A Soul In Ev'ry Stone

[Tom Stanton]

At 01:30 AM 4/5/97 GMT, Mike Weaver wrote:
>>"There is a hand to turn the time,
	There may be a god running things
>>Though thy glass today be run,
	But you're time is up now
>>Till the light that hath brought the Towers low
	The world will continue to be destroyed
>>Find the last poor Pret'rite one...
	Until we all realize we are one
>>Till the Riders sleep by ev'ry road,
	The 4 horsemen are everywhere
>>All through our crippl'd Zone,
	Our Zone no longer operates by Their rules
>>With a face on ev'ry mountainside,
	As a result, mountains reveal themselves
>>And a soul in ev'ry stone...
	And we realize everything is alive
>>Now everybody- ">

>While liking the interpretations suggested on this thread I notice that the
>last line of the book has been ignored by the respondents...

> It may be interpreted as an invitation to join in the (unwritten) chorus of 
> William Slothrop's song or there may, IMO most likely, be a liitle more
to it than
>that.  (The simple explanation  begs the question of what that chorus
might be)

I'm just old enough to remember sing alongs in theaters,
with a bouncing ball hopping or pausing gently on each word (my
dad had taken me to a cartoon, don't remember the song). Usually 
the first chorus was sung and then the character would call out 
"Now everybody sing" and you repeated the first chorus. Lots of
fun, usually.

>The last line leads us back out into the world we
>the readers inhabit and may be  a challenge to each of us to get up off our
>endless bums and join the resistance

What I love about the TRP ending is the song for this sing-along 
is a hymn you would sing in church, & the truncated but jolly 
"Now everybody-" that follows leaves the action open. Sing? Pray? 
Die? Dunno what call to action there is here...

>Maybe the poles of this list are ( i.) those of us for whom TP's writings
>are, primarily, a literary incandescence and (ii) those of us for whom they
>are a cultural/political one.  

Poles? Here? Come, come, my good man. Seriously, I can't ever separate
the literary from the cultural/political themes. That's why it's such a great
book. By way of example, I see "Ulysses" as being 90% literary tour de force
with a smattering of social commentary, whereas "1984" is a highly charged
political tract presented as a literary work. GR succeeds by expertly
balalncing
both extremes.