I have to admit, every page I turned in this week’s reading was upsetting. I want the end of the world catastrophe to hit! There are many characters, but only one really provides me with mutliple, thougthtful speculation: Fred Lauren. In class we discussed how the book is filled with contrasting couplings (old money v new money, emotional v rational, street/nature/common sense smart v technical/educated smarts), but I think Lauren has a very cryptic contrast. He is completely different from all other characters, a solitary observer and not much is revealed except that he has mental issues and sex offenses. No other character in the book is mentally unhinged like him. No other characters even seem to have quirks/ticks, let alone full out violent pyschological tendencies. I think Fred Lauren’s personality/mind is a symbol of the comet. On page 110: “Fred’s eye suddenly painted it with flame. The stucco wallow around the window flashed blinding light, which died slowly to reveal curtains flaming…Fred saw her bathed in the light of Hammerfall. Colleen glowed like a star…robe charring, long blonde hair crisping, blackening, flaming…and she was gone before they had met. Fred turned away from the telescope.” Its as though Fred’s distant watching is equivalent to the distant comet. Fred sees a firey death of Colleen, and later on the book tells he kills her. So Fred ( the comet) kills Colleen (the rest of the world), in fire. Does anyone else feel that that Fred embodies the comet’s ultimate purpose? And then when Fred does kill Colleen, gruesomely by taking her breast and drawing an arrow in blood to her genitals, I thought it was a symbol for the end of fertility, reproduction, motherhood. Just like the comet will be taking life, mother Earth. I think Fred Lauren is an eerie and perverted foreshadowing of the comet’s goals and capabilities.
by: Laura Kelly
I think you’re onto something important here. I was skeptical that Fred Lauren was so closely connected to the comet until I read your close reading of the lines describing Fred’s vision. Your attention to key words and phrases on page 110 demonstrates clearly that either intentionally or unintentionally (and it doesn’t matter which), the authors have drawn a parallel between Lauren and the comet.
I wonder, then, what does Lauren’s fate after Hammerfall tell us about the comet?
Actually, when I read Lauren’s death scene I thought my whole theory listed up there was debunked. But then I thought about it some more. Maybe since the comet destroyed so many people’s lives, people wish it was something tangible that they could rebel against. If Lauren is symbolic of the comet, then his ruthless brutality would need rebellion against as well. And since he is much easier to target and hit than a comet, perhaps the reason he got shot in his jail cell was also a higher symbol: justice against the comet (him) ? Is this becoming a long shot ?hahah I still think its a parallel…