The Waif

Roy C. Lackey · 04 Mar 2009, 21:16 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 15:16:17 -0600
Subject: (urth) The Waif
References: <fc75340d0903031239h4e31155fgb7a4f4c30dff4be6 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <002801c99d0e$792c0200$f2d04a0c@rclackey>

Mike Legedza wrote:
> 1) Maybe the biggest question of all ... Who ARE the Flying People?
> Ariael's name suggests he might be some kind of angel...or at least
> instructs us that we should view the Flying People on the same terms as we
> would angels ...

 Of course I can't answer all your questions, but I'll give you my take,
fwiw.

I think you are right to view the Flying People as angelic -- if they aren't
quite Judeo-Christian angels, they serve that functiion in this story.

> 2)  Niman Pryderi's description as to why their community doesn't tolerate
> the flying people is perhaps intentionally confusing.

As I see it, the schoolmaster is representative of those on Earth who are
philosophically akin to Vodalus and others on Urth who wanted to return to
the stars and reclaim Man's past glory. (But I am *not* saying this story
takes place in the same milieu as the Sun Cycle -- it doesn't.) Mankind on
Earth had precipitated an apocalyptic collapse of a technological society.
When they started to recover, the Flying People showed up to stop them from
repeating the disaster; whether actively or passively isn't clear. The
Flying People serve the same function as the Hierodules on Urth; to keep
mankind down until they have learned their moral lessons.

> I've read his logic a
> dozen times now, and still can't really figure out how it works.  From
what
> I gather, he is saying that humanity can't rebuild as long as the flying
> people are present, because their presence continually makes us feel shame
> for the way we destroyed our own world.  So essentially, we can only
rebuild
> once we have freed ourselves from the constant reminder of our sins.  This
> logic doesn't really make the connection between the flying people and us
> wanting to burn each other alive...but maybe I'm missing something vital.
> Does anyone here a lot smarter than me have a better explanation for what
is
> going on here?

As the schoolmaster said, "Guilt is the worst part, Bin. Knowing that we
were on the devil's side, and that what we got was less than we deserved."
(p-96) Mankind had sinned, yet again. But God is merciful, etc. Joel's
social transgression, for which he was burned and which may have included
reporting to the Flying People men who spoke out against the "angels", was
that he did not have the time or energy to actively hate the "angels". He
let them sleep in his barn when they were slumming among humans and testing
them, as Ariael tested Bin.

> 5) Speaking of the ending, does anyone have any thoughts as to the
> significance of the rain falling at the end?  I'm assuming that the
downpour
> was powerful enough to put out the fire that was burning, and that Ariael
> caused the downpour, saving Gam and Bin.

God helps those on the side of the angels, at least those who are young and
innocent and believe the angels to be Good. Notice that the rain didn't
start until young Bin, who can't be much more than nine-years old, came
forward to try to stamp out the flames and was in danger of being burned to
death himself. And none of the villagers tried to stop him. Bin had shown
his true colors and was destined for the flames anyway, sooner or later.
Ariael was morally compelled to save him, and he did, because at the
beginning of the story Bin, poor as he was and not knowing that Ariael was
one of the "rich" Flying People, had extended hospitality and compassion to
an angel, unaware.

-Roy

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net