Nightside again, chapter one

Alex David Groce · 11 Dec 1998, 11:58 · from whorl-v0009.mbox · original

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From: "Alex David Groce" <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Nightside again, chapter one
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:58:40
Message-ID: <whorl-v0009-0060 at digest.urth.net>
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Jonathan Laidlow wrote:
> Stephen Witkoswksi inspired to begin rereading Long Sun again, and=20
> I'd be grateful for your input folks:
>=20
> Nightside chapter 1 - two things I noticed:
>=20
> 1. the word 'clockwork' is used three times in the first three pages.=20
> Patera Silk is 'that absurd clockwork figure' in the parenthesis in=20
> the second paragraph, and he watches the game 'outside a clockwork=20
> show whose works had stopped'. This is where Silk has his first=20
> theophany (love that word!). The Outsider gives him an out of body=20
> experience and reveals how he is merely a mechanical creation=20
> (figuratively) who does what he has been programmed to do?
> Then again on p11 at the end of the vision: 'a wind that blew ever=20
> stronger and wilder as clockwork that had never really stopped began=20
> to turn again'. This then suggests that all is artificial, created -=20
> the wind is unnatural, but guided by the clockwork maker.
>=20
> I'm wondering how to reconcile this with Silk's assertion later in=20
> the chapter that the Outside will not help save the Manteion, Silk is=20
> the help that is being provided.
>=20
> 2. And another thing,back to  the first paragraph: 'he said that it=20
> was as though someone who had always been behind him and standing=20
> (as it were) at both his shoulders had, after so many years of=20
> pregnant silence, begun to whisper into both his ears'
> This echoes TS Eliot's Waste Land: 'Who is that who walks behind you'=20
> (Eliot's note refers to polar explorers, but that's a red herring).=20
> Both refer to some passage in the Bible, presumably after the=20
> Resurrection where Jesus is seen by various people, but where? And=20
> why?
>=20
	Road to Emmaus, Luke 24:13-31.  I think it's in there same reason Eliot
used it--an explicit reference to Emmaus, probably here to indicate (in par=
t)
the "resurrection" of the true church, through Silk, in the Whorl..
--=20
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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