"'They are to fight. If the loser is not killed she will be banished for ever. That will be the same as death. These people whither and die outside the tribe. They cannot live in our world. It is like wild beasts forced to live in a cage.'"
-Ian Fleming, From Russia, With Love (London, 1964), CHAPTER 18, p. 129.
The parallel should be obvious to Poul Anderson readers. In Anderson's The Day Of Their Return, the tinerans fight a lot and die if banished. However, Anderson presents a scientific explanation or science fictional rationalization. The tinerans have become addicted to the emotional feedback and amplification that they receive from the telepathic, formerly Chereionite, animals that they keep as mascots.
Is it true of gypsies that they would fight to the death and die if banished or was Fleming's imagination just running on overtime? In any case, his gypsies exactly parallel Anderson's tinerans.
Tomorrow, I will travel to another town for a pre-corona-operation interview so there will be less time for blogging. Eyesight is important for reading, not to mention other activities.
2 comments:
"..will be banished for ever. That will be the same as death. These people whither and die outside the tribe."
For hunter-gatherer people that was a real problem for anyone who was expelled from a tribe & could not fairly quickly join another tribe. Not simply a psychological problem, but finding food, protection from predators etc.
Kaor, Jim!
And those "predators" will include people from rival clans or tribes eager to kill, rape, enslave, or torture those who were banished.
To be Hobbesian life in the "state of nature" is nasty, brutish, and short.
Ad astra! Sean
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