From: StoneOx17@aol.com
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2003 12:02:46 EST
Subject: (urth) DOORS: The hero's name

This question Spectacled Bear asked earlier about the hero's name (Wolfe 
always refers to him as "he") is making me wonder whether something 
strange is going on.  It later becomes clear in TAD that the protagonist's 
last name really is Green (e.g., the crate he gets is addressed to Mr. 
Green).  
The first time it's mentioned, however, the context is as follows.  He has 
gone to the downtown mental health center to look for Lara, and he mentions 
to the therapist that Lara's eyes are viridian.

   "Viridan, Mr. . . ?"
   "Green -- viridian's a bluish green."

Later in the conversation, the therapist calls him Mr. Green, and he wonders 
how she knew his name.  But we eventually discover that she should have 
known his name anyway, because she was a therapist that he had already 
been seeing regularly.  However, from the snippet extracted above, it seems 
that the therapist did not know his name when she first sees him.

I'm wondering whether it is possible that it really was his first time at the 
Mental Health Center, and if his name was not originally Green, but that
somehow the goddess altered reality so that he would ex post facto be a 
mental patient and thus not be believed (and maybe so that his name would 
be Green, which fits in well with the winter-spring-renewal-Attis theme)?   

This seems like a lot to be reading into those three dots above, but 
something similar happens with his first name.  During the "Lunch with
Lara" chapter, when he learns that the sea captain's first name was 
William, it seems to be implied, although not explicitly stated, that the 
hero's
first name is also William.  But later, at the fight, Lara introduces him as 
Adam K. Green.  Adam is a name that our hero comes up with when North
checks him in at the Grand Hotel pseudonymously as A. C. Pine, and 
Herr K. is what Klamm has been calling him throughout the book.  Also, 
as maybe a little more evidence that he never actually went to the therapist 
before the first session in the book, he never seems to recover his memory 
of this, although he does recover his memory of most of the things about 
Lara that he forgets after the electroshock treatments. 

The changing of his name fits in quite well with the theme of a man 
jettisoning his old life and rededicating it to the goddess, which I believe 
is
the central thrust of the book.  What do people think?  Am I yet another
fan who has gone off the deep end in overinterpreting?

-- Stone Ox
 

--