What did you think of Chapter Five?
Here we meet the Week Team. Or should I say the Weak Team.
Monday: we haven't learned his name yet, is Secretary
Tuesday: "Brother" Gogol, Polish,
Wednesday: The Marquis de St. Eustache
Thursday: Our Gabriel Syme
Friday: Professor de Worms, appropriate name for a guy who's half dead
Saturday: Bull, has opaque glasses which really frustrate Syme, who can't see his eyes.
Sunday: President. Has a huge face, almost too big to be real, huge body. He is a person enlarged.
Like popes and supreme court justices, each Weekday team member must die before the "Day" is replaced by someone else.
Dictionary alert: diablerie, cicerone
Dream evidence: "the last nightmare touch..." "the eerie sensation of having strayed into a new world..." the way Sunday's face is described.
Funniest line: "I'd better tell you that he is carrying out his notion of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most extraordinary lengths just now."
Another funny piece: one of them was a "common or gardener Dynamiter" not unlike how people describe a certain kind of snake.
Another funny moment: when Syme considers Sunday's great weight possibly tipping the balcony right off. Certainly Chesterton had to consider his own considerable weight in moments such as this. And there are stories where Chesterton entered a hansome cab, for example, tipping it back so far that it appeared as if the horses were flying for a moment.
Artist's touch: Chesterton describes Sunday as "enlarged terribly to scale".
Micawber (dark humor) detail: de Worms moves as if at any moment an arm or leg might fall off. *shivers*
Question: What does "spiritual evil" smell like?
Monday, February 26, 2007
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In many literary instances (not necessarily Chesterton), spiritual decay is linked to physical decay, so the rancid smell of rotting meat or other forms of putrification are linked to spiritual evil.
ReplyDeleteIn C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair, however, spiritual numbness- i.e., lack of interest, destruction of the will and spirit and mind, unthinking obediance to evil, is brought about by a soothing, sweet-smelling incense that dulls resistance.