Miévillians discussion
This topic is about
Iron Council
Bas-lag 3: Iron Council
>
IC spoiler thread 6: Chapter 20 to end of Chapter 22. The Caucus Race.
date
newest »
newest »
It's surely relevant that "A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale" is chapter III of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Now I have to read that chapter to figure out why….
Nice catch, Derek! I was wondering why "Caucus" was looking so strange yet familiar...
I couldn't remember which Alice book it was from, but I knew it was there. I'll have to check my Annotated Alice, because I'm sure Gardner had something to say about the Caucus race.
Seems that it might be apt to add Lewis Caroll as one of the Mièville influences... ;)
He was certainly "Old Weird".
How true! A worthy precursor of the New Weird, along with Poe, Lovecraft et al. The Weaver certainly could qualify as a Caorrollesque character.
Derek, you might be a bit ahead of me; would you agree that we should dedicate this thread to part 6 only? I seem to have a lot to say about this bit, which I'll do a bit later.
I'm not quite finished Ch. 22 yet, but I just had to post quickly. While I had assumed that Rudgutter might not be Mayor of New Crobuzon any longer, and while I had a vague recognition that the Mayor was never actually mentioned by name, my consciousness was not fully aware that her identity was being withheld. The Mayor's identity was, for me, quite effectively hidden by the title and by the superstitious euphemisms that the dissidents nominally used to avoid attention.The stealth with which Stem-Fulcher's obscurity was accomplished just serves to remind me of the earlier cloaking of Judah's identiy which, in hindsight, feels even more clumsy and abusive, not to mention manifestly unnecessary.
Let me not flog a dead horse, though, and instead congratulate Miéville on such an exciting scene with a rewarding revelation and, no doubt, a stunning conclusion---though I'm just guessing there, and I've not quite reached it.
Off I go!
Oh, dear. I've been spoilered. I knew the mayor was Stem-Fulcher, and that wasn't in the cover blurb, so I don't know where I got it. There may have been something that gave away her gender earlier, but you're right that she isn't named until Chapter 22. Big finish, not necessarily satisfying…
I'm fine with this thread being part 6, only, but then I'm only on chapter 24, so I can't say if there's a reason to combine it. But chapter 22 is a pretty logical place for a break. Ori's life is clearly over (in a metaphysical sense).
Since the next chapter continues again with Cutter, I also thought that to break after we leave Ori in his puzzling split-city situation would be a good place to stop and take stock of all we had to absorb in part 6.The first thing I had wanted to comment about in Part 6, was the killing of that elderly couple to get hold of the house. Ori's immediate recognition that it had been a wrong thing to do, did a lot to endear him to me.
Very little in the chapter endeared me to Toro, though a lot made me actually despise her.
But wait, I want to go on a bit more about that couple they had killed.
Those of you who had participated in the PSS group discussion, will remember that I had made quite a big deal out of the sick guy Issac's group had fetched out of the hospital and used to power the machine.
I pointed there, to one of Ursula Le Guin's short stories, named The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, in which the utilitarian question of : "Is it okay to sacrifice one for the many? " was asked. I felt at that time, that it wasn't.
CM asks this question anew:
"This is the house where the old couple lived. That I heard about, the job you did, months ago, soon after I gave you the money. That the papers railed at. You killed them, or Old Shoulder did or one of us, and it weren’t that they was militia at all. They was rich, but you wouldn’t do them for that. It weren’t because they was rich but because of where they lived. You needed them gone so you could buy this house. That’s what you did with Jacobs’ money.
Ori felt gutted. He swallowed many times.
He sat hard on his own instincts. Something welled in him. All the uncertainty, the desperate lack of knowledge, then the weight of knowledge but vacillation of ideas, the shameful hash of theory that had sent him to the Runagaters, to all the different sects and dissidents, looking for something to ground him, a political home, which he had found in the anger and anarchist passion of Toro.
His uncertainty came back. He knew what he felt—that this was a dreadful thing, that he was aghast—but he remembered the exhortations to contextualise, always to have context, that the Runagaters above all had always stressed.
