GN? as fatasy, was Re: Captain Flint's wealth and insurance


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Posted by Peter Willis on February 20, 2004 at 12:22:21 from 195.92.168.167 user PeterWillis.

In Reply to: Re: Captain Flint's wealth and insurance posted by Alex Forbes on February 20, 2004 at 06:02:18:

As old Tarboard hands know, this is an oft-argued topic.
In favour of seeing GN? as fantasy there are the vagueness about the time of year (If divers were nesting, it would have had to be in school term-time,) the vagueness about the location (believed to be, but not identified as the Isle of Lewis) and the appearance of guns. Some textual analysts point out that these only otherwise appear in the two acknowlwedged fantasies, PD and ML, however as Alex observes, those in GN? are never fired at people.

In favour of reality, is the ready telegram communication with parents -something entirely absent from PD or ML, wehere it would not only solve an awful lot of problems, but burst the narrative bubble. Any reference to Mother, dufferishness and sailing in the dark is rigidly excluded in those two.

There is also the 'fact' that, to my mind at least, GN? feels real. It brings all the eight Ss As and Ds together for one final time, in real (ie tidal) water, up against real issues, both with the birds and the Gaels, and conveys a real feeling of their approaching the end of childhood. The sense of closure at the end is as powerfulas anything AR wrote.

(In fact the real mystery to me has always been why he bothered to start Coots in the North, not why he never finished it.)

I've always argued for GN? as reality, because it seems to me it has to be, but I'm beginning to come round to the view that it combines a bit of both reality and fantasy. After all, in wrapping up the series, AR might well have wished to give a nod to the PD/ML side of things. It is fiction, after all, and he might well have relished demopnstrating the power of the storyteller to confuse and bedazzle his audience.



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