (right) before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, Wednesday, January 20, 2021. Photo by Al Drago/Bloomberg (Bloomberg) {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}}
Similarly, Donald Trump's image haunted the Republican presidential debates in August despite his absence: orange skin, blonde hair, random capitalization on social media posts, insulting nicknames, and words like, “give me a break.” He may pull off the same trick in the second debate on September 27. Trump seems to have intuited something that Du Maurier and other storytellers understand: invisible people can make a bigger impression than visible people.
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In fiction and reality, absence can be a power struggle. Leaders, dons, and spymasters impress their authority on the audience by asserting their authority over other characters and relying on their minions to carry out their orders. The boss in Charlie's Angels issues orders to his agents while remaining faceless. In the British comedy-drama Yes, Minister, the prime minister is mercurial but unseen. When Vice President Mike Pence called Trump “the one who is probably watching” during the first debate, he described absence as heavenly.
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Absence breeds fear, because what is unseen is often scarier than what is revealed. Fueled by the eerie music, each imagination fills the void with its own fears. The audience never sees the bad guy tailing the film students in The Blair Witch Project, nor the hunter who shoots Bambi's mother. The identity of the truck driver who corners the protagonist in Steven Spielberg's Duel is unknown. (Conversely, the shark in Jaws is less scary once it appears on screen.)
What you can't see is a mystery. Sometimes, like the Wizard of Oz, Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, or Harry Lime in The Third Man, the mystery is eventually dispelled. Other times, the mystique remains. Big Brother is so far away that readers of 1984 can't tell if he is or was ever a real person. In the two James Bond films, 007's nemesis, Ernst Blofeld, appears as a hand petting a cat. In the first debate, live footage from Fulton County Jail, where Trump was scheduled to turn himself in, created the atmosphere of a villain's lair, with the darkened area standing in for the elusive man.
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At their most subtle, hidden figures become mirrors that reflect and measure the vices and virtues of others. At first, Romeo falls not for Juliet but for Rosaline, who to him is the most beautiful maiden “since the world began.” Though the audience never sees her, she makes us feel his overheated feelings early on. Anton Chekhov invented this kind of absence masterfully: in Three Sisters, the army officer Vershinin's bravery and philosophical thinking are undermined by his disdain for his suicidal wife, who is always offstage.
Similarly, in the first debate, Trump offered a ghostly measure of independence for the other candidates. Chris Christie was booed when he said some of his own behavior was “unbecoming of the presidency.” Vivek Ramaswami praised Trump. Ron DeSantis tried to navigate a gap between accusation and defense that was almost as painful to watch as watching him try to smile.
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Some of literature's most famous invisible characters combine these effects. In Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon are unsure what Godot looks like, whether he will appear, and, if he does, whether salvation or punishment awaits. Godot gives them purpose, but he is also an excuse for inertia. “In all this great confusion, one thing is certain: we are waiting for Godot,” Vladimir says.
Trump is not Godot. He is not Godot offstage, even on debate night. He holds court online and in friendly interviews, dominating conversations and front pages with or without his presence. His absence projects power and strikes fear into the hearts of many Americans, but he is hardly an enigma. They've seen the Trump movies before.
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Yet like Vladimir and Estragon, other Republican candidates will again find themselves paralyzed by Trump's shadow if he misses another debate. The play's ending captures their predicament: “Let's go,” says Estragon, and the final stage direction is, “They stand.”
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© 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. Published under license from The Economist. Original content can be found at www.economist.com.
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