If one death’ll stop ten, ain’t it better? If two deaths’ll save a city?
He was still. He had a sense that he did not know best, that he had to learn, that he was a better man in this collective than out, that he must understand why this had happened before he judged. Toro watched him. Turned to Old Shoulder. Ori saw the cactus-man set his face. They can see I know.
"Ori. Listen to me."
The others watched without comprehension.
"Yes," Toro lowed. Ori felt like a schoolchild before a teacher, so disempowered, so ill-at-ease. He felt truly sick. Toro’s thaumaturged drone felt through his skin.
"Yes," Old Shoulder said. "This is the house. They were old, rich, alone, no one to inherit, it’d be sold. But no, it ain’t good. Don’t presume, Ori, that there’s no guilt and pain.
"We get in that house beside us . . . we’re done. We win. We win. " Under the cactus’s words, Toro began to roar."
(continued next post)
There's a few sentences that made me pause to reconsider my own position: His uncertainty came back. He knew what he felt—that this was a dreadful thing, that he was aghast—but he remembered the exhortations to contextualise, always to have context, that the Runagaters above all had always stressed.If one death’ll stop ten, ain’t it better? If two deaths’ll save a city?
He was still. He had a sense that he did not know best, that he had to learn, that he was a better man in this collective than out, that he must understand why this had happened before he judged.
I thought over the question a bit more, and I think I agree that it needs to be seen in context.
I still think that what Toro did was wrong; -even before we know about Toro's revenge motive. To have killed those two people in order to assassinate a leader, was surely wrong; especially if one thinks over the fact that surely the house could have been obtained in a different way than killing the inhabitants; you could have threatened them, perhaps, you could have made such frequent burglaries that they felt unsafe and moved to an old-age home or secure complex or whatever.
But then, are there any scenarios in which we would be justified to kill one or a few for the many? I think there are.
If we need to sacrifice one or a few people to save the entire human race- if humanity would become extinct if we didn't sacrifice them, then, yes, I believe we are justified.
...but if we are sacrificing anybody just to make a large amount of people happier or more comfortable, then no, I do not feel that it is justified. So, to cause two deaths to save ten different people, I feel it is wrong.
If ten people were going to die anyway, and you can have only two out of the condemned ten die--in other words, you are saving eight instead of ten, then I reckon that is okay.
But if your saving of ten requires you to (let's say terrorists are holding ten people, and they require us to kill 2 people in order to have the ten back), then I'm not quite so sure that it would be the right thing to do to make a simple math calculation and to say that, hey, we should do this, because 10 lives> than 2 lives.
I think war makes many moral judgments more difficult---not in the sense that war makes more actions right, but it can make them more justifiable, more defensible. The story of Iron Council takes place against a backdrop of total war, and the dissidents are also fighting their own little war against Parliament. I agree, of course, that killing the couple was wrong, and I'm dubious as to whether the end viz. killing the Mayor will even be a positive outcome. Killing two innocents for the sake of revenge is not only wrong, it's evil. Still, Toro's motive is not just revenge, either: there was her own personal revenge, yes, but also justice for those others the magister maimed, and also proactive justice for those he would surely maim in the future.
Those last two, especially in the face of extreme personal danger, softens my distaste considerably. Again we see the deep injustice of the Crobuzoner courts, where a woman whose child has died with no clear intent from the mother, is mutilated and incarcerated for a decade when she should instead be counselled and shown compassion.
Does the injustice done excuse Toro's methods? Absolutely not. She is deceitful and puts the good of the few (the Remade) over the good of the many (all of New Crobuzon) and allows others to die for her own private goals. Still, I can understand why.
I'm glad you've found some redeeming qualities in Ori, Traveller. Personally I can't bring myself to dislike him. Toro I can, though with sadness. We're given a complex mix of motives and justifications, and I for one am not too sure yet what to make of them.
