SLSL "The Small Rain" Lardass or Deadass?

[jbor]

on 30/11/02 7:01 AM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:

> Is Lardass dead,  just trying to act that way, or unable not to act that
> way? He mainly withholds reaction on the first encounter with corpses.
> Others notice he is not himself (so to speak).  He says it is his
> stomach. The reader is tipped off that he is somehow affected because
> "after breakfast he makes one of those spur of the moment decisions
> which it is always fun to speculate upon afterwards." He voluntarily
> (not under orders) spends a long day out on the tug pulling in the
> dead.  This is a guy who avoids work details like the plague. Still no
> emotion shown. He returns to his quarters and it is time for his date.
> He denies any excitement  at the prospect. Calls his mental state sheer
> momentum. Is seemingly almost indifferent to Buttercup.  Oddly she is
> aroused (it sez) by what we can only see as a dead lump. It would help
> to know what she sees that we can't. Is Lardass so overwhelmed he can
> only present a numbed exterior?
> 
> A little baffled.
> 
> P.
> 
> 

I think it's the fact that he spontaneously gets onto the tug and then
spends the day working to retrieve the corpses which gives the clue about
his reinvigoration. It's an experience which he can't put into words, and
which he doesn't let on to anyone else, but he does experience it. (46-7)

best