[TGO Spoilers] Best bits of the Great Ordeal.

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Madness

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« Reply #30 on: August 04, 2016, 04:38:25 pm »
But doesn't Kellhus know, or at least suspect that Sorweel is an agent? I thought that was part of why he was sent away, or at least that's what I thought.

I just think Sorweel has to still be an agent of Yatwer's, she's been a major player for the 3 books now, it would be a bit anti-climactic for Yatwer to have been beaten so casually. Ajokli doesn't even seem to care all that much, just doing it for the lols. Psatma was no real challenge to defeat.

I can't guess at what Kellhus might know, though I've previously maintained that Kellhus would figure out the discrepancy pretty quick between what Sorweel is saying and what Kellhus is seeing and the possible whys and wherefores.

I also don't think Yatwer is beaten or that she's necessarily the only God who has a hand in the events unfolding before us, just the only one who we're explicitly privy to.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2016, 04:43:25 pm by Madness »
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mrganondorf

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« Reply #31 on: March 08, 2017, 04:52:15 pm »
I REALLY LIKED THIS:

I'm not a mom, but this really got to me as a parent--

TGO P. 34

"Nothing could be so absent--so missing--as a lost child.  They dwell so close, more here than here, ducking fingers that would tickle, convulsing with laughter, gazing with thoughtless adoration, lazing on your knees, or your hip, or in the crook of your arm, their body always there, always waiting to be clasped and hoisted, pressed against the bosom they took as their throne.  Let the Inchausti scowl! Let men disapprove!  What did they know of motherhood, the mad miracle of finding your interior drawn from you, clinging and bawling and giggling and learning everything there was to learn anew?"

Also this from p. 35

"Something ruthless dwells within every mother, a capacity born of plague and tribulation and children buried.  She was impervious; the hard realities of the World merely broke their nails for clawing.  She turned away, strode back into the shadowy palace with a kind of weary resignation--as though she played at something that had cracked her patience long before.  She had not so much abandoned hope as shouldered it aside."

mrganondorf

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« Reply #32 on: May 02, 2017, 03:00:40 pm »
I just love these parallel constructions—Bakker’s so good at them and keeps them going in TUC

Knowing precludes being

Intro quote from chapter 14:

“To be a Man is to take the frame of a Man as firmament, to be immovable unto oneself.  And to know Man as Man is to be blind to this common frame, to be without knowing.  Thus is knowing the corruption ob being.  And so to learn what it is to be a Man is to cease to be a Man.”

When Oinaral explains to Sorweel about how few Intact remain:

P. 250 “This is how you know that you stand before the lease of my Race…The fact that I stand lucid and Intact before you.”

P. 254-5 “The Aged coddle me…make grand gesture of all the strife I am spared.  At leas some ember of the, they proclaim shall glow long into the black.  But for all their fatuous celebration, I am despised just the same.  Thus the bitter irony of my curse, Son of Harweel.  I am the greatest shame my Kinning has known, a reclusive Scribe among grasping Heroes, and yet only I recall the distinction between honour and corruption…Only I can remember what shame is!”

Sorweel pondering the descent, p. 304:

“Judgment ever belongs to the greater.  He saw himself the way the Injori Ishroi saw Men in days of ancient old, as strutting bests, by turns devious and absurd, rotting even as they lived, shouting boasts from atop their barrow-graves.  Weed or flower, it did not matter, for their time was too short to count anything but the dregs of glory.  Henceforth, his would always be a miscreat life.  And so the last of the boy left to the Son of Harweel died in the Weeping Mountain.”

And to go back to the chapter 14 quote—this is the chapter where Koringhus discovers the ‘truth’ of what it is to be Dunyain and then self-destructs.

And, wow TAE is the most fucked up perversion of a coming of age story.  Poor Sorweel.

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gtownwr

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« Reply #33 on: May 22, 2017, 09:06:43 pm »
I loved the inside looks we got into Serwa's point of view.  Seeing a POV of a half dunyain other than Kelmomas was pretty awesome.  And how she affects the Non-Men so violently while being a prisoner.  Very typical Dunyain.  Ishterebinth was awesome and I actually like the anticlimactic death of opponents (in moderation), so I thought it was pretty cool that Fanayal just got murdered in a few sentences after all the build up he got.  And that Meppa wasn't even a challenge to Khellus.  I think those things invert expectations in a good way and get away from the clichéd.

TaoHorror

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« Reply #34 on: May 22, 2017, 10:32:09 pm »
But doesn't Kellhus know, or at least suspect that Sorweel is an agent? I thought that was part of why he was sent away, or at least that's what I thought.

I just think Sorweel has to still be an agent of Yatwer's, she's been a major player for the 3 books now, it would be a bit anti-climactic for Yatwer to have been beaten so casually. Ajokli doesn't even seem to care all that much, just doing it for the lols. Psatma was no real challenge to defeat.

I can't guess at what Kellhus might know, though I've previously maintained that Kellhus would figure out the discrepancy pretty quick between what Sorweel is saying and what Kellhus is seeing and the possible whys and wherefores.

I also don't think Yatwer is beaten or that she's necessarily the only God who has a hand in the events unfolding before us, just the only one who we're explicitly privy to.

I think Kellhus knew Sorwell was a spy/agent/assassin/traitor/non-believer/whatever ... he sent Sorwell to Ishterebinth to convert him to being a double-agent, among other reasons. It was a chance for Sorwell to gain first hand accounts of the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars and the fact he was planning on betraying/assassinating Kellhus would keep him alive as well.
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« Reply #35 on: May 23, 2017, 10:53:53 am »
I think Kellhus knew Sorwell was a spy/agent/assassin/traitor/non-believer/whatever ... he sent Sorwell to Ishterebinth to convert him to being a double-agent, among other reasons. It was a chance for Sorwell to gain first hand accounts of the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars and the fact he was planning on betraying/assassinating Kellhus would keep him alive as well.

He probably didn't know exactly what was up with Sorweel, but he probably realized something was amiss with how he was acting.  Offering him up in the Niom keeps his "piece on the board" but outside anywhere to really interfere with Kellhus, which are two things he is very apt to do (a la Akka, post PoN).
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TaoHorror

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« Reply #36 on: May 23, 2017, 12:34:12 pm »
Yeah, nice view on that - see some of Gandolf's wisdom at play there - with a bit of Kell spin, don't be so quick to kill, never know what "use" is left for the subject. Hard to use people when they are dead.
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