These group reads are so enriching, honestly. I find it interesting that you can find so much compassion for Toro, J., since I, as a mother myself, found her utterly disgusting and at the very least, thought that having a pair of arms grafted to the side of your face for killing your baby was actually a light sentence.I actually still clearly remember Toro's specific case and sentence being mentioned in PSS, and had thought at the time also, that the mother's crime had been a horrific one. Can you imagine how horrifying it must be to be shaken to death? No, I'm afraid I have no sympathy whatsoever with mothers who violently kill or torture their children.
They should have their ovaries removed. I know of a mother who got pregnant by being gang-raped, and she never took it out on the child, whom she tried to raise to the best of her ability. Sadly she couldn't live with her past and eventually committed suicide. ..but there is no excuse for taking things out on innocent children--especially if they are still little babies.
Toro killed her child just for crying???
..and Toro just shows again and again how utterly selfish she is; she has killed all of her followers just to get her own, bloody, violent, selfish revenge. Ugh, I say, ugh. Is she any better than Mayor Stem-Fulcher, I can ask? She's been just using her followers, ostensibly for political reasons, but in actual fact just to get her own back on the Magister.
Over and over again, also, she kills people with impunity. Why doesn't she rather agitate for prison reform then? How is killing the mayor going to help things exactly? It's the system they should be fighting--not individuals.
If anything, they should fight the system of aristocracy and agitate for a more egalitarian voting system.
Btw, has anyone else wondered why the Remade can't just have their appendages surgically removed? I remember CM mumbling something about that they can't, but I can't quite see why not.
I do not remember the case from Perdido Street Station, myself. I am aware that shaking a baby can be fatal (there were television spots in Ontario about a decade ago about it, for some reason), but I got the impression from what Toro was saying that she was trying to soothe the child rather than shaking her violently. I'll have to go hunting through Perdido Street Station tonight and review, also. Depending on the facts I may change my view on Toro. Ignorance is no excuse for causing the death of your child. On the other hand a negligent act for which one is penitent doesn't warrant life-long mutilation of both the mother and (it seems?) the dead child as well. That's just monstrous.
Traveller wrote: "Btw, has anyone else wondered why the Remade can't just have their appendages surgically removed? I remember CM mumbling something about that they can't, but I can't quite see why not."I don't think there's any one reason why not. In most cases I would think it's a lack of opportunity. No doubt it is illegal for a biothaumaturge to undo the state's punishment, and any black market for such work would probably be both expensive and chancy. Given that Remade are ostracized, few likely have a chance to make much money, and there's always the risk that a willing biothaumaturge is a police plant.
Further, some Remakings seem to render the host body dependent on attached parts (as was the case with Uzman, apparently), which would probably make surgical intervention even in ideal circumstances quite risky.
Add to all this the fact that Remaking is extremely painful,you end up with a pretty convincing set of reasons why they're not undone.
So, if I killed you by shaking you while I am in a rage, that's okay? Because I know I would be awfully sorry about it after the fact. And I'd certainly work on trying to curb my temper in general. ...until the next time that I lose my temper with someone and accidentally kill them while venting my rage--see what I'm getting at?Methinks Toro is perhaps aptly named and styled after an animal who stands as a symbol for aggression and anger. She kills people in a temper over and over again in the narrative--why should it have been any different with her daughter?
Does she appear to you like a person who has remorse over her violent temper and like a person who has gone to any lengths to temper it--knowing full well now what the results of her temper tantrums are-- knowing full well how lethal they are.
I'm just wondering here-- if Toro had been a male, would you have felt exactly the same sympathy for him? Truly and honestly?
If you killed me and regretted it, I wouldn't expect the state to graft my arms to your forehead, make you a second-class citizen and reserve the option of using you as slave labour in addition to throwing you in prison. Would you?As Toro is not a man, I cannot say with certainty, but I think I would have the same symphathy, yes. I don't see why I wouldn't.
