Chasing ... Cutting

[jbor]

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>From: Mark Wright AIA <mwaia at yahoo.com>

snip
> I don't think we are given good reason to believe Pirate's Condition is
> under such iron control, however.  In which case the source(s) of the
> imagery might be less well focused and less useful to the SOE. If
> Pirate's gift is uncontrolled (but useful to Them withal) and a sort of
> broad-band retrieval of dream-imagery from the most stressed
> populations is plausible, then the material could indeed be sifting
> through to him from the Jews though I see no *specific* cues.  But this
> dry little dusting of horrors would surely not be enough to "manage"
> the experience  or even the daydreams of anyone in a Ghetto or on a
> train or dying in an extermination camp or under the Mountain at Dora.
>
snip

Interesting thoughts. Your points about Pirate's potential conscious
knowledge of what the state of play was in the Occupied Territories are well
taken, and I have noted the *Metropolis* feel to the scene as well, and then
there is also H.G Wells' 'The Sleeper Awakes'. But I have had another
thought that, if it *is* aboard one of the death camp trains, it is perhaps
a single scream which pierces Pirate's dream rather than the collective
scream of that whole trainload/generation of victims. Through the surreal
lens of his dream Pirate (and we) see what he is seeing, feel what he is
feeling, hear what he is hearing, imagine what he is imagining, up to the
very moment of realisation. I think that it is important to the narrative
that Pirate's psychic gift is one of interception rather than empathy, and
so, while not "saved", this one poor soul is at least unburdened of that
moment of terror.

But I still have other questions. How likely is it that the Jewish victims
would think they were being "evacuated" by the Nazis at this late stage? Is
the suggestion that they are being taken from one internment camp to
another, in which case the initial nomination of them as "evacuees" would
seem apt? Or was it the case that sometimes the victims were simply
civilians who were duped into voluntarily boarding these trains in order to
flee to what they believed to be safe haven? -- I had thought that they were
arrested before being transported, but I do have a recollection that this
might not have always been the case? Again, the timing of this opening scene
is crucial to the logic of this reading. We are a few years into the 'Final
Solution' by now, aren't we? ... Is that "very old and dark hotel" described
in shadowy detail anything like one of the death chambers?

We don't get any insight into a Jewish perspective at any other point in the
novel: how accurate a portrayal of such a perspective would this be, if it
indeed is?

best