So I was realizing reading the book that I don’t like the characters’ names. Maybe they’re too old, or maybe too similar (Harvey, Hardy, Hamner and Harry…) so I flipped back to the Dramatis Personae in the beginning of the book. What I found interesting is the descriptions the authors’ chose for the women. Eileen, ie, is “Assistant Manager for Corrigan’s Plumbing Supplies of Burban” (go Eileen.) Marie Vance is “Gordie Vance’s wife”. What I noticed is the only two people who don’t have description is Mrs. Gloria Delantey (not really sure why she’s listed, she was only in one chapter), and Loretta Randall! She doesn’t even get “wife” tacked on. Epitome of true uselessness.
Anyway, that’s thought one.
Thought two:
Humans as Gods! I only noted two passages. There might be more, but these stuck out to me. Page 491: “astronauts from Hammerlab! you won’t believe them. They look like gods. They look like they never went through the end of the world at all.” Well, technically, they didn’t. But that triggered the thought that everyone who was on Earth, instead of floating above it, is marked with a very characteristic appeareance: frightened, hunted, haunted, starved, dark. And then on pg 509, “For a few minutes, possibly for as much as a whole day, Dan Forrester was safe. He could count on living until dawn. It was a strange feeling.”
I wonder if Dan’s general appearance changed in that one day of guarenteed life. The authors’ don’t even really describe the expressions, but by these two passages (spec. the first), these appearance changes are subliminal in describing, but totally obvious in contrast.
And my last thought, and probably the one of real interest, is I noticed a lot of Koran/Muslim references when talking about the New Brotherhood. I wanted to know if anyone could think of a reason why. I found two passages that draw the parallel. The first on page 524, when marvelling about the size of the Brotherhood, Harvey says, “Mohammed began he had five followers. In four months he controlled Arabia. In a couple years he controlled half the world. And the New Brotherhood has the same kind of growth incentive.”
Interesting. Harvey couldve drawn the parallel with Hitler. I mean, he got a huge following in a short time, and he was violent, join or die type guy. But why did the authors’ pick Mohammed, not Hitler?
Second passage: 568pg. While fighting the Brotherhood, Marie says, “Its officially dawn. Muslim definition. When you can tell a white thread from a black one. It’s in the Koran.”
Soooooo. Kind of got the impression that Marie isn’t Muslim, so why are the authors’ quoting the Koran and then using it as a premonition of the Brotherhood’s advancement???
Any thougths?!
-Laura Kelly
That is a very interesting observation Laura. I remember wondering about that while reading through the text as well. The leader of the Brotherhood, Alim Nassor also seems to have a Muslim sounding name, although its told at the beginning of the novel that his name used to be something else: “Before…he had been George Washington Carver Davis…When she [his mother] threw him out, he took his own. Alim Nassor meant wise conqueror in both Arabic and Swahili” (71). Afterwards, there are references to the whole Brotherhood in terms of Islam, as you mentioned. It is also interesting that the authors chose to bring Henry Armitage, a Christian priest in to sort of lead and preach to the Cannibals, permitting what was going on to continue. I wonder if the authors were portraying religious extremism in both circumstances. Then again, there are many religions that go unrepresented, or unreferenced in the book. We also have to remember the time period. Perhaps there is some historical significance to the references. I think it was an attempt by the authors to incorporate perhaps the distortion of religion alongside raising issues of gender, science, etc. that we looked at in class. Another problem is that the authors only really showed what happened in California. We never got a taste of the rest of the U.S, or the rest of the world. It might be that the authors were trying to convey as many aspects and issues as possible in communities only in the small area covered in the novel.
Well, I’d be careful about what you consider a “Muslim sounding name” as opposed to an “Arabic/Arab sounding name”. There is a distinct difference, and many countries in Africa either use Arabic as a whole or incorporate some Arabic into their own language(s).
As far as Marie’s comment goes, I personally just wrote it off to her being well-read/educated/what have you – not that she necessarily would have read the Koran, but that she could easily have picked up that sort of white-thread-black-thread snippet from any book, even a toilet-side book of quaint phrases, or a fortune cookie for that matter. But, it’s entirely possible that I passed over the comment too quickly.
This is a really interesting thread (pardon the pun) to follow. We are led to believe that Alim changed his name as part of the black power / Nation of Islam movement, in the same way that Malcolm X or Muhammad Ali adopted new names, symbolically divesting themselves of their history as slaves. So, at least some of the references to Islam make sense given the date of the novel. But I’m wondering if some of them too (like Marie or Harvey’s comments) are shallow attempts to give the novel a pseudo-liberal multicultural feeling (which, if true, actually backfires).