[TGO SPOILERS] TGO Suicides

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Triskele

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« on: June 26, 2016, 03:44:13 am »
 So I feel like there were at least two prominent, meaningful suicides in this book, but I'm not sure that I fully understand either, and I hope to get y'all's thoughts.

The two I'm thinking of are Oinaral Lastborn's in Ishterebinth, aka The Weeping Mountain, and down past the Ingressus in the Holy Deep.

The other is A. Koringhus.

The first seems clearer to me in one sense though I am not certain from my reading that it was a certain suicide.  Perhaps more of a gambit where he knew it could end in death.  Oinaral takes Sorweel with him to meet his father, Oirunas, a huge-ass Nonman.  It seems to me that Oinaral is set on seeing The Vile destroyed, and he thinks his father is key to this.  He knows or suspects that his father is too Erratic to be safe to approach and knows he may not survive the trip to the Holy Deep.  So he needs Sorweel, and he implores him to remember to remind his father Oirunas that the Vile now rule in Ishterebinth.  Once they get down there Oirunas backhands the shit out of Oinaral presumably killing him right there, realizes what he's done and laments (but as Erratic probably also gets a nice dose of awareness for a short time).  Sorweel upholds his end of the bargain and makes sure to exclaim that the Vile rule in Ishterebinth.  This leads Oirunas, Hero of the Watch, to go fuck some shit up in the throne room.

I think it's pretty clear that Oinaral knew or could parse out that he may not survive thus needing Sorweel to ensure the dread message delivered.  But was it even more than that and he knew that he needed to die in order to give his father the jolt of killing a loved one that could give an Erratic some brief clarity?  That is my biggest question about this one.  Either way, what a badass mission and, in my estimation, and incredible piece of writing by Bakker.  RIP Oinaral Lastborn.  Oh, and to make it all the more amazing, Oinaral teazed to Sorweel on the way down that Nonmen do not commit suicide (when the droppers were falling).  Perhaps, unless it is one of the Intact looking to strike the ultimate blow against the Vile. 

Koringhus, however, I am way less clear on.  His chapter leading up to his leap was fascinating but confusing to me and certainly warranting rereads in the future for better understanding.  I get that he was pondering the big questions.  The nature of the Absolute and Zero and all of that.  And then he was given Qirri.  But that's about all I get.  Are we to think that it was the Qirri that did it?  If so, why?  Or was there some subtle conclusion he'd met in his internal monologue that I missed that made it clear why he had to snuff it and Akka was just mistakenly blaming in on the Qirri?

Discuss.

ETA: I apologize in advance for this post not being very articulate. 
« Last Edit: July 12, 2016, 04:45:46 pm by Madness »

Francis Buck

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« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2016, 08:07:56 am »
As for the first point, I read through my copy so quickly I had to ask others whether Lastborn had lived or died, because I wasn't sure. I was upset when the consensus was that he died, simply because he's about the second most badass Nonman to have appeared in the actual text. I hope his pops can fill the void!

I'm not sure there's a connection between the two suicides you mention, although in both cases the characters in question seemed to have known the implications of their death (for others, or for themselves) and been willing to follow through, which for me is especially true of Koringhus -- but then the Koringhus sections were the only ones I seriously re-read.

My opinion, at this very early point, is that the qirri's effect on Koringhus was less important than it seemed. Or, rather, Koringhus had already come to all the conclusions meaningful to the reader by that point.

I'm kind of restating thoughts I had in the "Kiunnat and Zero" thread, but whatever -- I'll likely do so another two or ten times before TUC.

So, I think Koringhus was especially (if unintentionally) prepared to grasp the Absolute more-so than any before him. Well, besides Kellhus perhaps, but their circumstances differed greatly. I don't really think Koringhus was actually smarter or more powerful than his father or his grandfather. Rather, the world simply allowed him to come such a conclusion much more quickly (or did it? I'm reminded of Kellhus contemplating the twig at the beginning of TDTCB), and without the burden of being a self-proclaimed messiah.

In the Bakkerverse, the ultimate standard for "morality" (to me it's not really morality so much as the top-most hierarchical figure) is determined by an oblivious, cruelly exacting entity we can call the Zero-Goddess. It can also be thought of, I think, as Mother Earth/Earwa -- but one as viewed from the lens we might expect from this kind of fantasy world. I am almost tempted to call it a "Darwinian Goddess", given Koringhus's assessment of the wilderness into which he plunges.

I feel strongly that all of this ties into the standard Biblical notion of a Tree of Knowledge. There is no damnation without sentient beings -- at least not sentient beings on Earwa -- which is a sort of Garden of Eden, corrupted first by the Nonmen/Men (not sure which), and then even more so by the Inchoroi.

There's an important contrast between the oblivion of the No-God and the oblivion of the Zero-Goddess. The No-God is an anthropomorphization of nothingness -- which means it's not actually "nothing". True nothingness is, well, nothing. It cannot possess any other attributes, else it becomes something. And the No-God possesses many attributes.

The Zero-Goddess, on the other hand, has no attributes until other sentient beings exist to apply them. To a garden-world of non-sentient plants and animals, there's nothing to damn to because there is no one. That last bit is important -- no one.

