A Sea Of Crises

Dahut, XIX, 7.

Does each of us face a permanent inner crisis whether or not we realize it? People come to see things that way when they undergo a religious conversion, for example. Our condition is variously described as:

sin;

alienation;

greed, hate and delusion.

Whether or not she realizes it, Dahut is guilty of major sins, to use that terminology. I am not morally outraged by her sex with five men - so few only merely because she is only sixteen - but her attempts first to rape, then to kill, her father are more serious matters. In any case, she is overwhelmed by an outer, and related, crisis. Ys is inundated because of her betrayal of her father.

Of course Gratillonius should try to rescue his daughter although that zealot, Corentinus, urges against it:

"'No, you fool!... Leave that bitch-devil to her fate!... Take her with you, and the weight of her sins will drag you down to your death...'" (p. 454)

Surely Dahut's salvation would have been at least possible if she had survived?

Niall ingeniously tricks Dahut into stealing the Key with which he then opens the sea-gate. Does she realize what he has done before she is transformed? Unusually in a novel, Niall observes the Shakespearean custom of reciting a speech above the sleeping Dahut before departing.

Before dying, Soren Cartagi, Speaker for Taranis, says:

"'Ocean has entered. The city dies... The Gods have ended the Pact...'" (p. 458)

Someone might make the equivalent statement in our generation.