I didn’t like Hugo in Black Swan Green, but I also didn’t quite see him as the type who would grow up to join a league of super-villains who achieve immortality through drinking children’s blood. Something characteristic of David Mitchell’s works is that they take place in a single literary universe; characters introduced or featured one novel often turn up in others, but always in a way that is consistent with, or at least doesn’t contradict, previous descriptions of them. This is the case with Hugo, who in addition to appearing in Black Swan Green is one of the main characters in The Bone Clocks. I did not make this connection until Mr. Mitchell (the teacher, not the author) mentioned it in class today, but now thinking back on when I read The Bone Clocks about a year ago, Hugo’s childhood sheds a significant amount of light on why he eventually decides to join the evil Anchorites when offered the opportunity as a young adult.
The Hugo in The Bone Clocks is almost exactly how one would imagine a college-aged Hugo to be. He goes to Cambridge, and has the same elitist, amoral personality, and ability to use language as a tool and a weapon that he did in Black Swan Green. Hugo’s greatest fear as a teenager is that he’s going to end up being like his father. He tells Jason:
“I was you myself, Jace, once. Just the same. Always afraid. But there’s another reason why you must smoke this cigarette… If you don’t kill ‘Not Today’”--Hugo did a horror-movie-trailer voice-- “One day you’ll wake up, look in the mirror, and see Uncle Brian and Uncle Michael!” (65)
Most of what Hugo does seems to be in an attempt to differentiate himself from his father. He develops his own sense of style and what is cool, steals (“liberates”) when he feels like it, and takes up smoking. However, despite all of this, Jason still remarks that Hugo reminds him of Uncle Brian (61).
A similar dynamic exists in The Bone Clocks, although it is not explicitly mentioned. Hugo had maintained his amorality and various infuriating mannerisms, but much as Jason observed in Black Swan Green, it still seems like Uncle Brian has significant power over him. Hugo attends Cambridge, one of the schools Uncle Brian had pushed Julia to consider in Black Swan Green, and Hugo’s pretensions and elitism could also have increased in part due to his father’s influence. It is possible that when Hugo is offered immortality and a chance to join the Anchorites, he accepts it not because he is evil, but because he sees it as his one chance to finally eliminate the possibility of being like his father, and do something completely beyond the realm of what he can control, or even comprehend.