As for Toro's temper, it's hard to say how much of it is a result of her Remaking. As I said, I'll have to review. We're not necessarily in disagreement. ;)
J. wrote: "If you killed me and regretted it, I wouldn't expect the state to graft my arms to your forehead, make you a second-class citizen and reserve the option of using you as slave labour in addition to ..."If the only thing that the state did with me after actually taking your life, was that, I would most certainly consider my sentence too light. I'd most probably not be able to live with the guilt, and would end up committing suicide or doing some kind of additional penance voluntarily.
If you killed me in a rage for something I am innocent of (all babies cry) and you got such a light sentence, heaven help you, bc my ghost will come back and haunt you... :P
I'm not really interested in debating hypotheticals. Instead I'd just like to clarify that I find Remaking a disgusting idea. It's petty revenge on the part of the state, people with too much power playing with the lives of those whom they have power over. Punishment is one thing, mutilation is another. As I said, I'll have to review Toro's case, as I'm not convinced she killed her child in anger. That would change things for me, but nonetheless I would not wish Remaking on my worse enemy. I wouldn't even wish it on Hitler, if the opportunity presented itself. It would not only degrade him, but me as well, for holding a human life in such low regard.
We were not debating remaking here. We were debating whether Toro deserves sympathy. And of there being irony in the fact that Toro posed as a hero of the downtrodden all this while, while all the time she has actually been on a personal vendetta revenge mission of her own--not caring how many casualties she left in her wake. I think the killing of the old couple was a red light pointing in this direction.I assume Toro killed her child in anger, because she killed so many others in anger. Be that as it may, she killed her child. I personally think that grafting the child's arms onto her as a reminder not to act like that again, is pretty fitting, but that is beside the point.
The point I was initially making, is that we originally saw Toro as some kind of hero, but here she turns out to be an idol with feet of clay, and to me personally a despicable person. Let's not mix the issues here. I had not said that remaking is okay; please don't make it sound as if I condoned it.
Toro said she killed her baby for crying:
"More than two decades gone. You remember those big old towers in Ketch Heath? Yes, you remember. That’s where I lived. I killed my darling. You remember, Magister? My girl Cecile.
"She cried and cried and cried and I was crying too and then I took her and I think maybe it was that I was shaking her to make her shush, I don’t remember, but she was gone when I remember again."
and later:
.... And from me, and from Cecile—and yes it was me, my hands done it, and that’s mine to feel...
Not to mention the many, many other people Toro has killed, that were mentioned before Ori's group went on 'the job' and then, condemning Ori and his group to death for her own selfish reasons, and then, of course, the murder of Stem-Fulscher and the Magister as well.
I'm not saying that Stem-Fulscher and the Magister did not possibly deserve to be killed, but if you say that they did deserve it, if you excuse Toro's execution of them, you are actually going contrary to your own argument, if your argument is that an eye should not be exchanged for an eye. If Toro should not have been punished for killing her child, how is it fair and just that the mayor and the magister should be killed for their alleged crimes?
Do you see what I'm saying? What goes for the goose, should go for the gander, no?
J. wrote: "As I said, I'll have to review Toro's case, as I'm not convinced she killed her child in anger. That would change things for me..."So, if Toro killed her child coldy, without emotion, that would make the act better in your eyes?
J. wrote: "nonetheless I would not wish Remaking on my worse enemy. I wouldn't even wish it on Hitler, if the opportunity presented itself. It would not only degrade him, but me as well, for holding a human life in such low regard..."
Um, help me out here-- killing people is not holding lives in low regard?
Toro seems to see lives as disposable, not to mention subject to 'conditions'. So if and when it suits her, lives can be disposed of as collateral damage, EXACTLY the same way as the government is doing. So, how does that make her any better than they are?
Anyway, J. *sighs tiredly* all I said was that you obviously feel more sympathy for her than I do. There's nothing wrong in feeling sympathy for a person, as long as we call a spade a spade and use the same standards for everybody. :)
Then we agree. Toro is definitely a spade. ;)
...and here I go back to saying that Toro would have done better in fighting the system instead of individuals. I personally do believe that culture and poverty both have an influence on violent crime.Here are some interesting tidbits: http://www.therichest.com/expensive-l...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursa...
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders...
