From: Rich Puchalsky Subject: Re: The Bridge: spoil-o-thon Date: Saturday, April 28, 2001 10:58 PM Sixth post Metaphormosis: Four (in two posts, 2 of 2) After hearing Orr's dreams, Dr. Joyce says they're ready for the next stage of treatment, hypnosis. Dream analysis won't get them closer, according to the doctor, because if you regard the human mind as a castle, then all that they've been doing for the last few sessions is going on a tour of the curtain wall. Orr is really uneasy about hypnosis and puts it off. Orr goes on a walk and meets Abberlaine Arrol. They flirt and go on a fast rickshaw ride. Suddenly, their rickshaw crashes; Orr gets hit on the head and goes unconcious. He's had another crash on the bridge, even in his internal world. When he wakes, he hears aircraft engines. It seem importent to him to hear which direction they are flying in, but he can't. Why is the direction important? Well, in the last flyby the signalling airplanes flew from the direction of the Kingdom to the direction of the City. Assuming that the Kingdom is the Kingdom of Heaven, i.e. death, and the City is the City of Man, life, that means that the narrator is getting better. Probably what happened this time is that he had a sudden medical problem that knocked him out, or perhaps an operation, and now he's trying to sense whether he's getting better or slipping away. That interpretation is supported a bit later in the scene; Arrol is kneeling next to Orr, and his internal monologue goes "I thought there were other people crowded around me, but there are none, just her." The shock has caused him to momentarily sense the medical personnel crowded around his bed. Arrol promises to get back in touch with him, he lends her a handkerchief for her bleeding nose, and she leaves. In the last scene, he returns home to find that the hat that the engineer threw up in has been cleaned and returned, good as new. He throws it off the balcony. If anyone can figure out some symbolism inherent in him lending out one piece of clothing and getting another returned, feel free. Maybe him throwing away the hat means that he's going to approach the Bridge as less of an intellectual experience? The bartender at a place where he stays after the accident says about Arrol; "God must have sneezed when he blew the life into that one." Since the narrator is effectively God in this place -- he created Abberlaine Arrol, anyway -- that clearly has something to do with him lending her the handkerchief.