V--2nd, Prolegomena to an Epilogue

[Mark Kohut]

I think that 'ending' in Chap 16 is pretty damn bleak. 
Benny and just-met "Day of Doom' Brenda running thru
the 'abruptly absolute night' ...toward the edge of Malta,
and the Mediterranean beyond...

Like the kid in The 400 Blows--recently seen again---
caught/trapped at the sea---and frozen on the screen?

Like Ishmael, somehow a survivor on the water?

Like Virginia Woolf walking out into it never to come back alive?

Various degrees of bleakness to the vision here, yes? Reminding me
of the subgenre in mysteries---the locked room murders.


Well whatever, this also occurs to me inspired by TRP himself.
He writes in that intro to the reissue of 1984 of how the epilogue, 
set in the distant future from 1984 offers some kind of hope becuase
for one thing, the grip on language loss, revisionist history was not 
total if the epilogue could be true......................................

So, I suggest that TRP inverted Orwell's form, perhaps, by offering
us a look at how that bleak ending of Chap 16 could (have been) different
And since Mehemet is a time-traveller(!)---shades again of AtD---of changing
that bleak ending in the future..................................