The Islanders Week 6: Peace Earned to Half Completed

RichardAbbott

@clash_bowley said:

@RichardAbbott said:
Here's another wildly speculative and quasi-psychological interpretation - make of it what you will.

The tropical battleground is passion.

Except the southern continent is antarctic, colder than the northern continent.

Yes, so it seems when I have looked at other people's attempts to interpret the geography. Until recently I had assumed this myself, but then read the Paul Kincaid review that @Apocryphal quoted "a cold northern continent whose technologically advanced nations were locked in a perpetual war, and a largely uninhabited southern desert continent where this war was mostly fought out" and it all seemed to make so much more sense than having two polar continents. So I got excited with thoughts of Europe/Africa, or whatever, and thought for a while that I was getting to grips with it.

But it seems that you are right (along with @Ray_Otus and indeed myself at an earlier stage), and that it really is two polar continents. Ah well. I'm back to not really understanding the setting...

clash_bowley

I really don't think one is supposed to understand the setting, @RichardAbbott!

Apocryphal

It’s an interesting idea that the world might describe the psyche, but I don’t know enough about the structure of the mind to comment. I suspect the world-building is not _that_deep. That we have an archipelago that is geographically in the middle and politically in the middle and technologically in the middle is probably enough of a metaphor.

NeilNjae

@RichardAbbott said:
Here's another wildly speculative and quasi-psychological interpretation - make of it what you will.

I think it makes about as much sense as any other deep reading of the book's symbolism!