(urth) 5HX

[Gerry Quinn]

On 24/08/2014 14:29, Lee wrote:
>> Gerry Quinn: The diary has more than one function.  He is, in a sense, trying to
>> convince himself he is human, as Wolfe has noted.  But one does not trty
>> to convince oneself of something one believes to be true.
> You recognize that Victor is trying to convince himself he is human but do not
> recognize that Victor often succeeds in doing so.
I don't see anywhere it is indicated that he outright believes he is 
factually the original Marsch.
> When Marsch first meets Victor he notes Victor's dark hair, green eyes and pale
> skill. Physical characteristics Marsch himself possesses. The imitation had
> started immediately.

No.  We are never told of Marsch's appearance, but from his references 
to Victor's particular characteristics without any comment as to his 
own, we may surely infer that they were different.

If you are thinking of Marsch's first visit to Saltimbanque Street, that 
was Victor.  The original Marsch never visited Sainte Croix.

> Victor starts the adventure unable even to open a jar according to his father.
> But he gets progressively better with tools, the longer he spends with Marsch.
> His speech also becomes progressively better and Marsch eventually recognizes
> his is copying Marsch's own speech patterns.
I see no indication that he gets better.  From the start he is skillful 
at building fires, pitching tents, etc.  He learned to write at school 
with great difficulty (he spends some time reminiscing on the matter in 
his cell).  Certainly he learns something of anthropology and Marsch's 
speech patterns as time goes on.

> It is clear (to me and others) that during the course of the VRT story that
> the narrator is having an identity crisis. He truly doesn't know who he is.
> In one entry he is speaking as Marsch, in another he is discussing his
> shape-shifting mother. This would not happen if Victor's actions were entirely
> a conscious attempt to pretend he is Marsch.
In what entry does he speak as Marsch (not counting the diary entries 
that were actually written by Marsch)?  The closest I could think of is 
when he speaks of long-legged women etc., and on close examination the 
details of events mentioned in this passage stem from his time at the 
University of Roncevaux, which came after Victor replaced the original 
Marsch.


>
>> As for whether he killed Marsch or Marsch met with an accident, we are
>> not actually told.  Possibly there was an altercation initiated by
>> Marsch in which Marsch got killed.
> We are not "actually told" much of anything. That's kind of the point of this
> story. But since "the boy" (Marsch really) was killed right after Marsch
> had shot the cat (which is implied to have been a shapeshifting lover to
> Victor), and because the boy was becoming proficient with a gun, we are given
> both the means and motive for Victor to have killed Marsch.

We are told a lot of things which you choose to ignore.  But as to the 
circumstances of the death of Marsch and the cat, we know little, as the 
entries in the notebook after "I think I wuld shoot them both" are in 
Victor's hand, and substantially false.  This includes the story of the 
cat biting Marsch, which may be a total fabrication in order to explain 
the change in handwriting, or may be true.  Victor writes later that he 
broke the cat's neck and laid her at 'the boy's' dead feet,

So, we have Marsch's strangely jealous comment, and then no more from 
Marsch.  He goes back to the camp, and some kind of confrontation 
ensues.  Maybe Victor was waiting for an opportunity, or maybe the 
opportunity created the event.  Maybe Marsch shot the cat, maybe Victor 
killed her as a sacrifice of some kind.  Maybe the cat really did bite 
Marsch and he became sick and Victor killed him.  We are not told the 
details; all we know is that Marsch died and Victor took his place.


>> All we know is that Marsch did not return from the wilderness, while Victor did.
> We do not "know" this, if knowledge is bestowed upon the reader only by what is
> "actually told", then Victor replacing Marsch is merely a deduction which can be made.
It is a deduction for which the evidence is more than ample, from the 
clear indication that the final journal entries are written in Victor's 
(bad) hand, to the prisoner's memories of his mother on Sainte Anne, to 
his green aboriginal eyes.


> And, as I noted in a previous post, there are some very devoted and skeptical Wolfe
> fans who DID find this replacement to be a false assumption until Wolfe revealed
> it to be true in an interview. 		 	   		
>

Perhaps indicating that devotion and scepticism can be carried to excess.

- Gerry Quinn