And Let's not Forget...

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

> Poor ole Timmy Robbins swimming through 2 miles or so of sewage pipe to 
> get outside the prison in SR...
> 
> Richard Romeo

Come on, now - it was only 500 yards! Seriously though, this is a 
good point of comparison. Notice the difference between the treatment 
of sewage here, where it remains just that, stinking stuff so vile 
that it makes Tim's escape even more heroic, not affecting him in the 
least (Morgan sez something like "the man who swam through an ocean 
of shit and came out clean"). Whereas in GR that very revulsion is a 
significant pointer to something in us, the shit is something we have to 
swim in, something that we _have to_ let affect us (to metaphorize 
wildly) because the sewer is where hidden truths hide. The toilet is the 
locus of control, a place where daily transactions take place cementing 
society, the middle class, and especially the white middle class, for 
whom a visit to the toilet means "transacting ... something vaguely 
religious" (GR, 66).

[Obligatory quote follows]
"Shit, now, is the color white folks are afraid of. Shit is the presence of 
death, not some abstract-arty character with a scythe but the stiff and 
rotting corpse itself inside the whiteman's warm and private own asshole, 
which is getting pretty intimate. That's what that white toilet's for. You 
see many brown toilets? Nope, toilet's the color of gravestones..." (688).

Don't you just wish Morgan Freeman had said that?
hg
hag at iafrica.com