Piratical Fantasies

[jporter]

I had said:
.
.
>Not that it would be surprising if Pirate were a racist, or anti-semitic
>for that matter, but is that a correct reading of the above?"

And Don clarified:

>I think it is generally correct, but only in the popcult, schoolboy fantasy
>literature that is evoked here.  Kipling's poem, "Fuzzy-Wuzzie," for example
>is in the  persona of his prototypical "Tommy Atkins" soldier, who finally
>admires (somewhat condescendingly) his opponent: "Here's to you, Fuzzy Wuzzy!"
>But this also links in Pirate's imagination with George Stevens' film of
>GUNGA DIN, loosely based on the Kipling poem (again condescending to the
>native:
>"You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din").
>
>The problem is that Pirate's fantasy doesn't connect with Hollywood happiness
>("no Cary Grant larking in and out slipping elephant medicine in the punchbowls
>out there"--which is indeed a scene from the film).
>
>Once Pirate begins to be exploited by The Firm, he begins to discover how it
>is to be used and what it is to be Other.  (Watch the transformation of Leni
>Pokler for what I think may be a similar point.)

Sounds sound to me. But my point again: the feeling I get that Pirate is
capable of guilt (if not wallowing in it), for *things he has done* (or not
done? They've got 'im comin and goin') in the name of empire, country, king
(we'll leave God out of it for the moment). Guilty, even though he knows he
is no more evil then anyone else caught up in it. It's conditioned. Like
Pudding, it can be used to control him, because on some level he wants to
be controlled. He craves the clarity and reality that, under the
circumstances, only humiliation can bring. He may hate Them, if They really
do exist, but, if They weren't quite as real as They seem, he might just as
well, for his own needs, coax Them into existence out of thin air, much
like his fantasized personal A4.

P.13, Bantam:

"Well, hrrump, heh, heh, here comes Pirate's Condition creeping up over him
again, when he's least expecting it as usual- might as well mention here
that much of what the dossiers call Pirate Prentice is a strange talent for
well..."


Pirate, when he's not dreaming of oblivion, seems to crave self-definition
(two sides of the same coin?) as much as the next fellow. How much he has
become dependent on the Firm for his own identity- how much of a "self" he,
or any of the other characters have, beyond their usefulness to the Firm,
is an open question. But humiliation/exploitation seems, somehow, to've
become a mechanism for possible redemption, or at least, the coalescence of
an independent, if neurotic, identity. It's symbiotic...twisted, but
symbiotic.

Leni Pokler may also gain insight through exploitation...but insight into what?

Jody