(urth) Like a good Neighbor

[Gerry Quinn]

From: James Wynn 
  From: James Wynn 

  > > I think people who claim that Seawrack was wrong need to explain why 
  > > Wolfe would have her make such a false diagnosis in the first place.
  > To explain why she abandoned Horn in the pit?


> yeah. He didn't need to complicate things by having both her and Babbie check him out and > say, "Well, I guess dead. No sense trying to listen to his heart or anything. <cue the Stupid > People music: Doy duh dum dum ding dang daaaaah>

No, he didn’t need to do that.   Or he thought he didn’t.

  > > After all, he could have just had Horn get separated from Seawrack and 
  > > Babbie, to allow his encounter with Krait.

  > He’d have to be separated for days, to be in such a state that
  > he betrayed his wife and children to the inhumu to save his life.

> He was separated for days. Two days and an afternoon, if I recall 
> my previous count correctly. 

I think he was three full days in the pit.  If you want to see that as further support for your resurrection idea, be my guest.

He fell in during the day.
A night passed.
The next day he saw Babbie.
The day after, Krait came.
The day after that he licked dew, and the long-nose man came.
That night he got out.


>But he only needed to be separated for 
> a few hours for Seawrack and Babbie not to know where to find him.

<Shrug> If Wolfe had written the story differently, and he had gone off wandering alone and fallen into a pit in some secret valley, I guess.  I don’t see what makes it better.

> He does not betray them to the inhumu. Nor, by the time he writes 
>this account, view his time with Krait and something to be regretted. 

He gives Krait the key.  For all he knew, Krait would fly off with it and dine well at Maison Horn.

It’s true he did not *think* Krait would do that.  But it was still a major betrayal.

>He sees him as his true son. (I realize you haven't got to that places yet.
> Spoiler.)

No problem, I read the books before, but it’s Wolfe, so now I’m reading them for real, i.e. a second read.

- Gerry Quinn



 

  > Additionally, they need to explain why the text is justified at the end 
  > of Chapter 8, entitled "The End".

  ***************
  Very suddenly I was falling into darkness.  [—]
  But it cannot be. It cannot be a mere incident like Wijzer’s drawing his 
  map and the rest. Either that fall must be the end of the entire work 
  (which might be wisest) or else it cannot close at all.
  So let me say this to whoever may read. With that fall, the best part of 
  my life was over. The pit was its grave.
  ***************

  Well, it is literally true, isn’t it?  The best part of his life *was* over.  Soon be betrayed Nettle and his sons.  He travelled with an inhumu.  He was abducted to a hell planet and died there.  There might have been something about finding his girlfriend was a mass murdering cannibal too, but I’m not sure of that part yet. You’ve got to admit, his life after that moment was a bit of a bummer. 

I didn't notice that his life before that was so great. He knew this mission would be no picnic. But the narrator makes more of it. Falling into the pit is not just another event. It would be a fitting place to end the novel, he says...or else it just goes on and on. He nowhere bemoans dying on Green. He knew Seawrack was no ordinary girl already. "Mass-murdering?" 



  And why is he so coy about it, if he died in the pit anyway?  He’s been telling us all along about that *other* time he died.  What was different that time?

Why did the King of Annwvyn not tell Pwyll's family that he had switched identities with him? He has declared over and over that he is motivated to BE Horn. 

Anyway, you still have not justified that very hard underlining that the narrator places on this incident...why above all others--even his death on Green-- this event is so significant. We'll restart this conversation again when you are able to do that.



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