Subject: (urth) * Spoilers * PF stuff

From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com <thalassocrat at nym.hush.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 05:26:02 +0000

Some quick musings after a first run through ..

Can we take it that Chris is a clone? He says his father told him 
he'd "engineered" Chris for height; there is no hint whatsoever, as 
far as I can see, that a mother ever existed. He also describes 
himself at one point as a "half-human monster", fwiw.

We're sort of in 5HC territory here ... but how far can we take 
that thought? In 5HC the criminal father trains the clone up to be 
exactly like himself; in PF the mafioso father sends the clone to a 
monastic school. A big question here is, of course, why did Chris' 
father do that?

Was it because he himself was educated in a monastery, and his 
agenda was to make of Chris an improved (or, at least, taller) 
version of himself? Or was it to turn Chris into something 
completely different from himself?

The latter would put an interestingly paradoxical twist on things. 
The mafioso father wants to keep Chris out of "the life"; God comes 
along and puts him back in it. So next big question; why would God 
do that?

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From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:54:49 +0000

thalassocrat wrote:
> there is no hint whatsoever, as
> far as I can see, that a mother ever existed.

There is a hint, but it is sufficiently cagey that it almost suggests
the opposite.  It is on page 226.  Chris is fighting his temptation to
go to New Jersey:  "I tell myself that if I do not speak to either of
them it can do no harm.  That may be true, but can I control the urge
to speak to them when I see them? [...] What if my father decided not
to go to Cuba to run the casino?" etc.

So it's seems that one of the "either of them" is his father, and one
might assume the other is his mother, but it is not stated, and this
omission is suggestive.  Who is the other of "them"?

---

From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:59:28 +0000

I wrote:
> Who is the other of "them"?

I wasn't thinking.  The other of "them" is obviously his younger self.
 There is no suggestion of a mother, nor even any caginess.

---

From: paul witcover <gdeonn at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:42:49 +0000

Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com> wrote:    Who is the other of "them"?
   
  ***
   
  The other of them is Chris himself.

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