"Are you saying that a sixth-rate is beneath you? Would you prefer to remain ashore, and take up quarters in Bedlam? It has made a man of many in your Situation. Some have come to enjoy fairly meaningful lives there. Or if it's some need for the Exotic, we might arrange for a stay in one of the French Hospitals...."
* * * * * * * * * *
Lines 60-64 Vulgarized:
"Oh? You have a problem with us treating you like less than a person? Ignoring your will and your desires? Some miniscule nothing so far beneath the true mechanisms of power . . . you have a problem with the terrible voyage we're sending you on? Well, if you're going to make trouble, we can always offer you worse. How about a stay in the insane asylum? That should put some hair on your chest. Other patients we've sent there to die have found meaning in their final years cut short by the imprisonment and torture. Or if you're really intent on some high and mighty adventure, how about the insane asylums in France? They're really fucking horrendous!"
Subtext:
People in positions of power believe they can do whatever they want to anybody with less power and those people should express unending gratitude for the meager scraps of attention and care they've been given. And if they don't express gratitude for what amounts to nothing, less than nothing, or worse than nothing, authority figures believe punitive measures are called for. "How dare the peasants want more than they have? Don't they know we could be torturing and murdering them?!" Which of course they are doing to them but not in a way that seems unhealthy to the rich and powerful. "Sure their children starve because we hoard all the resources and give them no opportunity for financial stability. But it's not like we're hunting them for sport!"
Listen to Them for They are often explicit in what They're saying.
I first read this book when I was twenty-five and I don't remember being this sympathetic to Reverend Cherrycoke. Like Slothrop, he really has been at the mercy of far greater powers. He's been manipulated right out of Britain by Them, simply for striving for some kind of justice. Which means, possibly, that many of the other characters we meet in Cherrycoke's travels across America were also people fighting against the system and driven across the sea in an effort to escape. This really falls in line with my theory about frontiers, our tendency to flee rather than fight corrupt systems, and why the left coast of America is as liberal as it is, for the most part.
That theory, in brief (and in regards to white Western Civilization only. That's the "in brief" part. There are plenty of problems with how this "expansion toward the frontier" played out), is that those who don't fit in with the current society rarely have the power to fight back and change it. So they were always driven out, generally toward the frontier. My favorite books all seemed to be about how the protagonist fought against the system but ultimately could only flee. Catch-22. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Possibly House of Leaves (any commentary on House of Leaves must begin with "possibly"). Even The Grapes of Wrath although Tom Joad threatens to keep fighting before he disappears. People throughout history rarely had the ability to change corrupt systems from the bottom up. So they just left to find their own way. Which meant the most liberal people fleeing wound up on the west coast of America. Where they suddenly found nowhere else to flee. Which meant they had to fight. Of course things are getting worse and more "uncivil." Because the assholes of the world have nowhere else to drive us to. They've got our backs against the wall and they still think they can do whatever the fuck they want to us. And we're not taking their Nurse Ratched shit anymore.
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