The Sword and Laser discussion
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Bridge of Birds
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BoB: "...the guts of a first class burglar!" (spoilers aplenty)
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I look at the scenario as the August Personage of Jade saw these two men, saw their capabilities and goals and placed people and events in their path. The people were placed based on their goals as well. If Master Li and Number Ten Ox had different skills or were not as driven, they would have not succeeded. So there is divine intervention and free will. My only evidence is that the August Personage of Jade is bound by rules, just as a player in a game, only in this case the figures on the board can think for themselves. He must have a keen insight into human behavior.
But those "people being placed" in their paths are therefore functioning merely as props. Not human beings any more. The Chinese mythology presented here certainly avoids the old omnipotent-deity/free-will conundrum which plagues most monotheistic traditions, since (1) Jade is not the only God around and (2) he ain't even close to omnipotent. However, there's no avoiding the contention that the whole quest is a set-up. The kids get sick, Fainting Maid murdered, Miser Shen slain, all in order for Jade to get his favorite daughter-in-law back.
I excuse it on the basis of narratology: everything in this book is a smoking Chekhov's Gun, waiting to be trotted out in the final acts. the structure is brilliant. But your mileage may vary, particularly if you're a big proponent of self-determination.
I never felt like free will was taken out of the equation. I saw it as Jade essentially nudging the pinball machine of life. He's trying to apply enough motion to lead to the result he wants but not pushing too hard that he tilts the machine and loses his ball (or in this case, his position in heaven and the chance of his daughter-in-law returning).Honestly, there were SO many coincidences piling up, it was refreshing to see a literal "hand of god" element used to cleverly explain them. And I think every character had legitimate reasons to follow the paths they did, so it rarely felt like their decision-making had been unnaturally altered.
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It may have been divine intervention that put them in the right spot, but if they weren't truly horrible people they might not have worked so well as a distraction. There is a bit of free will involved.
Now if they suddenly started doing stuff out of character (like looking out for anyone but themselves), then maybe I'd buy into their being no free will at all.
This is the payoff, for me. The structure of this book is exquisite. Every little detail in that opening chapters, the ones many readers here in the forums found so boring, gets paid off at the end. The placement of Dragon's Pillow, the children's riddle, Henpecked Ho's clay fragments, the Dickensian coincidences which lead Master Li & #10 back to their companions over and over...all wrapped up in a tidy package.
HOWEVER: this does necessitate a little cosmological fudging on the part of Barry Hughart (or the August Personage of Jade, if you want to read this diagetically rather than didactically). To whit: "there are no accidents in the great way of Tao." If all these coincidences and plot devices were directed from Heaven, where's the free will? Is fate or karma in charge of the quest all along?
Discuss?