ATDTDA (5): Mythmaking, 149-155 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

The rest of the chapter deals with the consequences of what (whatever) has
happened. The inquiry has carefully established some kind of motivation for
"the Figure" ("vengeance", "retribution", 151); and we are told it "burn[ed]
its way out of its enclosure" (152); yet we are given little by way of
description of its actions subsequently. What we are given, in the text, is
an account of what others did in reaction. It has been said a few times that
this part of the novel reads like a horror movie; and one can easily see a
reference to King Kong. However, what I find myself thinking of, above all,
is the War of the Worlds broadcast from 1938 (based of course on the HG
Wells novel, first published in the 1890s). This broadcast is notorious for
the mass hysteria that it, allegedly, caused: the focus is on what people
thought, rather than what actually did or did not happen. For example,
consider the ambiguity of the following sentence: "All attempts to
counter-attack or even to avoid the Figure would be defeated". Is this a
factual statement?

This impression gains weight in the reference, further down the page, to the
Mayor's disappearance: "Fled, dead, not right in the head, the theories
proliferated in his absence". Rumour and speculation; the need to tell a
story that makes some kind of sense. And then: "So the city became the
material expression of a particular loss of innocence ... its inhabitants
became, and have remained, an embittered and amnesiac race ... unable to
summon the face of their violator" (153).

Hunter's reappearance at the end of the chapter reminds us that he was a
stowaway on the Malus (and therefore his arrival mimics, kind of, the
arrival of the creature). This passage recalls Lew's experiences in Chicago:
on each occasion the text refers to "the familiar grid pattern of the rest
of town" (38) and "the grid of numbered streets" (154). The "grid" in
question is that observable on a map, which means it offers an overview (eg,
as from the Inconvenience--see the reference to "[t]he sombre brown
landscape of north Canada" that opens the current chapter, 149). Hunter is
"stricken into remembering a nightmare too ancient to be his alone" (154);
so he too is caught up in the collective vision described earlier. His
"nightmare" brings him to the "meeting in progress" (155) and subsequent
departure aboard the "curious mass conveyance". Dream discourse defies
logic: "Occasionally, through the windows, inexplicably ..." etc.