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Old 05-16-2019, 01:33 PM   #22
fantasyfan
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady View Post
So the family was in their sights for generations, but somehow they couldn't manage to wipe out the line a few hundred years back? It all came down to this one family--and yet Jack couldn't kill the baby FIRST, when he was the primary target and the primary threat?
This point is well taken and quite difficult, if possible at all, to refute. I suppose this is the problem of any of those stories that work on the principle of changing history by eliminating a particular person. For instance, for me to exist I need every bit of DNA provided by all of my ancestors. Eliminate any one of them and I as a specific DNA construct no longer exist.

So why not kill any of the earlier ancestors? Well, the effect would be far less predictable (and it wouldn’t be as good a story).

Gaiman is also working with the idea of the prophecy that must be fulfilled when it is made. The assumption is that Time is a unity and our experience of it in terms of past/present/future an illusion. Thus, the fact that Jack kills the family members in the order he does is part of the pattern and inevitable. The prophecy is made and in a sense has already happened. Another interesting variation on this can be seen in Asimov’s The End of Eternity and “The Red Queen’s Race”. Philosophically this raises questions about the nature of free will and determinism but it can deepen a story.

On another level, I very much enjoyed the use of different dimensions and forms of reality that Gaiman plays with. The world is shown to be far more complex than the Jacks imagined.

Last edited by fantasyfan; 05-16-2019 at 03:24 PM.
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