Subject: RE: (urth) Castaway with Spoilers

From: cilluff1 at optonline.net <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 19:39:24 +0000

Blattid writes, prompted by Mantis' gender comment:

<<> So we are all in agreement that the narrator is female?

Huh?!? Sputter!?! 

You know, the question of what sex (or age, or race, or any 
other physical characteristic) of the narrator never came up 
in my mind. Not once. In two readings less than two days 
apart ... 

So, uh, any particular reason for thinking this? (I don't
think the "I love you" is intended that way...)>>

I read it as a man, but the passage that tipped me that way really can go
either way:  "...I was sick of talking to the other guys in the crew.  I'd
been talking to them ever since I signed on, and I knew what they were
going to say and the games they wanted to play and what all their jokes
were."

I had read "the other guys in the crew" as modifying the narrator, making
the narrator male, but it just as easily could refer to the stranded gent. 
The "the games they wanted to play" line though does have sexual
connotations to it, although that doesn't necessarily make the narrator
female.  I also thought her bawdy jokes of "was it as good for you as it
was for her..." seemed like a "guy thing" to say, but I guess that is
sexist of me and there's no reason a woman couldn't say that.

I do however like idea of the narrator being female -- she is the
antithesis of the Gaia, a nice duality.  She is the embodiment of the white
world, anti-nature (White Goddess?  I've never read that but it makes you
think...), where not only do they not have trees but they try to make the
stranded gent forget about leaves entirely.  He speaks to her, just as he
spoke to Gaia, because she is the embodiment of this anti-nature.  She
would like to know how to make him see the trees and hear the birds, but
She cannot do that anymore.

Incidentally, I do agree that the earth is "the" castaway as well the
stranded gent, which is why I've described him (clumsily) as the stranded
gent.  Note that the title actually isn't "The Castaway," it is simply
"Castaway" -- it refers to both earth and the man, so there is not any
singular "the" castaway, and it also lets the word act as a verb -- the
story is about how we castaway earth and nature, first on the planet
itself, and then by pounding its memory out of this last natural man, a man
whom we also castaway as having a "blown" mind.  Note also that all that
white "suck[ed] the color out of everything except blood.  Only it never
sucked the color out of him, and that made him special to me."  Well, if
he's alive, and has blood, why SHOULD it suck the color out of him?  Also,
why should that be special to her -- because she and everyone else no
longer have blood or color.

- Shell 

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2003 19:53:26 +0000

I took the narrator as female, because of the "games the other guys play" 
passage. And I agree that it works thematically. Also it "felt" as if the 
narrator was especially interested in the "woman" on the planet, which 
seems in a way more appropriate for a women. (E.g. "What was this other 
woman like?") Also, the fact that the man was so interested in talking with 
the narrator, after years of talking only to another "woman," indicated to 
me that the narrator was female. He was used to talking to a woman.
         The "I love you" was said by the stranded man to the old woman, 
over and over, and seemed to comfort her.
         I speculate that Atrothers is an alpha privitive before the word 
"troth," and would mean "unmarried ones" -- another image of sterility.
         Obert means "otter."
         Yarmouth is a river's name:

For example, the river Yar was first mentioned by the ancient Greek 
geographer Ptolemy, in the second century A.D. The word is believed to stem 
from an old, pre-English, Celtic word "gar," meaning something like "shout" 
or "cry," and probably referring to the loud sounds made by rushing water 
at the Yar's mouth, when tides were changing.

- English River Names, as reviewed (scroll down a ways) at:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A2CRUETJKX1WA5/1/ref%3Dcm%5Fcr%5Fauth/103-6356536-1614238

         Interesting that both of the man's companions had water names. 
First the Otter died, and then the River died.

Anyway, what I found.

Nutria

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