Wednesday, 1 June 2016

Dead Leaves

I asked where Dominic Flandry encounters dead leaves. Sean Brooks replied that Flandry used dead leaves as a metaphor for the decline of Technic civilization and that Flandry and Miriam Abrams walked through autumnal woods. The latter case is a pathetic fallacy because Dominic and Miriam are starting an autumnal affair.

I remembered another pathetic fallacy and found it here. However, the phrase used in the text is not "dead leaves" but:

"...tongue after fire-tongue ripped loose to scrittle off over the pavement. All nature was saying farewell."
-Sir Dominic Flandry, p. 552.

I called this "explicit pathetic fallacy" because nature says farewell as Kossara goes to her death - and the reader has had ample warning that something bad is going down.

There is also irony. As the march approaches Parliament, Kossara says:

"'Here we go, my brave beloved. They'll sing of you for a thousand years.'" (p. 558)

Will they? We soon learn that they will sing of Kossara for more than a thousand years because she is about to die and will soon after that be canonized by her fellow Dennitzan OrthoChristians.
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1 comment:

  1. Sean M. Brooks2 June 2016 at 08:25

    Kaor, Paul!

    And your comments about leaves reminded me, as you know, of this bit from Chapter VIII of WE CLAIM THESE STARS: "And yet, we who see winter coming can also see it won't be here till after our lifetimes...so we shiver a bit, and swear a bit, and go back to playing with a few bright dead leaves."

    And, yet, Flandry WASN'T content to merely play with a few bright autumnal leaves, he ACTED to help hold off, for a while, that winter of Technic civilization.

    Sean

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