AEG: Margaret

Roy C. Lackey · 18 Jan 2009, 21:53 · from 2009-January.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:53:42 -0600
Subject: (urth) AEG: Margaret
References: <002801c97911$a4967ae0$c2d24a0c@rclackey>
	<49729A3C.4030902 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <005b01c979b7$3e536a80$d5d04a0c@rclackey>

Dave Tallman quoted and wrote:
> > That's not enough. It's not the radical transformation Gid spoke of,
such as
> > human to animal form, as different as Carlos and the wolf that got
Scott.
> >
> We seem to be talking past each other, and I'm not sure how to resolve
> it. I believe Cassie's transformation up to star/goddess and Margaret's
> to possibly immoral shapechanger are sufficient. Since you do not, the
> burden of proof is on you to find better candidates.

I should have said Al, not Carlos as the wolf.

You evidently believe that Cassie was elevated by Gid to the level of a
goddess. I have trouble seeing Cassie as a goddess in any meaningful sense
of the word, either by traditional or Lupine standards. The Old World
goddesses in, say, the Latro books, have supernatural powers that they
exercise to intervene in human lives and on the objective world. Cassie
demonstrates no such powers. She was powerless to prevent her lover's death
or to get herself off that island, for example. She became an object of
desire with the requisite mien of a Hollywood star, but that is as far as it
went. And her comportment was by no stretch angelic.

> Here are some we could look at:
> 1) Hanga -- a human who went down to shark level, or a shark that went up?
> 2) The Volcano God -- possibly a human who transformed up.

That is the possibility that I was getting at. I mentioned before how, at
times, in Cassie's mind, it almost seems as if she regards Bill and Wally as
two different people. Then consider the "angel or what" bit and India's
"angel", the only person so called in the book. How different is India's
angel, the man Cassie came to profess love for, from the man the president
said was the most "evil man in the world"?

I don't think Gid ever refers to Reis as Wally Rosenquist, and when Cassie
first spoke that name to him he reacted as if he had never heard the name.
Thereafter he remains noncommital about her usage. In the islands, Wally
sets Cassie up as the "green goddess", with himself as her consort and fit
companion for a "goddess".

*If* there is a moral component to transforming up, did bad Bill become the
somewhat benevolent Wally, who hoped to fight the aliens and make the world
a better place? If there is no moral component to transformation, might a
spirit or nature god be the "or what"?

-Roy

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