V.R.T., Marsch and "man-shaped animals"

adam louis stephanides · 20 Jun 1998, 13:34 · from urth-v0014.mbox · original

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From: adam louis stephanides <astephan at students.uiuc.edu>
Subject: (urth) V.R.T., Marsch and "man-shaped animals"
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 13:34:06
Message-ID: <urth-v0014-0063 at digest.urth.net>
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On Fri, 19 Jun 1998 alga wrote:

> >I hadn't seen this thoery of V.R.T. merging with Marsch before, but I ha=
ve
> >to stick to my belief that V.R.T. is just impersonating Marsch in the
> >ordinary way, perhaps aided by his shape-shifting abilities if he has
> >them.
> >[stuff deleted]
> Yes, that is a good and convincing argument. But still, but still, there =
is
> that certainty among the Ste. Anne interviewees that the abos were
> "man-shaped animals," there is the evidence of "A Story," there is
> JVM/ART's own writing from his cell that seem to indicate something
> more.

Well, the Ste. Anne interviewees have a vested interest in portraying them
that way, as R.T. points out.  V.R.T. may even have internalized this
view, as shown by his assertion that he is half an animal and by "A
Story" (although personally I didn't feel that the characters in "A
Story" were identical to animals in their actions, as you said before, if=20
this is what you're referring to).  That doesn't make it true. And even if
it is true in some sense, it's not clear what it means: specifically, I
don't think it's necessarily incompatible with the intelligence and
curiosity V.R.T. displays as Marsch.  Marsch regards V.R.T. as intelligent
(Apr. 10 entry; 174, Ace edition), and he's not likely to be biased in the
direction of overestimating V.R.T.'s intelligence.

--Adam

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