(urth) Some Pirate Freedom thoughts and questions

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com thalassocrat at nym.hush.com
Sat Dec 8 19:49:43 PST 2007


On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 04:31:49 +1100 Matthew Groves 
<matthewalangroves at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I think there's a similar situation here to the one some have 
>argued
>exists with Able in Mythgarthr.  Unlike most of Chris's fellow
>pirates, Chris does not have the excuse of being a product of the 
>time
>and place he finds himself.  Even if we could excuse certain of
>Chris's actions had they been performed by a 18th-century
>contemporary, Chris has reason to know better, and Chris's own
>testimony would indicate that he does know better.

I think Wolfe is playing around with our preconceptions about his 
themes and other narrative tropes. 

IMO, WK is the story of a young guy striving to excel with respect 
to the highest ideals of a different time & place. His progress 
reflects increasingly refined conceptions of those ideals: a crude 
lout-buffoon-Hercules type to start with, and a pretty much perfect 
exemplar of self-sacrificing chivalry by the end. You might not 
like the ideals in question (I don't, partly), but that's the 
framing of the story.

PF is different: Chris strives towards the *lowest*. Even within 
his 17th century world, piracy is seen as a Bad Thing. He doesn't 
have to be a pirate, and certainly not a pirate captain; despite 
what he says over & over again, he actively chooses it. Think of 
all the opportunities he has to leave "the life". He doesn't, 
because he loves it. Look how quickly his squeamishness disappears. 
Recall his little walk with father Phil. Phil says he always feels 
like cheering when he sees the church steeple rising against the 
sky; Chris had the same feeling once - when they raised the black 
flag on the Castillo Blanco.

We (or at least I) have become familiar with a Wolfean theme in 
which love + courage are redemptive, transmuting into something 
lofty even if gross to begin with. Abe's love for Dsiri draws him 
higher and higher, and so on. 

In PF, Wolfe pulls that chair out from underneath us. We expect the 
same kind of story, but there isn't anything redemptive about 
Chris' love for Novia or his courage. They just take him lower & 
lower. 

IMO, PF is about freedom. We have free will; morality, holiness or 
whatever is must be chosen actively. It's possible to choose 
"pirate freedom" - freedom from ethical constraint - or you can 
choose ehtical conduct ("God's freddom", I suppsoe). But you have 
to choose. 

Abe chose to be ethical - within the context in which he found 
himself, and with an increasingly refined conception of "ethical"). 
Chris chooses PF, actively. He pretends to himself that it wasn't a 
choice, but that's just hypocrisy - a final layering of sin on top 
of all his other sins which I think cover just about all of the Big 
Ones.

Wolfe is also playing with the Graham Greene-ish trope of the 
sinner redeemed by love for another, hopelessly compromised and 
twisted over a long stretch of constant penance and usually 
culminating in a spectacular act of self-abnegation. We (or at 
least I) launch into PF expecting a story like that. The 
"furniture" is all there: the former pirate, now a priest, 
confessing his sins, moving inexorably towards a crisis of some 
kind etc etc. 

We glide over the horrific acts Chris willing participates in; we 
are on the other side of the confessional screen, and as reader-
priests we have our forgiveness already prepared. We expect a final 
act of contrition, something to make the confession valid.

That's how Chris plays it, deliberately I think. But this story 
isn't that story. There is no contrition. Chris wants it all to 
"happen again".


[As an aside on Greene: I picked up "The Captain and the Enemy" 
last week in a little Australian outback town.  Greene's last book, 
I think - I'd never heard of it before, but I wonder if it might 
have been in Wolfe's mind when he wrote PF? There are some 
resonances, and not just the image of Drake waiting for the mules 
of the Spanish bullion-train, shared by the child "enemy" and the 
typical Greene redeemed-sinner "Captain".]





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