Thanks for the explanation
issybird, and for the article link
Catlady.
On Ash's point about why Harriet shot Roy, I wondered if it was because she had talked to him to see if he had anything other than being good at baseball to recommend him. Then of course you can't expect too much in the way of logic with a homicidal maniac.
While looking again at that early section, I picked up a couple of points I had forgotten, that fit in with earlier things we have discussed.
1. Another bird reference - the first ball that Roy pitches (right term?) from the Whammer's viewpoint:
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He saw the ball spin off Roy's fingertips and it reminded him of a white pigeon he had kept as a boy, that he would send into flight by flipping it into the air. The ball flew at him and he was conscious of its bird-form and the white flapping wings, until it suddenly disappeared from view.
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2. Harriet's talk with Roy after he defeated the Whammer is full of classical allusions, and she asks Roy if he had ever read Homer. (Maybe that's
issybird's link to Paris and Helen and the Trojan War.) After their talk,
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Roy worried out some other things he might have said but had no confidence to put them into words. He felt curiously deflated and a little lost, as if he had just flunked a test. The worst of it was he still didn't know what she'd been driving at.
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