What Koringhus realizes is the maddening simplicity of it all. Most sentient beings are damned because they deny the interval between themselves and other things -- even their children.

This is really, I think, the key to it all, and the reason we have Koringhus and his son as an example in the first place. Both denied the interval between each other  -- which is a way of saying that, unlike "proper" Dunyain, they could not deny the familial connection they shared, but on a larger scale it explains the metaphysical notion of how the Absolute and Oblivion can be one and the same. By having a notion of "Self", sentient beings unwittingly acknowledge the interval between themselves.

(side note: I suspect this also why the Psukhe has no mark; its practitioners are semi-enlightened, denying the interval between themselves and nature, and thus their "sorcery" is not an aberration of reality, but a fact of it).

I'll have to add more later, likely when I've had the chance to re-read the book in full, since anything else I could theorize on would feel very shaky. I do think some riff on this concept is at play, though. It simply fits too well with the idea that "the darkness that comes before" is the key to salvation -- that is, never arising from that darkness to begin with. It also appropriately makes the audience rethink their stance on too-easily hated foes like Sranc and Skin-Spies, especially the latter.

Walter

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« Reply #2 on: June 27, 2016, 06:47:18 pm »
I feel as though Koringhus's suicide was a reaction to his understanding.

He is the last of the Dunyain.  The final Survivor of the halls.  Worthiest of a worthy line.  He matches gazes with a pregnant woman.  She is nothing.  He can see ten feet through her, and she's barely three feet deep.  He will make her love him, possess her and wring from her everything of worth.  And then...she comes before him.  Despite her total lack of training.  Despite the fact that thousands of years of atrocity didn't go into refining her, despite the fact that she doesn't deny every emotion, see everyone else as component urges...she effortlessly sounds his waters.  She states his thoughts without compunction or hesitation, even as he has them, EVEN AS HE SEES HER DO IT.  He is trumped on a level he doesn't even compete on.

The Dunyain are not only gone, they were stupid.  Grasp the absolute through knowledge? HA!  All they ever had to do was nothing.  But they sought relentlessly, damned themselves, warped their women into animals, their men into monsters...and FOR NOTHING.  Mimara transcends them without effort.

They sought to become the absolute, but never imagined that they might find the job taken.  So Koringhus, the last of the Dunyain, comes up against the Zero God.  Perfectly optimized search algorithm vs. just picking the right one first, every time.  His efforts are futile, and worse, his LIFE WAS ALWAYS leading to this.  What come after CAN determine what comes before.  He survived those halls, for nothing.  He has lied to his son every day of his life, for nothing.

He rationalizes killing himself as protecting them from his madness, as joining the absolute in death, as whatever you like.  I think he killed himself because he despaired.

MSJ

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« Reply #3 on: June 28, 2016, 12:22:34 am »
I think you've got the gist of it Walter, that's how I read it also. To me, it doesn't seem if he achieved God-Hood or anything. After all, as you so eloquently put it, the Zero-God is already there before anyway. Great post!
« Last Edit: June 28, 2016, 12:33:13 am by MSJ »
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

Triskele

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« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2016, 03:45:34 am »
What did Mimara do with Koringhus?  How did she do it?

Walter

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« Reply #5 on: June 28, 2016, 08:17:11 pm »
She looked upon him with the Judging eye.  In the same way that she could see Galian's entire life story she was able to entirely comprehend Koringus.  The Judging Eye knows the truth of him entire and in real time, rather than the Dunyain technique of seeing people as a series of competing fractions.

It's the same thing that Kellhus is mimicing when he is seducing Esmenet/the Holy War, and he says peoples thoughts as they say them.  They have an impression that they look out his eyes.  That everyone is the same person.  The Judging Eye is actually capable of that.

Triskele

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« Reply #6 on: July 01, 2016, 03:38:38 am »
Ah, and it must also the full realization of just how much the Dunyain were ignorant of.

Who is the "warrior's hand" that removes the gag from Serwa's mouth?  Is there a chance that it's Oinaral? 

The way the scene is written it seems very unlikely that it's Oirunas.  He's too busy murdering the Vile.  Could it be Sorweel or Moe?  Possible, but I don't take it that way.  So who the Hell else could it have been?  I'm not open to the possibility that Oinaral survived and followed and is now going to be his Father's book while they take the fight to the Vile.  Perhaps there was a clue in Soreel noticing that Oinaral held on to his sword when Oirunas swatted him? 

locke

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« Reply #7 on: July 01, 2016, 06:35:26 pm »
Ah, and it must also the full realization of just how much the Dunyain were ignorant of.

Who is the "warrior's hand" that removes the gag from Serwa's mouth?  Is there a chance that it's Oinaral? 

The way the scene is written it seems very unlikely that it's Oirunas.  He's too busy murdering the Vile.  Could it be Sorweel or Moe?  Possible, but I don't take it that way.  So who the Hell else could it have been?  I'm not open to the possibility that Oinaral survived and followed and is now going to be his Father's book while they take the fight to the Vile.  Perhaps there was a clue in Soreel noticing that Oinaral held on to his sword when Oirunas swatted him? 

Oirunas' swords' magical light was extinguished. I got the impression that it's light died when the last born died. that's what impression sorweel's black cauldron head took from the light of the sword going out.

pretty sure it is sorweel who removes serwa's gag.