From: "Alex David Groce" <adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Weer is not dead.
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 13:29:17 

On Aug 26, 12:12am, William H. Ansley wrote:

	I agree--I only meant that Bobby is the "best" case I see for someone
killed by Weer (and a poor case, although it's easy to see how people blamed
him and how it surely changed his life)--and I don't see it as his test, or
failure.  I'm not sure that there IS an exact turning point where things went
wrong for Weer--I think the book is more about coming to understand what did
happen to him, not what might have been (although the headrest story does seem
suggestive of that...)

> In any case, the events that up to Bobby's death seem to be an accident,
> unless Weer is lying (always possible) or just mis-remembering to suit his
> own sense of what should have happened (as he says he may be doing to a set
> of Christmas memories - p. 20 last paragraph and continuing onto p. 21).
> But again, who else do we have to ask?
>
> What I am trying to say here is that I find this event to be a very poor
> choice for a turning point in Weer's life, if it is one. Weer is too young
> to realize the consequences of his actions and his actions certainly do not
> lead inevitably to Bobby Black's death. It really is not a matter of
> choosing to push or not push Bobby, but a choice of whether to fight him or
> not fight (leaving capitulation or flight, if flight from the attic is even
> possible). So it seems to me that we have a boy of five who has to make a
> choice to eschew violence or embrace it, a choice that will change his life
> forever, if we accept that this is seminal event that forms Weer into what
> he becomes.
>
> Let me try to be clear (for a change) one final time. I think that the
> events that followed from Bobby Black's death (Weer's parents leaving for
> Europe for two (?) years without him and his time spent under the care of
> Aunt Olivia) definitely did have a great deal of influence on the man he
> grew into. But, if the outcome of the fight with Bobby was a test for Weer,
> I don't think it was a fair one.



-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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