{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/493",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 493,
    "subject": "Peace",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-04-16T10:07:24+00:00",
    "last": "1998-04-16T10:07:24+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0009-0736@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "adam louis stephanides",
        "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-04-16T10:07:24+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Peace",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Wed, 15 Apr 1998 Tony Ellis wrote:\nWell, the story is about something outliving its time, that's the point\nmade in the very last line. And that is what Weer has been doing. At\nthe time Dan is telling him that story he is an old man, who has outlived\nmost of his contemporaries. He is also a dead man, wandering through\nhis memories, so he's outlived his time in a more literal sense too.\n\nSince this story comes right before the very last paragraph of the novel,\nI think it serves to make Weer realise it's time to let go. Perhaps that's\nwhy he tells it to himself."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I actually hadn't thought about this at all before Rostrum asked the\nquestion (shows what a careful reader I am) but I now can see several\nparallels in addition to this one.\n\n1) Weer has been dead for many years (the tree planted on his grave is\nnow huge) so he has not just oulived his time but \"far outlived [his]\ntime,\" like the sidhe.\n\n2) Like the sidhe, Weer is in a sense the last of his kind: he is the\nlast to remember Cassionsville before it was transformed by the factory\nhe ran.\n\n3) Just as the geese's feathers sing and write after the geese's deaths,\nWeer's ghost tells stories after his death.\n\n4) The last goose is a fusion of all three sidhe children, and in a\nsense Weer's ghost \"fuses\" all the people whose stories he tells.\n\n5) Perhaps most importantly, the immortality the sidhe children gain from\nbeing transformed into a flock of geese is a false immortality compared to\nthe true immortality to be gained from baptism.  Similarly, Weer's\nimmortality as a ghost is a false immortality.  I don't recall Weer\nexpressing any religious convictions, although it's been a while since\nI read the book.  Perhaps that is part of what was missing from Weer's\nlife, and of why his spirit could not find peace.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}