Discussion - Week Four - The Rifles - pg. 309 - 411

[Jim]

This discussion covers Page 309 – 411
Conclusions/Book as a whole

[Zadignose]

Did you think--in a way that is atypical for Vollmann--the reader was meant to feel some degree of satisfaction, despite the cruelty of it, when the Englishmen were left to die of cold and hunger by Indians who in theory could have helped them more? They, and those who had come before them, had cynically used the natives while holding them in contempt and never fulfilling obligations to the natives... but still...
Or, looking from another angle, is this another step in the corruption of the natives and the decline of their society? Or is it all of the above?

[Zadignose]

The issue of being confused about Jane in the first hundred pages came up in the Week one thread. I said that it's sensible to be confused about this, and I'll respond further here:

I also, at first, took it to be that Subzero had a wife, and her name was perhaps Jane, but I'd say now that there's no clear distinguishing reality. I.e., there are no grounds for actually answering such a question. Subzero's wife may exist in another century, and Reepah's already calling him "John" in the "present" timeframe, so who's to say that there's any difference between Franklin and Subzero at all? Subzero is married to Jane, okay, but there's no reason to think that his Jane is a twentieth-century Jane that is distinct from 19th-Century Jane Franklin. Right?

[Jim]

Zadignose wrote: "The issue of being confused about Jane in the first hundred pages came up in the Week one thread. I said that it's sensible to be confused about this, and I'll respond further here:

I also, at fir..."

"Captain Subzero" is a nickname for a character named John...

[Zadignose]

But there are enough anachronisms or atemporalisms (I'm making that word up) throughout the book that we have no reason to suppose 20th-Century-John-Subzero couldn't be phoning up his 19-th-Century-Jane wife. To some degree, this book is mystical and time-spanning. It's not two stories that are analogous, or the stories of two people, one of whom imagines he's a reincarnation of John Franklin. This fourth "Dream" defies such logical divisions. Subzero is, at least partially, John Franklin the explorer, and thus he is married to John Franklin's wife. He may or may not have a contemporary Jane too... Jane does, at some point, occupy the same apartment with John and Reepah, though her real presence there seems just as doubtful as Subzero's friend Seth's participation in John Franklin's party of exploration.

[Jim]

I finished the book last night. Overall, one of my favorites of the series. Despite the time-jumping, and twinning, and so on, the book was very comprehensible. I think that Vollmann's personal experience in the arctic made it possible for him to create an easily believable and understandable world. His own encounters with arctic cold makes his descriptions of the explorers' struggles somehow more valid.

[Zadignose]

Ah, glad to hear you liked it so much. I thought the part where he recounts the expedition to the weather station surprisingly compelling, as it seems the most literal account of his own research experience. (But what do I know?) Meanwhile, after the novel is through, the exchange of letters and the efforts to determine some of the facts about the relocations shows Vollmann's sympathetic side, so we can distance him as an author from some of the more unsavory aspects of the character Subzero.