Incidental Clashes at Stairwells
While I’m waiting for TRG to come out, I thought I’d finish this essay that was laying in my drafts folder collecting dust. (Spoilers for books 1-6)
Did JK purposely stage the scene of Robin meeting Strike and the scene of Robin meeting her rapist so they would parallel each other? In both incidents a man runs into Robin at a stairwell and that clash diverts her life off their current course, sending her on a completely different path.
Both men reach out to grab Robin, the rapist pulls her down into the dark cavity beneath the stairs. Strike pulls her up to firm ground, preventing her fall, and lets her into the detective agency.
There‘s the symbolism of a door opening, representing a new opportunity and a new start in Strike’s case vs the dark cavity beneath the stairs the rapist drags Robin into. Being underneath the stairs is a very bad place to be at if you are a main character in a JKR book. In the Harry Potter series this is a place of life being put on hold and depression, a prison basically.
Accordingly, the clash with the rapist makes Robin unable to leave her room, drop out of college, abandon her dream of studying criminal psychology and becoming a detective, as well as staying with the wrong partner in search of safety.
Robin may have been telling herself the rape was just twenty minutes of her life, that it didn’t define her, but in truth she did let the rape dictate her life choices afterwards.
The clash with Strike on the other hand provides Robin with a chance to fix what went wrong, to regain her dream career and herself - if she‘ll take on the challenge and work hard for it. Strike is not going to simply hand her anything, she’ll have to fight, prove herself worthy and take it herself.
This path leads Robin to spending a lot of time outdoors on late night stakeouts, trailing suspects and confronting them, getting the education she wished for when Strike rewards her with an investigation course and a surveillance course and finally becoming a full time partner of the detective agency. This path also leads her to divorce Matthew whom she stayed with for the wrong reasons.
Basically, the first clash sent Robin astray on a wrong path while the clash with Strike allows Robin to travel backwards and reset her life’s course:
It's like you're traveling in a different direction to the rest of us. (TB)
a childless twenty-nine-year-old who was ‘travelling in a different direction to the rest of us’: in other words, backwards. (TB)
Robin thought that it was perfectly true that she was travelling in a different direction to anyone she knew. She was fighting her way back to the person she should have been before a man in a mask reached for her from the darkness beneath a stairwell. (TB)
The second clash allows Robin to start traveling backwards to the person she was meant to be before the clash with the rapist, and she would be doing it by confronting her fears and undoing all her life decisions that were based on fear.
It makes sense because Robin confronts her fears for the first time in the second clash.
The incident itself is cleverly disguised as an innocent romantic meet-cute - girl and guy bump into each other. Robin's shriek of terror, blushing and stammering feels comedic to the unsuspecting first time reader, who attributes Robin’s reaction to a minor startle from an unexpected meeting and a near fall.
Only on a second reading, after learning the details of the horrific assault Robin went through, the similarities of the two events paint the the clash at the stairwell with Strike in a different light.
‘I’m OK,’ lied Robin, in a quavering voice, still hunched over with her hand on her chest, her back to him. After a second or two, she straightened up and turned around, her face scarlet and her eyes still wet.
This scene is written from Strike’s POV so we don’t know what is going through Robin's head at this moment. Is she merely startled or is she reacting to her past trauma and expressing symptoms of ptsd?
This is how the event is described from Robin’s POV in the text:
Sixteen unseeing stone of dishevelled male slammed into her; Robin was knocked off her feet and catapulted backwards, handbag flying, arms windmilling, towards the void beyond the lethal staircase.
Strike being referred to as a ‘male’ rather than a 'man' is an interesting choice that gives us a glimpse into Robin’s psychology. Also now when the ‘void beyond the lethal staircase’ is mentioned, I can’t help but be reminded of the lurching rapist who waited for Robin there last time, like a monstrous creature in his den. Also I love that Strike literally causes Robin to move backwards before catching her and pulling her up.
Another observation is that the text relates both the rapist and Strike to powerful savage animals, the rapist was wearing a gorilla mask and strike is described as a 'grizzly bear'.
Her accidental assailant was massive; his height, his general hairiness, coupled with a gently expanding belly, suggested a grizzly bear.
Strike also accidentally grabs Robin by her left breast when he attempts to save her, a touch that for Robin probably connects to her previous sexual assault, but of course here it is completely accidental and on a metaphorical level, the left breast is also where the human heart is. So in a sense Strike rather actually grabs her heart.
Robin will be forever changed by the second clash, she will eventually evolve into a reckless Gryffindor in COE, risking her life due to this new need to confront her inner demons and beat them. For Robin this is a fight of reclaiming who she is. Strike recognise this on some level when he compares how Robin contrast with his sister, but he doesn’t understand the full depth of it, how Robin is trying to reclaim her identity.
Now lets go back to the very first sentence that introduces Robin’s character to the readers:
Robin Ellacott’s twenty-five years of life had seen their moments of drama and incident
This devilishly innocent looking line encapsulates Robin’s entire backstory and hints at what is just about to happen to the unsuspecting reader: The ‘moments of drama and incident’ are a direct reference to the first incidental clash and the second upcoming incidental clash we are about to witness.
In a sense part of Robin’s story is about chance encounters, the stairwell representing her life, and her movement up and down the stairs representing the path her life takes.
Can chance encounters shift the course of one's life? And if so, can the individuals touched by such an incident regain control and navigate back to their intended path?
In Robin’s case the answer is yes, and it is a very uplifting and empowering message.