Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
We end up with effectively two quite separate story lines: The story of the Electric Monk and Gordon Way is told in parallel with the events surrounding Richard, Dirk, Reg and the 4-billion-year-old-ghost. Yes the two sets of events touch on each other, but just touch, either could have existed without the other with only very minor changes to the text.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
On the issue of the two storylines that you raise gmw, I thought they did tie together. The ghost of Gordon was released, as it were, after he finally managed to get through to Susan’s machine with the vital information about Michael, thus for once doing something of real value for others instead of himself. Indeed, of value to all life on earth!
|
The two plots run more or less parallel, but are linked first and last and I think are managed quite elegantly by Adams. The monk found the door that linked back to Reg, hence his showing up at St. Cedd's on the critical night - otherwise, that might have been a little too random. And as Bookpossum points out, the ghost of Gordon was key to the resolution.
I think this structure is paralleled in the two Coleridge poems; I read the ghost as an Ancient Mariner figure and of course the slimy wiggly things had their origin in that poem. I need to reread both poems more closely now that I'm done.
My own real issue with the resolution is that it's an example of people (almost) doing something fatal that any dunderhead on the sidelines knows is a very. bad. idea., like the girl who decides to explore the deserted house in the dead of the woods, on her own. Anyone who's been exposed to the
Twilight Zone, as an earlier example, knows that aliens do not have man's best interest at heart. Reg wouldn't save the dodo, but was going to give the ghost another chance? There's no eyeroll big enough.
I was blindsided, however, in that I confidently expected the time-changing agecy to be used to undo Gordon's death, especially as it resulted from the time-travel aspect itself. But that would have been an example of the Hitler paradox, so I clearly didn't think that through.