From: Rich Puchalsky Subject: Re: The Bridge: spoil-o-thon Date: Thursday, April 26, 2001 10:43 PM Fourth post Metaphormosis: Three This chapter, like the others in Metaphormosis, starts with a dream. The narrator sees an abandoned city, long since destroyed by the desert and the sea. There is a statue of someone the narrator can't remember the name of, he guesses at something like Mock or Mocca. At the shore, a ragged man is whipping the waves with a flail. The man seems to be chained by his ankle, but he says that he's employed to do this, and that once, a great emperor ... he no longer seems to see or hear the narrator, and as the narrator walks away a manacle appears on the narrator's wrist. Orr wakes and finds that he's really dreamed this dream, he didn't just make it up for Dr. Joyce. This dream takes mythological symbolism from two sources: Shelley's poem Ozymandias ("Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!") and the legend of King Canute whipping the waves. They are both stories about the futility of power. In this case, though, the kings and emperors are gone, but their servant remains, still carrying out their futile task. Clearly the narrator feels that he's playing this same role, self-chained to a meaningless effort that he thinks is voluntary. But I don't quite have this one interpreted to my satisfaction. Orr wakes, looks at his TV, and sees the man in the hospital bed being given an injection. Orr never liked injections and winces with "sympathetic" pain which is of course not really sympathetic at all. The telephone is beeping a little faster than before, his heart rate has actually speeded up a bit. Brooke breaks in with a phone call. He asks Orr to visit him at a bar, and bring a hat; Orr arrives and is annoyed by Brooke and a couple of other drunken engineers. But the main purpose of the scene is that he meets the Chief Engineer's daughter, Abberlaine Arrol. If Brooke is the devil assigned to keep the narrator's dream going, Abberlaine is clearly one of the chief temptations he has to offer. Orr has had several scenes in the previous chapters, which I haven't commented on (these posts are long already) in which he worries about his lack of libido; in this sequence, Brooke and the other engineers are going to a brothel, and Orr declines. Abberlaine's purpose within the Bridge fantasy seems to be to let the narrator approach the idea of sex within the Bridge. After all, if this is going to be a wish fulfillment, sex is necessary. But the narrator doesn't have real physical drives at the moment (in reality, his body is deeply wounded) and also, sex is something that often makes you more concious of your physical body and is therefore deeply dangerous to the narrator's avoidance of trauma. Orr and Abberlaine have a talk where they discuss whether it's easy to fool yourself or not, and she alludes to a child's creation of fantasy worlds. Abberlaine's brother throws a pitcher behind him, and it shatters, just as Zakalwe does at the beginning of Use of Weapons. I think Banks had actually written most of UoW at this time. What does Abberlaine Arrol's name mean? Does anyone have a better idea of the UK context? At first "Arrol" reminded me of an amusing scene from Moorcock's _The Runestaff_, where the beast lords of Granbretan have all of their ships named after their ancient gods, "Chirshil, the Howling God; Bjirn Adass, the Singing God, [...] and Aral Vilsn, the Roaring God, the Supreme God ..." It took me a while to realize that Aral Vilsn was Harold Wilson, and that this was a list of British politicians. Anyways, I vaguely remember a place in the UK called Abbey Lane in connection with the Beatles. Anyways, back to the chapter. Orr can't figure out why the engineers wanted him to bring a hat, but one of them throws up into it, and he figures that may be why he wanted it in the first place. Orr's next appointment with his therapist is cancelled. He visits an art gallery where artists keep depicting the Bridge as a damaged human form or human tissue; surely this is striking too close for comfort. Orr goes home, turns on the TV, and waits for a new message, but quickly loses his nerve and turns the TV off when he sees the nurse coming to give another injection.