Now, kids, play nice :)I found Toro utterly reprehensible. Not for killing the baby: like J, I can't say that she either did it out of rage or deliberation. Babies die very easily. Shaken Baby Syndrome is common, and that's why there were PSAs on the TV—to warn people that you really could kill your child with what seems a gentle shake.
And remaking, in general and in this specific, is certainly punishment out of all proportion to the crime.
But Toro took a political movement, and sacrificed everyone (including Ori, even if he does survive this chapter) for her revenge. She betrayed everything, and the only tiny redeeming factor is that she incidentally accomplished the assassination that her followers believed necessary. She didn't have to do that: they could have assassinated the magister more easily if Stem-Fulcher and the Clypean guard hadn't been present (they may have needed the inside man to break the hexes, but assassinating the Magister right after the Mayor left would have been an option, then).
The idea of killing one (or two) people to save others is the Fat man variant of the Trolley Problem, and I've always thought there was a fundamental flaw in it. While you may or may not agree that pushing a fat man from a bridge in front of a runaway trolley, to stop it and save other lives, is morally right, it is dependent on being certain that the trolley won't just roll right over him. The usual time-travel thought experiment—would you go back in time to assassinate Hitler—is different, because we know that if he wasn't around things would be different (of course, Stalin would probably have killed even more people…), but in the case of the Trolley problem, or assassinating the two old folk or even the Mayor, there's no certainty (or imo even likelihood) that it will seriously change the course of events.
So, I despise Toro, and I'm not at all sure about Ori: I want to see how he handles this.
Traveller wrote: "So, if I killed you by shaking you while I am in a rage, that's okay?"
I think we need to know more about J. to decide that...
btw, does anybody recall the final M*A*S*H episode, Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen, where Hawkeye is suffering PTSD. It wraps up both infanticide and sacrifice of innocents for the greater good.
Derek wrote: "Traveller wrote: "So, if I killed you by shaking you while I am in a rage, that's okay?"I think we need to know more about J. to decide that..."
I now officially like you, Derek.
Derek (GR: TELL your users about the censorship policy!) wrote: "Now, kids, play nice :)I found Toro utterly reprehensible. Not for killing the baby: like J, I can't say that she either did it out of rage or deliberation. Babies die very easily. Shaken Baby Sy..."
Exactly--Toro is despicable for her disregard for human life. But I disagree that shaking a baby violently is not also a despicable thing to do.
Still, I see your and J.'s point re Toro to some extent; I rated Toro's earlier crime in view of her later crimes. If Toro had been a second Jean-Val-Jean turned Mr Madeleine, I would have said:
"Sure, I can see that Toro is inherently a good person, a person who made a mistake and who shows penitence for what happened in the past. She also shows that she can transcend pretty revenge and act towards the greater good."
..but that is not true, is it? Many other people have gone through prison and been remade in the Bas-lag world; many, many of them, but few of them have reacted with the vehemence and disregard for human life that Toro has shown.
So, I can't help but finding it a rather logical leap to infer that, since every time we meet Toro she shows behaviour indeed typical of a bull, that that must be part of her personality (she is the one who chose to represent herself as a bull, after all), and that she must have acted roughly with her child as well. It seems part of a pattern.
In our world at least, people who have babies or work with babies know that babies are fragile and should be handled very carefully. Pretty much anybody who has ever held a newborn, knows how soft and floppy they are and that their heads and necks should be carefully supported. ...and in our world, shaking your baby to death, can lead to you being charged for murder. (Not manslaughter, murder.)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/l...
http://www.wbaltv.com/news/maryland/h...
(Btw, the latter guy's initial excuse is bs, because who on earth leaves a baby alone with a toddler, let alone lying on the edge of a bed?)
Shaking an infant can not only cause death, but severe eye and brain damage, disabling the shakee for life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken_b...
It really is a despicable thing to do, no matter which way you look at it, and courts in our world agree.
