From: "cilluff1@optonline.net" 
Subject: RE: (urth) Castaway with Spoilers
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 14:39:24 -0500

Blattid writes, prompted by Mantis' gender comment:

<<> So we are all in agreement that the narrator is female?

Huh?!? Sputter!?!=20

You know, the question of what sex (or age, or race, or any=20
other physical characteristic) of the narrator never came up=20
in my mind=2E Not once=2E In two readings less than two days=20
apart =2E=2E=2E=20

So, uh, any particular reason for thinking this? (I don't
think the "I love you" is intended that way=2E=2E=2E)>>

I read it as a man, but the passage that tipped me that way really can go
either way:  "=2E=2E=2EI was sick of talking to the other guys in the crew=
=2E  I'd
been talking to them ever since I signed on, and I knew what they were
going to say and the games they wanted to play and what all their jokes
were=2E"

I had read "the other guys in the crew" as modifying the narrator, making
the narrator male, but it just as easily could refer to the stranded gent=2E=
=20
The "the games they wanted to play" line though does have sexual
connotations to it, although that doesn't necessarily make the narrator
female=2E  I also thought her bawdy jokes of "was it as good for you as it=

was for her=2E=2E=2E" seemed like a "guy thing" to say, but I guess that i=
s
sexist of me and there's no reason a woman couldn't say that=2E

I do however like idea of the narrator being female -- she is the
antithesis of the Gaia, a nice duality=2E  She is the embodiment of the wh=
ite
world, anti-nature (White Goddess?  I've never read that but it makes you
think=2E=2E=2E), where not only do they not have trees but they try to mak=
e the
stranded gent forget about leaves entirely=2E  He speaks to her, just as h=
e
spoke to Gaia, because she is the embodiment of this anti-nature=2E  She
would like to know how to make him see the trees and hear the birds, but
She cannot do that anymore=2E

Incidentally, I do agree that the earth is "the" castaway as well the
stranded gent, which is why I've described him (clumsily) as the stranded
gent=2E  Note that the title actually isn't "The Castaway," it is simply
"Castaway" -- it refers to both earth and the man, so there is not any
singular "the" castaway, and it also lets the word act as a verb -- the
story is about how we castaway earth and nature, first on the planet
itself, and then by pounding its memory out of this last natural man, a ma=
n
whom we also castaway as having a "blown" mind=2E  Note also that all that=

white "suck[ed] the color out of everything except blood=2E  Only it never=

sucked the color out of him, and that made him special to me=2E"  Well, if=

he's alive, and has blood, why SHOULD it suck the color out of him?  Also,=

why should that be special to her -- because she and everyone else no
longer have blood or color=2E

- Shell=20

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