ATDTDA (15): Squealing is good for you, 420-422 #2

[David Morris]

This is a great digging into the text.  "Appearances" Vs. "In fact"
revolve around the "againstness" of information coming from without
the Commandant's (a very Nazi title) head.  Both the drug habitue and
the nihilistic denier seek refuge against what they seek to avoid from
outside themselves.  So there is little difference between the two.
Both are actively rejecting.  But one does so via pleasure (drugs) and
the other does so via anger/vengeance (nihilism).  One is reminded of
that crazy bus driver in GR, addicted to his ride, knowing it will end
in death, but loving the road there.

That this school is where the Chums choose their own denial of the
world speaks volumes.  This is clearly the return of the repressed.

David Morris

On 8/17/07, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Characterisation here is elusive: "... to appearance the slow and amiable smile of the drug habitué, but in fact an all but nihilistic dismissal of whatever the world might present him" (421). So: "to appearance" (who makes the attempted reading here, Alonzo, anyone who might happen to see him?) is juxtaposed to "in fact" (which of course requires the authority to make such a declaration). One might suppose "the drug habitué" increasingly impervious to "whatever the world might present him"; so the distinction made here involves intent. Hence: "... bodies had begun, actually, to fall, and screams delayed by distance to float at last up from the green fields and through the Commandant's window to accompany his long recitation, punctuated with tuneful quotations on his personal gold-plated IG Mundharfwerke" (422),