Honor

Roy C. Lackey · 27 Oct 2005, 07:20 · from 2005-October.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 02:20:36 -0500
Subject: (urth) Honor
Message-ID: <001201c5dac6$f1c61ec0$6a3ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

On 10-24-05 Bob Miller wrote:
>>In his failings, I find Able's personal growth, emotionally and "morally",
to be one of the better thingies about the novel.He does start off as a
rather confused and not particularly admirable person.  However, for one it
is apparent that he is showing us his "bad" side in a number of different
scenes.  I would rather say though that it is his human side.  That he
aspires, and others have faith in him, to betterment (greatness?) and others
see the value there even through his flaws.  In Christianity this is called
grace.<<

Though I come from the opposite end of the religious spectrum, I quite agree
with you, at least about that last statement. Something akin to grace is the
only way to account for the literal overnight transformation of a gangly,
ignorant American teenage boy into a he-man comic-book superhero who fancied
himself a knight. Why did he fancy himself a knight? Because he *believed*
he was a knight. He had done absolutely nothing to earn his spurs. Unless
you count screwing a fairy queen.

And on 10-26-05 Bob Miller wrote:
>>I have two points here.  ONe is that there is more to honor than fighting.
It required obedience.  And looking at Sir Woddet and his actions to keep
Able from fighting Marder, it required forethought and initiative.  The
other is that Wolfe's characters, as Chris noted, grow.  The punk who
offered to kill the boy Toug for Disiri's pleasure is a far distance from
the knight who refused to go with her when she offered everything he had
dreamed of (her body and company) in order to join a starving army.<<

But he was the same knight who, even in middle age after his sojourn in Skai
(carousing, drinking and fighting; no finer venue for honing knightly ideals
of chivalry and honor), upbraided the stable hands in Utgard for not taking
better care of the horses. It takes a lot of damn gall to ride into Utgard
in the middle of the night on a flying unicorn, roust out the stable hands
and threaten them with bodily harm for not performing their slave labors to
his satisfaction. Those stable hands were human men who had been captured,
enslaved and blinded by the giants. Those ungrateful, lazy bastards. But
Able put them in their place. He was able to do so because he was bigger and
stronger and more Able than they. Might makes right.

hartshorn wrote:
>I think the real problem some suffer in understanding Abel and Idunn and
>other imperfect people is that we have no modern analog of what a Knight is
>supposed to be.   What function do Knights serve?  How do their rights and
>duties interact with those of ordinary people???
>
>Some seem to believe that a Knight is simply a high status individual with
>the right to push other individuals around.
>
>As I have posted before, a Knight is really better understood as something
>like  white blood cell in a body, fighting off attacks on the nation in a
>very selfless way and rewarded for this by a complex of rights and honors
>that (taken alone) seem reasonless.

>From the very first day that Able woke up in his big body, he started
pushing people around in an entirely selfish way, beginning with Toug's
family, at a time when he wasn't even a nominal knight. The ship captain,
innkeepers, jailers and almost everyone he crossed paths with who was a
knight's *social inferior* he treated like crap, throughout both books.
Otoh, in the presence of those in the social pecking order commonly regarded
as a knight's 'betters', he behaved like a boot-licking lackey. That those
who were his 'betters' had achieved their positions by force of arms,
wealth, marriage or accidents of birth, rather than the merits of
fill-in-the-blank ideals, didn't matter. My Lord, may he always be right,
but my Lord, right or wrong.

>Hence the strong prohibitions and severe tests put in the way of any one
who
>would attempt to gain the honor and rewards of a Knight without earning
>them.

As I said before, Able *didn't* earn them. He was appointed a knight by the
action and whim of his fairy lover.

>A Knight's values are not those of an ordinary person: but then reputation
>and manners are the means by which human beings enforce behavioural
>standards on each other, and a leucocyte's program of behaviour is not that
>of an ordinary body cell.

I would make another analogy, that of a knight as an American Old West
'hired gun' or a Mafia goon. Codes of honor are involved there too, but that
doesn't make them right or good.

Speaking of those "behavioral standards", it might be useful to those new to
this List if you re-posted a link to that Wolfe Tolkien essay you bought a
few years ago. The piece might afford some insight into Wolfe's views of
social structure in Days of Yore and in TWK, particularly the first two
paragraphs.

-Roy

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