"Ludgate, then? whichever, 'twas Gaol. It took me till I was lying among the Rats and Vermin, upon the freezing edge of a Future invisible, to understand that my name had never been my own,— rather belonging, all this time, to the Authorities, who forbade me to change it, or withhold it, as 'twere a Ring upon the Collar of a Beast, ever waiting for the Lead to be fasten'd on.... One of those moments Hindoos and Chinamen are ever said to be having, entire loss of Self, perfect union with All, sort of thing. Strange Lights, Fires, Voices indecipherable,— indeed, Children, this is the part of the Tale where your old Uncle gets to go insane,— or so, then, each in his Interest, did it please ev'ryone to style me. Sea voyages in those days being the standard Treatment for Insanity, my Exile should commence for the best of Medical reasons."
* * * * * * * * * *
Lines 52-56 Vulgarized:
"Maybe not the Tower of London. Possibly Ludgate. Whatever it was, it was jail. It wasn't until I was at my lowest, lying among the filthy beasts, my future completely erased now and unknowable, that I understood what a name meant. It wasn't something for me at all. It wasn't my identity or some affectation of my person and personality. No, it was a label so They could identify me. It was itself a prison, a shackle, a leash to keep me at bay or moving in the proper direction or, ultimately, in Their control. One of those moments of pure ego loss, only hinted at by stories from the East, near enlightenment where I felt one with the universe and with a pure ability to understand all. I could see strange lights, phantom fires, and heard voices in many languages and strange tongues. Yes, kind Brae and you creeps, your Uncle went insane in jail. At least, that's what everybody else decided. And since I was now a disgrace to Father and apparently beyond all rational thought, I was sent across the sea, being that sea voyages were a cure for insanity. Or at least that's what the same people who said I was crazy believed. More probably they just wanted all the loons in Australia and America."
Subtext:
While in jail, Reverend Cherrycoke seems to have ingested ergot, either from the dirty conditions or having been fed some moldy bread. Because if this isn't an acid trip then it must not have been me doing all of that acid in my late teens and early twenties. In fact, I had the exact loss of ego one time when I took too many mushrooms. I wound up in the parking lot of a strip club in San Jose (mainly because the DJ inside knew my friend Paul and kept referencing him, calling him "Punky Boy," which caused everybody in the club to look at our table and the paranoia it was building inside me was too much to bear. So I told Paul, "I've got to get out of here." And he said, "Why? Are you going to cut somebody's head off?" Which he said way too excitedly). While in the parking lot, I began to believe that the person I was . . . the person who had just graduated college and was going to go cross country in his VW bus after which was going to visit several countries in Asia . . . was a figment of my imagination whom I had made up to make my life as a vagrant palatable. I resolved myself to this sudden realization that I was only now seeing reality and that all of my plans, and my recent past, had been hallucinations and I was just waking up into the real world. I wasn't even sure of my name which, according to Cherrycoke, was probably me finally finding freedom. Eventually I saw my friends walking toward me from the club and the hallucination dissipated.
Cherrycoke's "trip" while in jail isn't "being Hanged." So which is it? Was he nearly hanged which sent him on his mission to whistleblow everybody in town? Or, like his easy change of the story from the Tower to Ludgate, is his story malleable? Whatever the case, this ergot trip is much like his death and resurrection. In the first, Cherrycoke leaves behind his old body to rise a new man. In this case, he realizes his name is a choke chain for Them and leaves it behind. Was "Cherrycoke" his real name? Earlier, he refers to his father as "Grandsire Cherrycoke," but that could simply be so the Twins don't get confused. I mean, Cherrycoke is a weird name for 1786, right?!
I obviously don't think Cherrycoke went insane (see my ergot theory as evidence) and neither does Cherrycoke, as he states "did it please ev'ryone to style me" insane. He simply believes he had a spiritual experience because he doesn't know what ergot is. And he welcomes the change of continent as it is symbolic of his loss of identity and his shedding of the name They own.
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