Dreaming, Mag, Able and Art

Andrew Bollen · 09 Jan 2005, 03:05 · from 2005-January.txt.gz

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From: abollen at internode.on.net (Andrew Bollen)
Date: Sun Jan  9 03:05:56 2005
Subject: (urth) Re: Dreaming, Mag, Able and Art
Message-ID: <002a01c4f63b$23dd3720$95406596@crunchynut>

Further on Dream, Art & Able ... It seems that you one way you know you're 
in Dream is if
you see the the Valfather's "castle like a star" flying through the clouds.
Toug watches it in Dream (p56), as does Art at the start of Knight, on the 
hillside as he is surely dreaming.
Elsewhere in Knight, Art dreams he is Able dreaming on a hillside (surely 
the same one) as the
castle scuds through the clouds, remembering how he used to live in a place
where there were swords and no cars (p133). I think all this supports the
idea of Art & Able having being swapped, by the Aelf, via Dream.

(Though come to think of it, I guess the swap could have been engineered by 
the Overcyn, given the presence of the Valfather's castle ...)

As a bonus, in the Dream chapter in Wizard, there's a gratuitous-seeming
little passage where Art tells Toug that any horse ridden by an Aelf  "will
be one of ours, a horse taken by the Aelf as a man or woman may be." Or
indeed as Able, Art & Toug all have been at one time or another.

Toug is in some ways the most interesting character in the series. Art 
identifies with him to a certain extent. In the Dream chapter, he more or 
less appoints Toug as his prime agent.  I can't remember who or where, but 
one of the characters says that Art sees himself in Toug. Toug is a key 
piece in the game played by various parties in the first half of the book to 
secure Art's services for their own ends; they recognize Toug's influence 
over Art.

I don't think that Toug and Art have any direct physical or psychic 
relationship with each other, but I do think Art sees him as a kindred 
spirit. More than that, I think Toug is a kind of stand-in for the real 
Able, now in America.

One of the things that surprised me about Wizard was that we hear little 
about Able. I think we get Toug instead: an exceptionally brave peasant kid 
from the same area as Able, also taken by the Aelf & also delivered into a 
strange and dangerous world ... Toug fights against great odds, is wounded, 
fights on & is further wounded. I think we have to assume the same for Able 
in America; we hear of him in America via Art's dreams mainly when he is 
hospital after fighting hijackers, in an ambulance and so on.

Toug, unlike Art, is not a figure of destiny; no god-like beings have 
moulded him for great tasks and he doesn't have "supernatural" powers. I 
think the same would be true of Able in America, and though we don't know 
the details I feel sure his experiences there parallel Toug's.

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