Dominic Flandry tells Dragoika that her home planet will be destroyed:
"He had not known she could weep."
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT Chapter Seventeen, p. 183.
The Nyarrans might be destroyed by trans-oceanic invaders:
"Theor bent his head. They do not weep on Jupiter."
-Poul Anderson, Three Worlds To Conquer (London, 1966), Chapter 8, p. 59.
They do not weep on Jupiter! We do not know what they do on Jupiter or even whether "they" exist there. However, it is legitimate for any author to tell us that, within the parameters of his fictional narrative, they do not weep there. Again, this is the omniscient narrator speaking. Theor knows that he is bending his head but presumably does not know that he is not weeping! - unless in the unlikely event that Fraser has described this human response to him and he is now reflecting on it. By contrast, Flandry realizes that he had not known that Tigeries could weep. Thus, that passage in Ensign Flandry is narrated entirely from Flandry's third person point of view. I am a stickler for povs.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Actually, I think the bit about Flandry not knowing Dragoika could be so over come by sorrow that she could weep came from Flandry thinking her too strong, determined, forceful, etc., a person to show such "weakness." And I agree that Dragoika's tears does not have to mean she or anyone else in a similar position was weak.
And I would expect Jovians, being non humans on a vastly different planet from ours, would show grief differently from humans.
Sean
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