From: Rich Puchalsky Subject: Re: The Bridge: spoil-o-thon Date: Monday, May 14, 2001 10:03 AM Twenty-fifth post Metamorphosis: Quarternary (part 2 of 3, not 2) This is the last chapter in which the formal structure says that Orr needs to appear. So in this chapter he can indeed appear and wrap up his existence. Orr walks along the railroad track away from the city where he escaped from the Field Marshal. Every night he dreams of the same man and city (i.e. the narrator's real life), he starts to believe that these dreams are the genuine reality, and expects each morning to wake up into a new life, "just a nice clean hospital bed would be a start" -- but he doesn't. He walks onto a battlefield, where he meets a man from one of his dreams, the man who used to be whipping the waves with his flail. Note: this time they don't meet in Orr's dream, but in Orr's reality -- which is still the narrator's dream, but the guy has shifted up one level closer to reality. The man is dressed in rags. Orr thinks "we last met in ... Mocca? (Occam? Something like that)". Mocha is the place where the narrator saw a ruined city by the sea in reality, in Yemen; Mocca was one of the names that Orr guessed at for the scornful (mocking) statue in his dream of the place, now we have a third variation of the name, Occam. The likely association for Occam is Occam's Razor, "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." This is commonly taken to mean, in science, that when you have two theories that make the same predictions, the simplest one is best. Atheists often use it to mean that it is not necessary to postulate the existence of a god in order to explain anything; events can be explained more simply without one. The man is now whipping dead bodies that lie everywhere, not waves. He beats each body exactly 100 times. Orr talks to him; the man says he's not the same person as the man by the sea. He hands Orr a playing card, the three of diamonds, that he says he was told to give to Orr. He doesn't know what it's for, he won't say who gave it to him or why. Orr asks him what happened to all the dead people. The man says that they didn't listen to their dreams. Orr walks off, and wonders if he should have lain down and let the man lash him to death, maybe death is the only way to wake up from this "terrible, enchanted sleep". But that would require faith and he can't risk it. So what does this sequence mean? I'm tempted to write "you've got me" and go on, but pride insists that I at least give it a shot. OK, the original dream was about the futility of power; it combined elements of the Ozymandius poem ("look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair" -- but his works are all crumbled) and the King Canute legend (whipping the waves won't cause the tide to go back). Orr was a phantom in that dream. This time he's real and can really interact with the man. The man himself is a lower-class symbol, dressed in rags and hired to whip away at a meaningless job; he's a diligent workman who doesn't ask questions. Let's see: these people died because they didn't listen to their dreams, and now they've been incorporated into a symbol of the futility of power. I believe that this is a warning from the narrator to himself. He stuck himself into this situation because of power; he wanted power over Andrea, to get her back. But that is futile, and stupid; it really doesn't do him any good to get Andrea back if he's in a coma anyway. Now his dreams are telling him that he really wants to wake up. He can keep whipping away at his dreams indefinitely, or he can leave, wake up, and do something worthwhile. Something like that is my best guess. The three of diamonds? Well, three planes, three men of whom the narrator is the third. No idea why diamonds, except that they are valuable; maybe the narrator is telling himself that he values his life too lightly. I have no idea why Occam's Razor. You've got me. Having written a partial analysis longer than the original scene, it's time to go on. Though actually, Occam's Razor is telling him that all of the people in these dreams, and specifically the man with the whip, are actually himself, which is true. Orr goes on to walk through a desert. He still has the handkerchief, "like a [knight's] favor". He also still has the waiter's jacket, he's still waiting. He falls on a dune, dehydrated. Then he sees the young barbarian come towards him, with the wolf helmet. He looks transparent, insubstantial. He sways, put a hand to his brow, talks to the helmet, walks closer. He doesn't seem to see Orr. He stands "too close to me, too close to my feet, as though his own feet were somehow inside mine. Then he falls, the helmet cries out, he's apparently dying of exposure. But he doesn't fall onto the sand; when Orr looks again there is no trace of him or his helmet. In fact, it's obvious that he's fallen into, or merged with, Orr. Orr uses the last of his strength to peel open his coat, that attracts two buzzards that spiral down like DNA, Orr chokes them, he drinks their blood and that gives him the strength to get through the desert. That's it for the barbarian and the familiar. In Underworld dream, Andrea said that the narrator would become the barbarian, the barbarian would kill himself and the narrator would live again in the barbarian's body. Well, the barbarian did kill himself once, he killed his old self and awoke in his new self. The first and third parts of Andrea's prophecy are really the same. In this case, the barbarian and familiar have both merged with Orr, who is the narrator's alter ego. Note that neither of them really die; there are no bodies left. Also, no one has called Orr by his name for a while, the last person to do so was the Field Marshal, who called him Ore (i.e. the ore from which metal, the narrator's real identity, is extracted), so he's really becoming more and more the narrator and less a separate dream self. All of the narrator's various identities are joining; when the narrator wakes up, he will indeed live again in the barbarian, who was a symbol of his physical body all along. Finally, Orr sees, ahead of him, The Bridge. It is in ruins, just like the ruined city of Mocca. The main sections are still intact, but the linking sections, the bridges within bridges, have been destroyed. Everything is deserted; old carriages are rusted to the rails. He finds Dissy Pitton's, where he drank with Brooke, and Dr. Joyce's office, and the Arrol's summer apartment. At that apartment, "The fire is buried beneath the waves of sand, so is the bed." This is getting too long, so I'm going to post it and have this chapter take up three posts instead of two.