Why Berthold looks like Ben

Seth Lombardi · 11 Jan 2005, 13:49 · from 2005-January.txt.gz

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From: sethlombardi at hotmail.com (Seth Lombardi)
Date: Tue Jan 11 13:49:04 2005
Subject: (urth) Why Berthold looks like Ben
Message-ID: <BAY2-F20F1A0E05C7805FD538192D7880 at phx.gbl>

>At the end of Wizard, when Art is wearing his magic helm. I think that 
>previously, Berthold would have looked like Berthold, helm or no. Art wears 
>the helm a lot and Berthold is around, in all of the fighting leading up to 
>this; and the appearance of Ben in place of Berthold after the River Battle 
>is obviously a surprise.
>
>The big change is Art's healing of Bert, in which "it took a lot to restore 
>the thing he had left in a pond, so long ago." We know that Art doesn't 
>have the power to restore the dead. I think the point here is that the 
>"thing" which Ben lost in the pond is indeed dead. To restore him, Able has 
>had to replace it with something taken from or copied from (a memory of?) 
>Ben, though it seems that Art himself doesn't realize this.


I felt it was something along the lives of: the inhabitants of Mythgrather 
and America do more than just live prallel lives, but in fact share a soul, 
and that the differences between the two places were just different points 
of view on the same conflict, or state of being. Thus being a big reveal at 
the end of the book, it's an attmpt to give the work an extra bit of 
relevance or emphasis or emotional punch.

seth

*****************************
Seth Lombardi
sethlombardi at hotmail.com
sethopopotropolis: http://pages.prodigy.net/nlom/blogg.html
AIM: melombardi
"Two faces are alike; neither is funny by itself, but side by side their 
likeness makes us laugh" -Pascal


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