MDMD: On dreams

[jbor]

on 9/22/01 7:01 AM, Murthy Yenamandra at yenamand at cs.umn.edu wrote:

>> [...] At least in
>> the beginning, the reverend's story has none of the subjects mentioned; but a
>> hanging, wow, that is
>> great stuff.  
> 
> This got me thinking - the revd says, "It begins with a Hanging." But
> really it doesn't, except in the "Had I been..." construction. So, is it
> just something said to hold the kids' interest? Or are we being set up
> with alternate realities where in one, the revd was hanged and
> resurrected into an entirely new Knowledge of the terms of being (for
> the reader's benefit) and in the other, incarcerated and exiled?
> 
> Just wondering aloud.

I think Wicks is referring to the first meeting between M & D, and that
perhaps Dixon had been caught up in a procession to or from one of these
hangings in London without realising it (p. 14), which leads on naturally to
Mason's admission about his regular attendance at the "Friday Hangings" at
Tyburn, and his insistence that Dixon must accompany him thereto. (p. 15) I
think that when Wicks says "it begins with a Hanging" he is prefiguring the
"story" he is about to relate for the children's amusement. The "Had I been
... " comments in Ch 1 aren't part of the "story" as such, they serve as
rhetorical embellishment to the storyteller's autobiography, directed as
much at 'Brae's wry remark about how this morning he'd "look'd so much
younger" as to the twins' innocent bloodlust.

Thus the "Hanging" itself is well offstage, and while it does perhaps begin
the story it doesn't do so in a way which could be considered offensive by
those who might be monitoring the Rev.d's tale-telling.

best