Tom Seymour
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Tom Seymour is the name of a fictional character in the 2001 novel Border Crossing by English author Pat Barker.
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[edit] Description
The central character of the limited third-person narrative, Tom is a psychologist, with particular experience in working with children. When an elderly woman is founded smothered and partially mutilated in her home, Tom is asked to perform a psychological assessment of Danny Miller, the young boy accused of her murder.
In court, Tom proclaims Danny capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality, and of understanding the notion of death as a permanent state. Tom's testimony effectively ensures that Danny is tried as an adult, despite being only ten years old, and sentenced to ten years in juvenile prison for the murder of Lizzie Parks.
Despite his experience as a therapist, Tom finds himself somewhat incapable of understanding Danny, both as a child and an adult. Tom's own observations serve little to connect the "horror of the images" with Danny. It is from those who spent the most time with Danny that Tom must seek his answers, and the majority of Border Crossing is concerned with Tom's search for an explanation.
[edit] Marriage
Years later, when he next encounters Danny, Tom is also suffering from the breakdown of his marriage to Lauren. Tom feels disconnected from Lauren, and resents being treated as a "sperm bank" in their failed attempts to have children. Their relationship gradually disintegrates throughout the course of the novel, ending with Lauren's asking for a divorce. The unravelling of Tom's marriage and, indeed, his whole life, is addressed early in the story, as Tom likens himself to a length of rope, "fraying, one strand after another coming apart."
In addition, Tom appears to have no desire to try to rebuild his marriage. Though he often recommends troubled clients "keep talking" to prevent the breakdown of their marriages, Tom does nothing of the kind. "Faced with the breakdown of his own [marriage]," he thinks, "Shut up, Lauren. Please, please, please shut up."
[edit] Relationship with Danny
Tom understands that, as a therapist, it is essential that he strictly separates his work from his personal life. It is his belief that "those who take misery home with them burn out and end up no use to anybody." This habit of "switching of... [and] living his life in separate compartments" almost certainly contributes to the failing of his marriage. It is, therefore, significant how, later in the story, Tom forsakes these clearly-defined ethical boundaries and becomes emotionally involved in Danny's exploits. Contrary to his own earlier beliefs, Tom is equally susceptible to Danny's subtly manipulative actions than many other characters in the novel.
During their initial consultations, Tom believes that, as an experienced therapist, he remains unaffected by Danny's "charms." He observes Danny's "conscious display" of crossing his legs at the ankle, and declares to himself that such an act is "wasted on me." However, despite Tom's self-reassurance, it is obvious, even near the beginning of the story, that Tom treats Danny significantly differently to other patients. Having "learnt to value detachment" in his line of work, it is curious that Tom offers Danny therapy sessions in his own home, in very close proximity to Lauren. He even serves Danny alcohol to open his first consultation, an offer unlikely to be afforded to any of Tom's other patients.
Throughout the novel, Tom exhibits a level of emotional involvement with Danny that clearly disregards his previous obsession with emotional detachment. He feels a sense of obligation towards Danny's case, and a yearning- not only to help Danny- but also to understand him for himself, in order to connect "the horror of the images" he'd witnessed in Lizzie Parks' murder with the young boy he'd once evaluated. When Tom meets Danny for a final time, he reacts with "a stab of jealousy that amaze[s] him" when he hears that Danny has been in contact with Angus MacDonald. That Tom has become emotionally involved with Danny is put beyond all doubt, as jealousy represents a level of intimacy which is rarely associated with the formal structure of a therapist and client relationship.
As a therapist, it is also Tom's responsibility to observe Danny's psychological stability and make an unbiased decision on the need for Danny to receive further medical treatment. Despite witnessing Danny's potentially dangerous behaviour during the night in front of Tom's fireplace, Tom neglects to inform the authorities of Danny's unbalance. Such an abandonment of his professional obligations demonstrates how, through Danny's manipulation, Tom has allowed his personal involvement to influence his professional decisions.
[edit] Beliefs
Tom initially embodies a rational, scientific perspective of human behaviour. For example, when Danny insists on labelling their seemingly chance meeting as "the crack in human affairs that lets God or the Devil in," Tom counters by suggesting, "...what we need to let into human affairs is a bit more rationality." Tom is initially suspicious of their apparently coincidental meeting, considering the possibility that it was "a dramatic gesture gone badly, almost fatally, wrong." He later decides that perhaps he was looking too deeply into the situation, affirming that "when confronted by a number of disturbing events, the human mind insists on finding a pattern. We can't wait to thread the black beads on to a single string. But some events are, simply, random."
