Not-So Bad Horn

William Ansley · 17 Apr 2001, 00:28 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Not-So Bad Horn
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 00:28:28
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0619 at digest.urth.net>
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At 5:32 PM -0400 4/16/01, Michael Straight wrote:
>On Sat, 19 Feb 2000, Allan Lloyd wrote:
>  > Horn is a careless and violent man, blaming others for his own mistake=
s.
>>  He loses all of the supplies that he was given for his mission, and then
>>  violently beats the man who was supposed to be looking after the boat,
>>  although he had no proof that he was involved in the theft.
>
>"Loses" them?  He asks the guy to watch his boat, and when he comes back
>his stuff is gone and the guy has no explanation for what happened to it.=20
>I can see criticizing Horn for resolving the dispute with violence (though
>we don't know who threw the first punch) but I can't see faulting Horn for
>blaming the guy, and it's pretty harsh to call this careless.  Naive,
>maybe.

I have always been puzzled by this passage. If the guy Horn asked to=20
watch his boat was involved with the robbery, then *Why* did he stick=20
around? In fact, if he wasn't involved in the robbery but had just=20
left the boat unguarded, why did he come back and why did he stick=20
around when he saw that all the stuff had been stolen?

To me, it seems as if the boat-watcher is just guilty of gross=20
stupidity or fecklessness. This may warrant a beating, but I don't=20
think a good man, or even a man who had any control over his temper,=20
would have given him one.

William Ansley

P.S. Horn does have one very important trait for a violent man to=20
possess. He does seem pretty good at judging who he can beat up. <g>

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