{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6770", "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": 6770, "subject": "dead rabbit and fox in Ieuan's room", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2018-01-05T23:47:08+00:00", "last": "2018-01-05T23:47:08+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2018-01-05T23:47:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) dead rabbit and fox in Ieuan's room", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "When Bax first comes across the younger set of twins, he makes \"Emlyn\" drop\nhis light and flee through a closed window, ghost-like. Later, \"Ieuan\"\nbeats him and kicks him (though he also does damage to that boy). When he\nsees Emlyn again, he hits him with a stick he cut for a fishing pole three\ntimes. Emlyn tricks him, and then Bax \"took three hard blows from my own\nstick\" - the damage between these characters is always tit for tat. Ellyn\nthinks that Bax might be Ieuan here, and thinks \"you'd have a sword or a\nknife\" (Bax will get both later).\n\nLater he is walking with \"Emlyn\" and leaves him for a second to peer into\nIeuan's bedroom - in it, he notes \"A dead animal on the floor appeared to\nbe a rabbit; another, sprawled over a chest, was clearly a large fox.\"\n(71).\nGiven that later Lupine will give Doris's car keys to him and they will\nfeature a pink rabbit, the dead animals here seem somewhat prophetic.\n\nI think Ieuan and Emlyn are parts of Bax that want to embrace different\nparts of their nature. When Emlyn sees Winkle face to face he promises her\nhe will never force her. When Bax meets Lupine, he promises he will never\nforce her. When Lupine meets Bax, she says that she likes him. When Kiki\nmeets Bax, she also says that she likes him. The morning after that strange\ntrip to Lakeshore he meets with both Ieuan and Emlyn at different times,\nthough both call themselves Emlyn. One wants to talk about the werewolf,\nthe other introduces him to the werewolf. At one point Emlyn asks if Bax is\ntheir father, who he says is good at disguises. When Nick the butler, who\nis supposed to eventually be revealed to be Mr. Black, speaks of himself,\nhe says that he is \" a thing, if you will allow the word. A thing rather\nless fine than your sword, sir. .. Only a thing, like your sword, that\nstrives to serve you.\" (256)\nHe goes on to say:\n \"[Nicholas] was made first, and I subsequently. We were grown in the same\ntrough, sir. Our creator was their father, sir. Zwart is, or was, his\ncommon name.\"\n\"You think he may be dead?\"\nThe old man cleared his throat. \"You, um, sir. Or the boys, sir. Emlyn, I\nwould think. Or both, sir.\"\n\"I did not kill him, Nick ... I shot a wolf. (258)\n\nLater he winds up somehow being Zwart Black, who is Alexander Skotos,\naccording to Bax, but here we see that the butler's words might make sense\nin another way, if he is just an object in a story created to serve the\npurpose of Bax. Ieuan, Emlyn, and Bax might be three in one. When Bax asks\nif Zwart is dead, the old man does not actually use the verb \"killed,\" but\nhis answer could even be to provide the object to the previous sentence:\n\"You think he may be dead?\"\n[I think he may be] you, um, sir. Or the boys, sir. Emlyn, I would think.\nOr both, sir.\"\nThe struggles between Bax and the twins is perhaps one for internal\ndominance. However, granting them anything beyond a metaphorical reality to\nillustrate the previous relationship of Bax and George seems somewhat\nunwarranted, save for the Hound of Horror stories and an inability to\ncontextualize Lupine.\n\nDo the dead rabbit and fox in Ieuan's room indicate that Winker and Doris\nwill \"die\" when Ieuan's coldness comes to power in Bax? Can the fox spirit\nbe corrupted into something more deadly? After the penultimate struggle\nwith the wolves on his way back from Lakeshore in a letter to Millie, with\nno mention of Mary King, Bax says that the second determining incident that\noccurred in the morning involved Emlyn introducing him to a woman he\nadmired: \"She was Lupine, the psychotic I had met beside the river.\" It\nseems to be the mirror image of a talk he has with Ieuan in a previous\nletter, who wants to talk about the werewolf and feels he might be blamed.\nBax tells him that he cannot deceive him: \"You should try to become\naccustomed to that, to internalize it.\" (181) He also says, \"I recognized\nmyself at once.\" (180) These meetings are frustratingly left inconclusive,\nending with Bax asking why he came - \"the werewolf, but that was while you\nwere playing your brother. why did you really come?\" (182)\n\n Can anything be made of the dead rabbit and fox in Ieuan's room?" } ] } ] }