From: morrow@fnalo.fnal.gov (Lake Elmo, MN)
Subject: Re: Sandman:Men of good fortune
Organization: Calm Blue Water...and a Muskie the Size of Boise
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 06:16:58 GMT
X-Posted-From: fnalo.fnal.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

cen@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:
>  morrow@fnalo.fnal.gov (Thomas Elmo Edison) writes:
> 
> [Men of Good Fortune]
> 
>>> Living for as long as you wish and being an Endless' only friend is being
>>> "just folks"? *boggle* Constantine didn't think so.
>> 
>> 	I dunno; Gaiman hits the "folks is just folks" over and over again 
>> with Hob as observer/POV.  From page 23:  "I doubt I'm any wiser than I was
>> five hundred years back.  I'm older....Have I learned ought?  I've learned 
>> from my mistakes, but I've had time to commit more mistakes....Listen, I've 
>> seen people, and they don't change.  Not in the important things."
> 
> But this is all from the viewpoint of someone with little emotional engagement
> in the fates of men. He has stepped outside the ever-present pattern of death
> which shapes much of human existence.

	I disagree, and disagree strongly.  Hob _is_ human, and merely being
unable to die hasn't changed him--see the quote above.  Hob certainly
identifies himself with humanity, as well.

> His attitude to slavery is very much of
> the owner of the dollshouse, rather than a doll's.

	And that is true of perfectly ordinary people, including most
slaveholders.  People are exceedingly good at depersonalizing others--look at
the extreme objectification of women in Western society.  Hob was merely acting
like a person.
	And Hob = doll owner conflicts with Hob = doll below :-)

> Dream is involved in the patterns of people with a similar emotional
> detachment. 

	So this is why Dream and Hob are friends?  I'll think about it.
I saw the friendship as an expression of human characteristics in Dream, not
inhuman characteristics in Hob.  Dream is an anthropomorphic personification,
after all.

> He realises where the true control should lie, however, as the
> self-absorbed Desire does not.
> 
	Not sure what you mean here.

>> 	Who Hob is has zip to do with the theme.  Hob enables the story to
>> observe a long stretch of human history so as to make the judgment that 
>>people don't change.
> 
> No. It is important that Hob is who he is. We don't see a stocks'n'shares
> investor, a life-insurance scam, any deviation from the patterns men set at
> all. Hob is a doll. 

	Not sure what you mean here, either.

> His recognition of Dream's motives after several hundred
> years is important in looking at the power relationships of _A Doll's House_.

	This is interesting; I'll have to think about it.

> Hob breaks the pattern of inevitable death, but only with Death's consent. He
> is a slightly atypical example of humanity who sits well in the same arc as
> other explorations: a family which holds responsibility for major human 
> affect,
> a family which hoards a vortex, a dream playing at a human concerned with 
> issues of identity, people with blurred gender roles or integration with
> normality (the connoisseur, Hal, the serial killers as a set), the whole 
> gamut of observers and observed which make up a doll's house.

	I'll have to think about the observer/observed connection.  Hob is a
doll who obtains the doll house owner's perspective?

>> 	I still don't see the connection between MoGF and the rest of DH.
>> MoGF says that people don't change; they live and die with grand emotion and
>> petty scale.  They always have and they always will.  DH is populated with 
>> nothing but ABnormalities--the most MoGH-"human" character is Gilbert, who 
>> is 
>> an incarnate dream!  There is a vast difference in scale between MoGF and 
>> DH, and the two don't map to each other.  No fractal symmetry here.
> 
> But Hob himself is an anomaly, whatever his protestations of normality.

	Hob is not an anomaly, he's just this guy.  I admit that he lives
forever.  So what?  He has done _nothing_, thought _nothing_, been _nothing_
which sets him apart from the great masses of humanity.
	Unity Kincaid is the child of Desire.  Rose Walker is a vortex.  Rose's
brother is a pawn in a dream game.  The serial killers are unwitting acolytes
of a nightmare.  Gilbert is a dream incarnate.  Even Barbie has become heir to
a dream skerry.  They are unique and separate.  Their thoughts, dreams, deeds,
existences are _not like ours_.
	(Although I suppose Hal, Zelda, Chantal, and Rose's mother are 
human in a way the rest aren't.  Problems fitting into society are fundamental
to human nature.)
-- 
"Don't be humble.  You're not that great."                                     
--Golda Meir                                                                   
  
elmo (morrow@physics.rice.edu,morrow@fnal.fnal.gov)