(urth) Re: Dreaming, Mag, Able and Art

[stilskin]

I think you're onto something about Toug.  Why do you
think he fades from the ms. toward the end?  Is it
simply the return of Able to center stage?


--- Andrew Bollen <abollen at internode.on.net> wrote:

> Further on Dream, Art & Able ... It seems that you
> one way you know you're 
> in Dream is if
> you see the the Valfather's "castle like a star"
> flying through the clouds.
> Toug watches it in Dream (p56), as does Art at the
> start of Knight, on the 
> hillside as he is surely dreaming.
> Elsewhere in Knight, Art dreams he is Able dreaming
> on a hillside (surely 
> the same one) as the
> castle scuds through the clouds, remembering how he
> used to live in a place
> where there were swords and no cars (p133). I think
> all this supports the
> idea of Art & Able having being swapped, by the
> Aelf, via Dream.
> 
> (Though come to think of it, I guess the swap could
> have been engineered by 
> the Overcyn, given the presence of the Valfather's
> castle ...)
> 
> As a bonus, in the Dream chapter in Wizard, there's
> a gratuitous-seeming
> little passage where Art tells Toug that any horse
> ridden by an Aelf  "will
> be one of ours, a horse taken by the Aelf as a man
> or woman may be." Or
> indeed as Able, Art & Toug all have been at one time
> or another.
> 
> Toug is in some ways the most interesting character
> in the series. Art 
> identifies with him to a certain extent. In the
> Dream chapter, he more or 
> less appoints Toug as his prime agent.  I can't
> remember who or where, but 
> one of the characters says that Art sees himself in
> Toug. Toug is a key 
> piece in the game played by various parties in the
> first half of the book to 
> secure Art's services for their own ends; they
> recognize Toug's influence 
> over Art.
> 
> I don't think that Toug and Art have any direct
> physical or psychic 
> relationship with each other, but I do think Art
> sees him as a kindred 
> spirit. More than that, I think Toug is a kind of
> stand-in for the real 
> Able, now in America.
> 
> One of the things that surprised me about Wizard was
> that we hear little 
> about Able. I think we get Toug instead: an
> exceptionally brave peasant kid 
> from the same area as Able, also taken by the Aelf &
> also delivered into a 
> strange and dangerous world ... Toug fights against
> great odds, is wounded, 
> fights on & is further wounded. I think we have to
> assume the same for Able 
> in America; we hear of him in America via Art's
> dreams mainly when he is 
> hospital after fighting hijackers, in an ambulance
> and so on.
> 
> Toug, unlike Art, is not a figure of destiny; no
> god-like beings have 
> moulded him for great tasks and he doesn't have
> "supernatural" powers. I 
> think the same would be true of Able in America, and
> though we don't know 
> the details I feel sure his experiences there
> parallel Toug's.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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