Atdtda35: No need for euphemism, 1000-1002 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

On 1000 the narrative indicates ('Scarsdale well into what by now was his
customary stem-winder') that some at least will have heard it all before:
hence 'the expected arm gesture'. The speech is a performance, a rehearsal
of agreement; however, on 1001 it ends with Vibe betraying the distance
between him and Foley Walker. Vibe speaks generally of those 'whose future
... was always to toil for us' and then avoids eye-contact with Walker. The
latter ('attentive back in the shadows') might now be aligned with the
'observer' of the opening paragraph on 1000, implicitly an outsider called
upon to interpret what he sees, an outsider with whom the reader might be
positioned.

Vibe's speech constructs the general while the narrative disrupts that
overview with the writing of a less predictable agency. Cf other examples of
that kind of political statement, elsewhere a history lesson, as a speech
delivered by a character: the Cohen (230-231), Ratty (808-809 and 937-938)
and Danilo (828).

On 1001 Vibe anticipates, and celebrates, victory ('who will care that once
...' etc) while the narrative points out that, these days, he 'seldom'
refers to Walker, who has been cast aside, as obsolete as 'jabbering Union
scum, the frozen corpses whose names, false in any case, have gone forever
unrecorded'. This might well be an allusion to the part played by Walker in
Vibe's earlier life: cf the section's final paragraph: 'On battlefields
after the engagement ...' etc (1002).

Vibe thinks of himself as 'a man of practice, not theory ...' etc as he goes
to confront the 'anticapitalist monster' (1001). In the event he will be
confronted by another kind of monster, 'a being much taller than he was ...'
etc. Yet he is 'bemused at his own lack of terror' (1002); and the
'apparition' is replaced by Foley Walker, who '[comes] blinking in, awakened
by something only he heard'. The section then closes with anticipation of
Walker's enlightenment: 'Didn't take him long, however ...' etc.