Derek, I like your Fat Man mention. ..but I'm too exhausted from batting back J.'s volleys to comment further. :DFrom the previous thread:
Derek (GR: TELL your users about the censorship policy!) wrote: "But I'm basically with J. I don't trust that any of the "criminals" are really guilty, but if I was Uzman (especially, if I was not myself guilty of any such crime), I would have described the Iron Council that way, sarcastically.
[...]
Meanwhile, I don't see that the IC is any different from any other society, except in one way. They would have had those who transgressed against the IC's own laws: but they could, and likely did, exile them.."
But be that as it may, taking into account our argument re Toro on this thread, don't you agree that given Toro's violent reaction to her punishment, that either these people are very placid and forgiving, or that indeed Toro's reaction is uncommonly strong and violent? ;)
Speaking of batting and fat men, do Crobuzoners play sports? I wonder if that's why they have so many criminals, violent vigilantes and dissidents. Maybe they just need an outlet in a bit of baseball and/or cricket! :)Can anyone recall mentionings of team sports? My mind is drawing a blank, and I'm suddenly finding that unlikely...
Sorry about exhausting you, Traveller. I appear to be getting a bit carried away with these discussions. Next time I'll try and find some pillows to throw instead, or---even better---a nice bottle of something we can commune with together while we peer throw our metaphorical monocles and admire these excellent tomes we're reading.
J. wrote: "Speaking of batting and fat men, do Crobuzoners play sports? I wonder if that's why they have so many criminals, violent vigilantes and dissidents. Maybe they just need an outlet in a bit of baseb..."You'll drive me to drink, J.! ;)
Re the sport: that is a point. His society seems very terse indeed, doesn't it. Maybe its just that he doesn't really describe the leisured classes at all--although, admittedly, in PSS and The Scar, we deal with artists scientists and journalists-- all who could surely afford to go see a game of soccer or baseball.
Which reminds me that CM said in an interview that he didn't support the Olympic Games when it went to London.
I was actually still going to link to that interview elsewhere on the group space, but wanted to check first that someone else hadn't already done so.
Oh, please do! Or if it already exists, point this out. I'd love to read it!
Traveller wrote: "I disagree that shaking a baby violently is not also a despicable thing to do."I disagree with that too, but then it's not what I said. I said a baby can be killed by shaking it gently. We don't know that Toro shook her violently—and neither does Toro.
"few of [the Remade] have reacted with the vehemence and disregard for human life that Toro has shown."
That is exactly what all of the fReemade have done—Toro just found a way to do it without leaving the city. It's actually quite believable. When you live on the frontier (and every direction from New Crobuzon appears to be a frontier) you don't generally stick around and fight the system when you can't live in it—you just leave.
Derek (GR: TELL your users about the censorship policy!) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "I disagree that shaking a baby violently is not also a despicable thing to do."I disagree with that too, but then it's not what I said. I said a baby can be killed by shaking it..."
Ah, we'll just have to respectfully disagree on Toro as well as her baby. I tried to search for evidence of babies being killed by being gently shaken and I couldn't find any. For death to ensue, from all that I've seen and heard, the shaking has to be quite prolonged and violent.
One just does not shake a small child, period, because even 'gentle' shaking can badly damage a baby.
Let's just all agree that we have differing opinions over Toro, and that I personally find her an idol with feet of clay. We don't have to agree in these discussions, of course--each person has his/her own take. Maybe that's not too surprising after all. :)
re;feet of clay....this book,they all have them,Judah,Cutter,Ori as well as Toroonly Ann-Hari keeps getting more savy and bolder
..and after this stormy discussion, I'm afraid that I've fallen a bit behind. Would somebody else not like to carry on with the next thread, or am I the only pot-stirrer around here? ;) :Phttps://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Dear fellow readers, I apologize for being absent from this discussion for so long. We are finally continuing and are almost finished, if you'd like to join us for the final two threads here https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... ?
Miévillians
Books mentioned in this topic
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (other topics)The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (other topics)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (other topics)
EDIT: Since what happens in part 6 is so significant, we might want to dedicate thread 6 to part 6.
This is the part where the mayor is assassinated, and Toro is unveiled.