(urth) PF as YA
"Fernando Q. Gouvêa"
fqgouvea at colby.edu
Fri Apr 17 11:08:35 PDT 2009
That is my reading as well, though I think that we're also expected to
see that some of Chris's choices are pretty bad choices. The business at
the end about the vow of celibacy is a particularly discomforting one.
See my other comment about "YA". I'm not sure what that means any more.
But I still think the themes in PF are appropriate for young adults, and
especially young men. This seems to be a concern of Wolfe's. Our society
seems no longer interested in "manliness", but Wolfe is.
Fernando
Henry Eissler wrote:
> Fernando Q. Gouvêa wrote:
>>
>> Is Chris intended as a sympathetic character? I think that to some
>> extent he is, though Wolfe has never really written a character that
>> was a "good guy" in every way; he knows that all of us have flaws.
>> One of the things Wolfe was trying to do in PF, I think, is to
>> complicate our sense of what is right and what is wrong by having a
>> young man be formed in an utterly foreign culture (piracy in the 17th
>> century). Things we consider horrible are routine for him. Things we
>> consider routine (see his comments about his life as a priest) are
>> horrible to him. I know it's easy to just say Chris is a "bad guy",
>> but most of us haven't been shot at and had to fight for our lives.
>> Could we? If we could, should we? Nor have we been hungry and had to
>> decide whether to steal.
> For what it's worth:
> It always seemed to me that PF was about situational ethics- or
> rather, morals. I didn't walk away with the impression that Chris
> considered the horrible things he and his crew did to be anything less
> than horrible. It took a long time and a lot of pushing for him to
> finally become a pirate, even with his gangster background. After
> that, he did everything in his power to influence his crew and anyone
> he came into contact with to be better, more devout people. Just like
> so many other Wolfe protagonists.
> Bram Burt was a privateer. Chris took his orders directly from
> Burt. Essentially, they were at war with Spain. This was the
> situation he'd been thrust into- that God placed him in. He made the
> best of it, and tried to be the best man he could be within it. And I
> believe that Father Chris knew that no good man would be likely to
> understand or forgive the life he'd led. That only God could be his
> judge. And would be. And perhaps had been.
> Anyway, that's my take. Father Chris knew it was a rougher,
> tougher world than his fellow priests would like to imagine; he wanted
> to give the boys in his care some guidance that they could accept.
> But I never thought of it as a Young Adult novel. Wizard Knight
> yes. Not Pirate Freedom.
> ---H
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--
=============================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea
Carter Professor of Mathematics
Colby College Editor, MAA FOCUS
5836 Mayflower Hill Editor, MAA Reviews
Waterville, ME 04901 http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/
http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea
A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.
-- G. K. Chesterton
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