Posted by Katharine on October 12, 2003 at 09:59:10 from 81.96.140.205 user Katharine.
In Reply to: Re: Are the D's the real heroes? posted by Alex Forbes on October 12, 2003 at 02:40:15:
"...it can be quite difficult to manage a large number of characters and keep the story coherent."
Yes - and Alex's point about the new characters introduced in ML had not occurred to me. WH does not feel unwieldy, and does not have signficant new characters other than the Ds themselves. PP (I think - long time since I read it!) just has Timothy and some farmers whose names I forget. GN has all those Gaels and Jemmerling, and I always found it a bit too jam-packed.
"Or, the story he had in his head might simply have not included the Ds."
Yes, so I wonder why not. Anyone know when ML was first thought of - could it have been earlier, before the Ds had got established as consistent players? Or is it a function of the plot - ML is more of an adventure story, without the need for Dick's scientific problem-solving or Dot's detective abilities.
A theory, to follow on from Andrew's:
the D's represent connection to the real world, as opposed to the storybook world of the Peter Duck stories. They do this in several ways:
1.Dick's science, which is accurately presented
2.Their role in the stories makes a link between the fantasy world where we can all sail as well as the SAs, and the real world where most of us grew up in towns and can't!
3.(This last one is the sort of thing postmodern literary critics say about all kinds of books and I'm not sure I agree with it myself, but here it is:) Dot's role as a "writer" reminds the reader that the story is itself a fiction.
They would, therefore, have been out of place in the fantasy story ML, and I've answered my own question!