Author: SmileyChewtrain
Date: 10-02-04 20:55
Guardo -
I do agree with you about how odd it was that Jeff's death in Transmigration seemed glossed over - however, as the book moved on, I began to see it more of an inability of the narrator to deal with the tragedy, rather than the author 'forgetting' or deciding not to focus on it.
I think what made this apparent to me was the fact that Tim also seems to be in denial of Jeff's suicide - on the surface - but his feelings stay hidden, fester, then snowball and create the latent idea (as I think it's called in the book, I can't remember offhand). Since we can probably all agree that to a degree Tim = Angel (as Duff Beer Dragon stated in an earlier post), we can see from the 'mirror of Tim' that Angel is affected in a similar way - she is in a type of apathetic denial of the tragedies around her, yet it causes her to eventually become lost in a 'world of words' - explanations that mean nothing.
Also, from a dramatic narrative standpoint, if there had been a big response and outfall from Jeff's suicide, the snowball effect into the outlandish "Jeff's returned from the grave" phase might not have been as effective.
That's not to say that Angel couldn't have reacted more severely in the world of the book and then just not related it all to the audience- and it's not to say that Dick couldn't have spent just a little more time discussing her feelings about the subject... But after finishing the book I think that this is the kind of novel in which an intricate balance of narrative flow, motivationally and literally, is achieved to create the 'plot', and I think that Dick pulled it off rather well.
Anyways, I also agree that the final 'trilogy' is a lot harder for me to read than the earlier stuff; I usually can read through his pulpier books in one sitting, and these later ones I have to read on and off for a while, but I do enjoy them quite a bit.
G
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