M&D CH 29

[Joseph Tracy]

CH 29

We are with M&D in Philadelphia somewhere near the Shambles. The mass killing of animals always receives commentary from P:
“Cities begin upon the day the Walls of the Shambles go up, to screen away Blood and Blood-letting, Animals’ Cries, Smells and Soil, from Residents already grown fragile before Country Realities. The Better-Off live far as they may, from the concentration of Slaughter. Soon, Country Melancholicks are flocking to Town like Crows, dark’ning the Sun. Dress’d Meats appear in the Market,— Sausages hang against the Sky, forming Lines of Text, cryptick Intestinal Commentary.”  
  From slaughter to wax effigies to a meeting with the the commisiners of M&D’s survey, commisioners who first appear unexpectedly in the back room of a bar with waxen faces and then in daylight “ to greet him with the same, O God in Thy Mercy, the same look…”
  The whole chapter strikes me as black humored foreshadowing ending with Ben Franklin dressed as death holding a scythe designed to channel lightning and some electricity fans heading out of a pub into a lightning storm. 
    We also see that in Philadelphia political affinities and arguments, as in England, South Africa have a strong religious component, boundaries again.
   
    DISCUSSION ?     Commisioning bodies in M&D are powerful agents, but anonymous, mysterious and associated with fear and death. They do little or no speaking in the novel. Thoughts?