TMOP Chapter 9 - Nechaev

[Bekah]

Yes,   wrestling came to my mind, too.   As in Jacob wrestling with  
the angel.  Jacob defrauded his brother,  Esau and felt profoundly  
guilty and afraid.   An angel came to him (Esau perhaps) and Jacob  
grabbed him,  would not let him go, even when Jacob was badly  
wounded,  until he was given a blessing.   Jacob recounted that he  
had seen the face of God.

0nly in this case, D. is fighting Pavel - He won't let Pavel go until  
Pavel (or someone/something) blesses him.   (I won't go on due to  
spoilers and besides I don't think this is a very good analogy but I  
just kept thinking of a wounded D. wrestling with an angel until he  
got a blessing.

Bekah


On Oct 22, 2008, at 6:22 AM, David Morris wrote:

> TMOP Chapter 9 - Nechaev
>
> In the apartment before the tall woman's identity is discovered, D.
> reasons with the Finn and warns her that her soul is in peril should
> she follow through with murdering someone from the Vengeance List.
> Then, after these words, "I have a duty toward my son that I cannot
> evade," a "heavy silence" befalls him.  His part in this dialogue
> halts, and then:
>
> "From far away comes a scream that must be his own.   _There will be a
> gnashing of teeth_ - the words flash before him, then there is an end.
>
> This Biblical quote is from Matthew 13: 49-50 in which after speaking
> hidden wisdom in parables to the multitudes, the parable of the wheat
> and the tares,  later in private explains their meaning.  It is
> meaningful that D. refers to the explanation of a parable because D is
> constantly inventing and wrestling with metaphor, and a parable is
> described as an extended metaphor.
>
> "So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth,
> and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the
> furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
>
> It unclear to whom this scream is aimed, the People's Vengeance or D
> himself in failing the "duty he cannot evade."
>
> These voices D hears, which seem to be coming from within himself, are
> a part of a pattern in which all of D's words seem to "come" to him
> without his volition.  Somewhere in the book he says he "trusts" this
> flow of words emanating from him, and lets them flow without resisting
> any of them.  He sees them as a source of truth.  In this regard D is
> a kind of shaman/mystic who receives revelations via possession.
>
> More later…
>