AEG: Margaret

Roy C. Lackey · 21 Jan 2009, 07:05 · from 2009-January.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:05:03 -0600
Subject: (urth) AEG: Margaret
References: <002c01c97ac2$24157580$47d04a0c@rclackey>
	<4975CB1C.7050503 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <003f01c97b96$a0259c20$26d34a0c@rclackey>

Dave Tallman wrote:
> I never saw the distinction you made, with Bill and Wally as separate
> people in Cassie's mind. Wally is like a pet name she choses after she
> has come to love him. Cassie explains this on p. 288: "My husband's name
> wasn't Wally. Not really. It was Bill. I called him Wally a-- a lot. It
> was a little private joke we had."

Otoh, that whole account of how she came to be stranded is a tissue of
half-truths and evasions, a fine example of Gid's lecture about how best to
mislead people.

Cassie was told contradictory versions of the gold bracelet's origins. There
is the green-dress business and Wally being/not being in the audience. In
the beach conversation, she called him a wizard (making gold, vanishing),
just after he had told her that a wizard (meaning Chase) could never be
trusted. (269-270)

She reminded him that he had once told her he (Reis) could be trusted and
his word was always good. He reacted as if he didn't remember saying that.
(270) He hadn't had that many conversations with her. How could he have
forgotten something like that, particularly when his original point in
saying it was to gain her trust? Three pages later, it comes out how he
deceived her (and Kanoa) about using depth charges on the Storm King.

> Vince is still an unknown in my mind. He's an established actor, having
> done TV or movie work (westerns, p. 65), voiceovers (Memorare), and the
> stage. His voice makes everything he says sound important (285). Was he
> transformed up?

I don't think so. She told the Vince-figure that he wasn't really Vince and
that she had never liked Vince anyway. But she liked this entity, "whoever
you are." Yet earlier, when noting the correspondences between real-life
people in the islands with characters in the play, she told herself, "I only
hope I never meet Vince.", meaning, of course, the Volcano God. Too bad we
don't know how Wally's play ended; it might shed some light.

> It's troublesome to explain how Vince ended up in a play
> close to Cassie before she became involved in Chase's plot. Is a time
> traveler setting things up?

I don't see any good reason to suppose that Vince is anything more than he
appears to be, an actor.

> How might Cassie see Wally again? If Cassie goes back in time as
> Margaret, she will see him again, not very happily. Or he could mean in
> the life to come.

I think W.R. was too alpha to be that passive, unless the life to come means
something other than what it means for most people. I have no idea
whatsoever what it means for a human to be in any sense a volcano god.

-Roy

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