SLPAD - 123 - "Low-Lands" - 34

[Michael Bailey]

It may be only a typographical oddity, but there’s no new paragraph marking
the segue from Pig’s tale (Pigtail!) into Flange’s.

I of course want to make much of this.

Flange is a changing man, and in some respects also a changed man. Even
though his dissatisfaction with proto-Yuppieism has made him choose Pig
over Cindy, it’s not so that he can follow Pig into more adventures.

I’d venture to say that Flange has progressed in his thinking beyond the
sort of Manichaean worldview - us rebels vs the Establishment - that Pig
has been acting out.

 He allows Pig to catalyze his discontent, but his choice of a
“three-quarter width innerspring” mattress (though he won’t be using it
long) indicates he retains a connoisseur’s taste. Pig chooses a “pallet
about two inches thick and three feet wide” - even the narrator notes Pig
“would probably never get accustomed to civilian life.”

By refraining from any comment on Pig’s sea story and instead launching
into one from frat life, isn’t he saying something like “pranks & stuff
isn’t unique to seafaring - the sea that I love has room for that, but that
isn’t what I love about it - in fact I can’t even talk about it really so
here’s a story of the nature of the one you were telling, but one where we
bucked authority outrageously from the safety of our social position”?

And attained his own measure of authority thereafter
 - recognized by Pig eventually calling him “Sir” though only in the
context of Flange asking his advice - a last remnant of Flange’s dependence
on Pig as ringleading roisterer.