V-2 - Chapter 9 - Sarah's Story & the Story of Isaac

[Michael Bailey]

Robin Landseadel wrote:

>>
> Sarah is introduced to Foppl in this scene. I guess it's Foppl that doing
> the fucker/fuckee twist, but I'm not really sure, seeing as he refers to
> himself as "Himself," further confusing the narrator's voice with Stencil's.


yes, true, he's recounting or confessing this to Eigenvalue.
And I suppose it's not necessary to stress the idea that according to
his old roommate, the author was a frequent confessor himself, but
it's the kind of thing I like to do...
the idea that some of the urgent propulsion of Stencil's narrative,
or, heck, of V. itself, comes from the form of expression where one's
soul is at stake

Without unduly taxing my interpretive capacities, maybe I can attach
some more significance to Sarah's name: as the progenitor of the line
from which Rachel and Esther are later to spring, her situation is
more primitively oppressed than theirs
- Andrea Dworkin's thesis being the conceptual line (rather than
progenitive) connecting them?

They are hauling stones by hand and plopping them in the water to make
this thing!  the old scars bearing testimony to how much coercion has
been required, and even still she doesn't snap to, the way he'd like

>                She looked at the chit, then at him. Clouds moved
>        across those eyes; whether reflected or transmitted he'd
>        never know. Brine slapped at their feet, carrion birds wheeled
>        in the sky. The breakwater stretched behind them back to
>        land and safety; but it could take only a word; any, the most
>        inconsequential, to implant in each of them the perverse
>        notion that their own path lay the other way, on the invisible
>        mole not yet built; as if the sea were pavement for them, as
>        for our Redeemer.
>

another harsh Line created by man, patriarchy and slavery!  Perhaps
the worst of the lot!  and even in Foppl himself, the Christ who I'd
argue isn't dismissed at all in V. exists in any potential verbal
encounter to draw them away from their endeavor - and yet, what
they've been building makes following that prompting a major hazard, a
turning away like Roger and Jessica's from the harsh War-mother
symbolized in V. by the various incarnations of V.?