(urth) Babbie

Jordon Flato jordonflato at gmail.com
Fri Mar 20 08:56:33 PDT 2009


And I'm allowing myself to respond to literally!

There is no denying the mythic resonance of the scene with the pit, the
greenbuck, and Horn's 'death'.  And now that I've just freshly read the
encounter with the Neighbors, their resonance with the faerie is
undeniable.  Something was given to Horn in the Pit.  I might have been new
life, or at least a reparied life.  Some of a neighbor might have gone into
him.  I don't think, at this point, it replaced him.

For one, he has memories of seeing Babbie looking down at him from the edge
of the pit, so when Babbie sees him and assumes he's dead, he isn't.  Also,
after the first meeting with Krait, he sees an actual neighbor, who sends
his spirit flying back to Nettle (a loaded moment if ever there was one), by
touching something to his head.  If he is already inhabited by a neighbor,
what is the use of this?  Well, I'm sure I could think of some if I tried.

It is certainly giving me an interesting perspective on this read through.
I'm very grateful for that!

Here are  few questions I've come up with this time through OBW:

1)  The Neighbors knew of the Mother, and while Horn calls her a Goddess, I
don't think we ever know if the Neighbors considered her to be so.  It is
Seawrack who gives Horn the ring which identifies him as a neighbor/man to
He-Pens-Sheep, and may single him out as a representative of all humanity
for the Neighbors (or, he IS a neighbor if you want to go that route, which
I don't yet).  Seawrack comes back with the ring after disappearing under
the waves for a while.  Could the Mother have given her the ring to give to
horn, in an effort to engineer a peace between the neighbors and humanity?
Is that part of seawracks purpose, and part of why she was sent to Horn?
It's a stretch, but something tingles in the back of my head about it.

2)  The neighbors say, when talking of their world:  "Some of you call the
placw where we are the Neighbor Whorl.  It does not matter what we call it,
or what we once called this one."  Who on Blue would know what World the
Neighbors went to, and call it the Neighbor whorl?  It is clear in the
sentence they are talking about a world other than Blue.  Who else on Blue
knows about it?  Felt significant (and is maybe touched on later, and I'm
completely forgetting).





On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 6:36 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

> Not at all. But I'm allowing myself to be understood too literally.
> I'm suggesting that Wolfe rewrites or incorporates myths and mythical
> systems, and that we can easily recognize elements from time to time. So Pas
> is obviously Zeus; certain people have a certain resonance with Christ, some
> characters resemble angels, others fairy-tale monsters, and still others are
> people who can't be seen unless they want you to see them. Like the Little
> People of Ireland, the Neighbors once lived on Blue but now have gone away
> and will never be seen again. Or not.
>
> Divinity has nothing to do with it, in other words. It's more about niches
> in literary ecosystems. Just as a horse goddess could be worshiped across
> pre-Roman Europe under dozens of names, figures out of myth can easily be
> mixed up and switched around.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:22:33 -0700
> From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Babbie
> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Message-ID:
>        <273409710903191422s3e787dd8xf0424a020f62fff4 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I'm not sure where you fall on the 'hierodules' argument, but hopefully,
> you
> are not one to see them as "insect beings" who have no divinity or
> legitimate connection with divinity.  Otherwise, it seems like it would be
> hard to make the case for the Neighbors having that quality and not the
> Hierodules....
>
>
>
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