GRGR(11): More on Webley

[Mike Crowley]

Okay, I'm still thinking about his speech, so here it is:

"I would set you free, if I knew how.  But it isn't free out here.  All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least fee of all.  I can't even give you hope that it will be different someday--that They'll come out, and forget death, and lose Their technology's elaborate terror, and stop using every other form of life without mercy to keepwhat haunts men down to a tolerable level--and be like you instead, simply here, simply alive...." (230)

Sentiments like the final ones, being "simply here, simply alive," strike me as a bit New Age-y these days, even a bit empty.  Is this an acceptable alternative to the death-obsessed culture of Their technology or to the Transcendence-through-annihilation we see from Blicero?  The repetition of "simply" reminds me that this Silvernail's sentimentality (what's a better word to describe his attitude here?) is a bit simple-minded.  He can't give us the hope that someday They'll as at one with the world as rats in cages? Geez, is that what passes for optimism in this world?  

    Silvernail starts his daydreaming pretty pessimistically, seeing himself and the other lab workers as the subjects of experiments run by some unseen observers above and ends by expressing a desire for the state of mind of the rats he helps perform experiments on.  Ignorance is freedom? 

    I guess at least one character eventually achieves that state of being "simply here, simply alive"; whether we view it as a kind of transcendence or annihilation is another question.  Does Silvernail eventually find another possible and positive alternative?  He's only mentioned a few more times--the PNotes index lists 79, 113, 229, 230, 274, 533, 535, 620.  He's likely the cameraman who filmed Katje earlier; at the very least he showed Octopus Grigori the film in preparation for setting up Slothrop, so he is seeing firsthand how one man in particular is "being broken and reassembled every day [. . .] to preserve an elite few."

Now how do we move from Webley Silvernail to the Brigadier, from cute dancing mice to shit-eating old men?


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Michael J. Crowley
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10 Park Hall
crowley at arches.uga.edu
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