Forgiveness and the Limits of Language in The Shrine at Altamira

Jacques Derrida’s description of forgiveness as a kind of “madness” certainly applies to John L’Heureux’s novel, The Shrine at Altamira (1992). In the novel’s climax, forgiveness is manifested between Russell Whitaker and his son John through an incomprehensible tragedy. But although the novel harmonizes with much of Derrida’s thought, it resists a complete coherence. This article will explore the gaps between the novelistic and philosophic discourses on the subject of forgiveness. I argue that while the story painfully portrays an event of “forgiveness” as a “madness,” it also challenges conceptual articulations of forgiveness and thereby exposes both the necessity and the limits of language. The novel thus compels the reader to make a choice more existential than theoretical: one can either see the act of forgiveness as meaningless, or one can allow the possibility of hope, a hope weak and illogical to be sure, but a hope that refuses to grant tragedy the last word.