5HC

Gerry Quinn · 23 Aug 2014, 14:24 · from 2014-August.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 15:24:50 +0100
Subject: (urth) 5HC
In-Reply-To: <BLU175-W4828E01BC2215CD3CD282CCFD00 at phx.gbl>
References: <BLU175-W4828E01BC2215CD3CD282CCFD00 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <53F8A432.8000906 at bindweed.com>

On 22/08/2014 14:59, Lee wrote:
>> Gerry Quinn:
>> The abo who replaced Marsch, and who would seem well equipped to know...
> No. You seem to be assuming that the killing and replacement of humans is a
> conscious function of these creatures. I (and others) are seeing the opposite:
>
> The drive for killing and imitation is an unconscious instinct. The reason for
> this is that a conscious awareness that you have killed and replaced somebody
> would hinder your ability to imitate them. So from Shadow Children to Abos to
> Victor/Dr. Marsch there is a strong self-delusion happening, driving each
> imitator to think they really are their victim and to invent whatever lie is
> needed to perpetrate that delusion.
>
> Thus Victor does not continue writing in Dr. Marsch's personal journal to trick
> other people into thinking he is Dr. Marsch. He does it primarily to trick
> himself.
>
We know that Victor knows he is imitating the original Marsch: "I only 
had to make my voice like his,and look older".

As for whether he killed Marsch or Marsch met with an accident, we are 
not actually told.  Possibly there was an altercation initiated by 
Marsch in which Marsch got killed.  There are hints that Marsch was 
developing some kind of erotic obsession with the boy.  Or perhaps being 
alone for a long period with someone who was startuing to imitate him 
had a strange effect on the un-self reflective Marsch.  The matter is 
moot, I suppose.  All we know is that Marsch did not return from the 
wilderness, while Victor did, writing a diary which now includes a 
fabricated report of Victor's death.

The diary has more than one function.  He is, in a sense, trying to 
convince himself he is human, as Wolfe has noted.  But one does not trty 
to convince oneself of something one believes to be true.

Not giving details of the killing or whatever is the sort of thing that 
Wolfe's semi-naturalistic unreliable narrators do actually leave out - 
we see it elsewhere with Alden Weer and Lois.  They don't dwell on such 
things as murders they may have committed. Neither, however, do they 
exist in a fugue state completely out of touch with conventional 
reality, which is what some of the theories advanced regarding 5HC seem 
to require, not just of the major narrators with their unusual issues, 
but of pretty much everyone on the two planets.

- Gerry Quinn

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