Re: Can "The Double Shadow" be read as statement on determinism?
Posted by:
Sawfish (IP Logged)
Date: 18 February, 2021 07:06PM
Cathbad Wrote:
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> I guess there’s always something in a CAS story
> that makes it worth reading? I mean apart from the
> obvious? So that bit about the mummy being just as
> vulnerable as a living man to the shadow’s
> invidious influence struck me just as it did you.
> Also the story’s point of view. CAS wrote
> countless stories about wizards who get their
> comeuppance by dabbling in some forbidden lore,
> but here we get that familiar story told from the
> perspective of the wizard’s apprentice.
The choice of POV and how the tale unrolls is masterful, in my opinion.
As regards the mummy's susceptibility to the double shadow, as a means to underline, double underline, in red, that all hope is futile, there were two sort of comic precedents that I also liked, one in Catch-22 and one in Slaughterhouse 5.
In Catch-22, the main character, Yossarian, tries to get out of combat by malingering in a hospital. He is in repeated times.
One time he is in with the "soldier who saw everything twice", who appears to Yossarian to be a great master malingerer, and whom Yossarian has resolved to emulate for beneficial outcomes. So every time the other patient screams out with a new symptom, Yossarian waits a day and does the same.
After a few days like this, the other patient screams out "I see everything twice!" This causes a lot of doctors to cluster around and Yossarian thinks it masterful and resolves to try it the next day, and Yossarian does.
However, the patient dies in the following night, and Yossarian decides that he has followed his hopeful example far enough, and declares himself fit for combat.
The other story, the POV was a US POW being shipped by box car to Germany. It gets super cold at night and one guy dies. There's one older soldier who had been a hobo, and he told every one: "This is nothing, no problem. I've slept thru lots worse conditions than this and I've made it just fine."
So the rest of the younger soldiers take heart in this desperate situation.
However, the former hobo dies of cold the next night.
WHOOSH! Hope evaporates... :^)
>
> So I think he did try to mix things up a bit, even
> when the premise was instantly familiar to the
> reader.
>
> I’ve always reckoned The Maze of Maal Dwebb and
> The Empire of the Necromancers to be two of
> CAS’s best stories for the same reason - ie,
> they’re atypical. Maal Dwebb halts the
> transformation of the hero before it’s complete
> - he’s bored and he decides to change the
> outcome of a familiar situation in a fundamental
> way, this in turn being a reflection of CAS’s
> own frustration with the exigencies of an overly
> familiar plotline (or so I reckon).
Yes.
Interesting that boredom of a super-endowed main character also comes up in that one about the serpent scientists and the flower women. The wizard (whose name I forget) decides to tackle these very competent and dangerous reptiles with only what amounts to a wizard's equivalent of a Swiss army knife, just for the challenge.
And so you might think the wizard is sorta *saving* the flower women, but really, he sees them as simple-minded objects and is there simply to alleviate his own boredom.
> And The City
> of the Necromancers is about how a prince
> orchestrates the deaths of the two necromancers
> who have enthralled him and his subjects - ie, it
> is a rare example of a positive outcome in a CAS
> story, even if it could hardly be classified as a
> happy ending.
Boy, when you really think about that one, it's unspeakably foul!
The two necromancers, besides the general yuckiness of dallying with corpses, have taken the most dignified, formal, and respected members of a ruling dynasty, and forced them to debase themselves in a variety of ways, solely for the gratification of the two maladjusted miscreants.
UGH!
So yep, they had it coming, in spades.
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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