You can read earlier parts here.
IN THE saddest, darkest moment of the film, John stands on the edge of the stage, rain-soaked and showered with debris. In a pathetic attempt to save the John Doe Clubs, he cries out, ‘The idea is still good!’ Even were his microphone not cut, nobody would listen to him.
One may wonder if the crowd has not overreacted. The defining aspect of the John Doe movement was its constitution by ordinary men and women inspired to care for each other in a spirit of friendship. It explicitly rejected political leadership. John Doe influenced so many people precisely because he asserted no special virtues and made no claims to authority. He simply presented himself, in the words of Ann Mitchell, as an ‘average man’, the kind of man ‘the ads are written for’. He was the honest, hardworking man with a ‘streak of larceny’ that she wrote of in his first radio address. He was the man who does all the necessary but overlooked jobs that make society run: ‘the farmer, the miner, the factory worker, the bookkeeper, the pilot’. What caught people’s attention about him may have been his threat to kill himself in protest. What kept their attention was his inspiring message. Though he did not write the words himself, Long John spoke them with conviction, precisely because he was average, decent, and hard-working. What should it matter that he never intended to throw himself off City Hall?
As Long John discovers, quite a lot. Movements may be defined by philosophical propositions but they are composed by men who lead and by others who follow. Those people who formed the John Doe Clubs all around the country were inspired by a man whom they admired as just and brave. Above all they admired him for his honesty. John’s admission that he never wrote the ‘I Protest’ letter to the newspaper nor did he intend to jump off City Hall calls into question all the virtues that people saw in him, and which they were moved to emulate. What is more, his confession of dishonesty makes plausible the accusation that he enriched himself by the dues paid by John Doe Club members. Even if the principles of the club are sound, who wants to be complicit in an organisation with such a man as its prophet?
Perhaps hardest for the crowd to bear was the thought that they were suckered. John Doe, they believed, was a simple but honest man, who threatened in his distress to throw himself off a building on Christmas Eve. This would be a reckless, even immoral act, but one understandable for a man driven to despair by cruelty and misfortune. All those people who formed the John Doe Clubs saw themselves as his saviour. Moved by his plight, which they saw as their own, they wanted to give him something to live for. ‘You’re a wonderful man,’ Bert the soda jerker once told him. ‘And it strikes me you could be useful walking around for a while.’ Now Bert and the other newfound do-gooders have discovered their sympathy has been in vain. As a jilted lover, their anger masks their broken hearts.
What makes the scene all the more poignant is the fact that John really has been faithful. As the viewer knows, he really is a decent man. Indeed, he has given up a lot to promote the movement. His confession of dishonesty to the crowd in spite of the threats made by Norton shows both his trust in the people and his willingness to sacrifice himself for their benefit. John never asked to become leader of this movement. He took on his role out of affection for all the John Does like him. He did this against the objection of the Colonel, his cynical friend who sees the poor, average man as simply someone not yet corrupted by money and the pleasures of civilisation.
All the worse is the fact that Long John suffers his own broken heart. The very woman who gave him the courage to take on the role of John Doe has turned out to be in the pay of Norton. As John sees it, the same woman who encouraged people to create a more just world by loving and forgiving each other was using him and all the other John Does to promote herself and Norton’s interests. That he should have revealed his heart to her so foolishly fills him with shame. If only John knew that she too is an unhappy victim of fate. In order to prevent her from revealing John’s innocence to the crowd, Norton has kept her and Connell temporary prisoners. She begs Norton’s henchmen to let her go. ‘I should have been there,’ she cries to her mother. ‘I could have helped him. He was so all alone.’
To be continued
