Tracking Song and The Call of the Wild

Roy C. Lackey · 17 Jun 2007, 07:57 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 02:57:39 -0500
Subject: (urth) Tracking Song and The Call of the Wild
Message-ID: <004a01c7b0b5$2ff987c0$35cb5a42 at rclackey.stic.net>

Matthew Groves quoted and wrote:
>> If there was any telltale mark of a beast about Nashhwonk, I find no
>mention of it.
>
>The telltale mark of the beast is, ironically, his "chair," which is his
>antlers.

He's sitting on his own head?? "Sitting in the very center of it [the Sleigh
track], in a massive, high-backed chair of dark wood, was a man bigger than
I had ever conceived that a man could be. He was facing me [. . .]"
Nashhwonk later rose from the chair and walked around it. Is this incident
"just a matter of how literal we're being"?

>> I just don't see any evidence in TS that any great crime was committed by
>> Cutthroat that got him expelled from the Sleigh.
>
>His name is Cutthroat; that has to mean something.  I suggested that, in
>light of Call of the Wild, it has something to do with Buck's tearing the
>throats of the Yeehat Indians after the death of John Thornton.  But if you
>don't think something like this CotW episode is in Cutthroat's past, then
>you have to find some other reason for his name.  This is Wolfe, after all.

Okay, but the name was given to him *after* he departed the Sleigh *by* the
wolfmen. They knew nothing of his past. Names bestowed by the beastmen are
largely descriptive; witness Crookedleg's new name. Cutthroat said they gave
him that name because of his "reddish-brown birthmark". You earlier
suggested that the "birthmark" was an analogue of Buck's forced submission
by a rope around the neck. You also suggest the name Cutthroat is a
reference to a hypothetical, past analogue of Buck's well-earned reputation
as a man killer. And, yes, a symbol can represent more than one thing. The
problem for me is, it is Cutthroat who is carrying the mark that should be
on his victim(s). In other words, the descriptive name given by the wolfmen
suggests to me that Cutthroat was on the receiving end of a cut throat.

>> The winged man is definitely not the "you" addressed by
>> Cutthroat; indeed, Cutthroat seems never to have seen such a creature
>> before.
>
>That's because he's forgotten everything, unless you think he's regained
all
>his memory upon seeing the Great Sleigh.  But there's nothing in the text
to
>suggest that.

He may not have regained it all, but he did remember who "you" was, and it
was not the winged man, who was "with you". If the winged man is divine,
then there is no reason for "you" to be divine also, even if "you" is divine
only by analogy. If "you" is to Cutthroat as God is to Man, why is the
winged man there at all?

-Roy

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