NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2

[Don Corathers]

Actually we do know the name of Sam Shade's wife (and John's mother). It's
Caroline (p 100, the starting point for Kinbote's riff on surnames). Sam
died of a "bad heart," Caroline of cancer of the pancreas (l. 77, 78).
You're right, as far as I can tell, that we're never told when Shade's
mother died.

Relative to that: a few days ago we were discussing l. 71 "I was an infant
when my parents died." Second def of "infant" in MW10 is "a person who is
not of full age : minor," which means (def 1) "a person who has not attained
majority," which means (def 2a) "the age at which full civil rights are
accorded." This gives Caroline a lot more time, until her son turned 18 or
21, to shuffle off this mortal coil. Why Shade would use this kind of
lawyerly construction of the meaning of "infant" might bear some looking at,
and the absence of any information about his mother's death is kind of the
dog that didn't bark, isn't it? It is possible that Aunt Maud took over his
upbringing while Caroline Shade was still alive, but somehow indisposed. It
is possible, even--I'm just sayin'--that the wench who forced Shade "with
his pure tongue her thirst to quench" was his widowed mother. Keith, you
want a piece of this?

I'm with Jasper on the evanescence of the Shakespeare refs. It's just that
there's such a rich vein of them around the palace it seemed possible they
might connect somewhere else.

Don



----- Original Message -----
From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at yahoo.com>
To: "Don Corathers" <gumbo at fuse.net>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2


>
> --- Don Corathers <gumbo at fuse.net> wrote:
> > Where are all of the Hamlet references headed? They point to Botkin, and
> > they prepare us for Kinbote's contemplation of suicide. Is there a
larger
> > significance than we've seen on the ground in Zembla? If Fleur =
Ophelia,
> > does her mother = Polonius? Where's Claudius? Or is it just Hamlet as
> > comedy, the joke being that Zembla, unlike Elsinore, can't even mount a
> > proper palace intrigue? The two hapless Danish tourists as R&G, now
that's
> > funny.
>
> I think the Hamlet references point to the suspicious early death of Sam
Shade
> and that lack of any specifics about the death of John Shades' mother (did
she
> really die?).  If you follow the chronology you'll see that:
>
> 1. Both John and Charles lost their fathers at the age of four.
> 2. Sam was 46 of 47 when John was born.  We don't know how he died (except
the
> poem's info).
> 3. Alfin was 42 when Charles was born.  He died in a sports-plane crash.
> 4. We have no specifics about when Sam's wife died (except the scant bit
in the
> poem), nor even her name.
> 5. Queen Blenda died of a "bood disease" when Charles was 21.
> 6. Aunt Maude and the "oldest Shadow" (the probable murderer of Iris Acht)
were
> both born in 1869.  Maude dies in 1950 at age 81.
> 7. Hazel dies in 1957, age 23.
>
> I don't know where this leads...
>
> David Morris
>
>
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