Subject: (urth) Caraboo-hoo

From: Tony Ellis <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 10:21:18 +0000

William H. Ansley wrote:
>I really don't agree with the "morphing carabao" theory...

Nor me. It's funny how any evidence for shape-shifting sort of melts
away when you look at it closely, isn't it? (The one exception being the
Old Wise One's mention of this ability - that's currently the only
reason I think shape-shifting has anything to do with St Anne.)

>It does seem as if there is some deeper meaning to this episode, but I
>don't think that providing evidence of shape shifting is it.

As you say, Marsch's cruelty seems to be significant, and the tears too.
And why does Wolfe _keep_ showing us Marsch gunning down the local
fauna? 

My impression is that this is all meant to suggest that the animals of
St Anne might be "people" too. Not in the sense that they are all some
sort of morphing alien race with a big SFx budget, but simply that on St
Anne the distinction between human and animal is blurred. There are
numerous references to the Annese being just "animals shaped like
people", and also hints of the reverse. When VRT lists the "people" he
used to see when living in the wilderness with his mother he includes
animals, birds, trees and Shadow Children as if there was no distinction
between them at all. He, too, cries when the carabao is killed.

That would make all those other animals Marsch so cheerfully shoots
"people" too. Sort of ironic, given that Marsch wants so badly to meet
the native Annese, no?

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: adam louis stephanides <astephan at students.uiuc.edu>
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 12:01:45 +0000

> reason I think shape-shifting has anything to do with St Anne.)

And this occurs in a work of fiction by V.R.T.; we don't know if
it reflects something he saw or thought he saw, is derived from Annese
lore, or is his own extrapolation from Veil's Hypothesis.
 
> people", and also hints of the reverse.

There was a similar phenomenon in "Tracking Song."  There, too, you had
characters who were intelligent, and who looked like people, but whom
other characters regarded as "just animals," and quite cheerfully killed
and even ate.

--Adam