The Dream Archipelago Week 14: The Discharge, conclusion

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Summary

  • Our protagonist completes his journey southward. Along the way, his belongings are searched and his map of the islands is confiscated and destroyed. He's docked some pay and his name is given over to the Black Caps (presumably as a warning). They don't find his diary, however, and anyway the names of the islands are the map are ingrained in his memory.
  • He arrives on the southern continent, trains for a bit, then embarks on a train to travel to his new unit.
  • After a lonely journey (despite there being other people) he eventually joins his unit - a grenade launcher unit.
  • There is some faffing about with new equipment... new training... and purposeless and constant movement.
  • Eventually it seems like the big push is imminent, and he decides that this is the time he must discharge himself if he ever will. He flees cross country and shelters in a brothel, where they feed and dress him rakishly in civilian clothing.
  • After a time, he's taken out to a dark motor launch on the sea, along with other escapees (also in rakish clothing). The launch heads north.
  • He jumps off the boat at the first inhabited island, named Keeilin. Someone calls him a 'Steffer' - which seems to mean 'deserter'.
  • Gradually, he makes his way north: Fellenstel, Manlayl, Meequa, Emmeret, Sentier. He learns how to cope, to be self sufficient and travel slow.
  • After another year he reaches Mesterline and stays for a while, but when some black-caps arrive he once again moves on.
  • Another year, travelling, living off his wits, assisted by a network of well-meaning whores. He practices drawing, painting.
  • Eventually, he gets to Muriseay and settles down. He makes a living selling pictures of sea-scapes and harbour scenes to the tourists on the street. He spends his spare time in the studio and at the museum, experimenting and learning about tactilism. Eventually, he purchases a space where he can make a private gallery of his work.... and five years pass.
  • Then one day, while he's alone in his gallery, the black-caps arrive. They tell him he's been discharged and zap him with synaptic batons. But one of the black-caps gets stuck to a tactilist painting after he zaps it. And he can't free himself.
  • Though he is injured by one of the batons, he manages to get downstairs in the confusion and lose himself in the maze or rooms. The other black-caps chase him, but they also get stuck to paintings, like flies to fly paper.
  • Smoke rises from the interaction between the batons and the paintings. The place catches fire. Our soldier flees into the night streets.
  • The next morning, he was aboard the first ferry of the day, heading for other islands. Their names chimed in his mind, urging him on.

Discussion

So, what do you make of it? Lots of innuendo - as an ex soldier, he's a discharge. He discharged himself. The black-caps use synaptic batons, that cause them to stick to... artwork? Tactilist paintings? The painting are art - expressive, interactive art.

One of them shouted at me to help them.
'What is this stuff? What's holding him against the board?'
The man started screaming as the smouldering pigments reached his hands, but still he could not release himself. His pain, my agonies, contorted his boy.
'His dreams!' I cried boldly. 'He is a captive of his own vile dreams!'

He discharges twice in the story (in two different contexts), and both times he flees immediately afterward.

Again, does the litany of islands suggest a conclusion to the work? What about the last line - 'their names chimed in his mind, urging him on'. This reminds me again of the notion that islands are people - like characters in a novel, whose names chime in the mind of the author (or the reader). Can we, I wonder, read the 'discharging' as being akin to an author completing a novel? He puts it out there - by himself. Sometimes he's embarrassed by it. sometimes it's an escape. When done, he has to move on, looking for new places, new characters.

Comments

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    There are elements of memory and hallucination too. We're told that tactilist art destroys memory, so we're supposed to infer that the narrator can't remember his childhood due to an over-indulgence in art. This supports the notion that the tableaux he encountered earlier in the story were mostly in his head.

    The forces of law and order meet art, don't understand it, but are trapped, overwhelmed, and destroyed by the experience. i wonder if that's a metaphor for anything?

    There's a lot unspoken about sex work, stigma, and the generosity of the oppressed. The narrator is saved by prostitutes, who are engaged with a fairly reliable "underground railroad" for deserters. Why are they so helpful? Why is sex work disdained? Or are we not supposed to comment on this, just accepting it's the same as in contemporary Western culture?

    "Wandering artist" is a motif from other stories by Priest: it was a key part of The Islanders. I can see it as being a metaphor for the work of an author, visiting situations and characters for a bit, then moving on.

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    I thought this was a good story - nicely constructed, and with an ending that while remaining on an unfinished journey, actually had some closure! This also made it a fitting end to the collection - though my kindle version tells me that the individual stories were separately published in a variety of locations and were only later drawn together.

    So whilst I can easily believe that CP arranged the collection to have this one ending it, I don't think this was his original intention. But as the collection has been constructed we have a pleasing symmetry of soldier stories at start and end (The Equatorial Moment + The Negation, ending with The Discharge), and also of travelling (The Equatorial Moment focuses on the shapes of the islands as you fly above them: The Discharge follows the soldier as he travels first south on the transport then back north on his own, in each case forming and creating his own map)

    The clash between the military and art is an odd one. Both appear to annihilate the other, in the protagonist's mind and in the underground gallery. But while I can sort of see how someone might argue that art overcomes war (not sure I agree, but I can see there would be a case for it) I can't see how war overcomes art? War and its trappings have, surely, inspired art both sympathetic and hostile to it? Maybe I'm missing something.

    As suggested by @NeilNjae I also can't quite fathom the role of prostitutes. Most of the time CP seems to draw on what you might call a conventional reaction on the part of his readership. But from time to time this other side emerges, of helping the victims. Most of the islanders seem indifferent to the plight of deserters, and the soldier here tries hard (though unsuccessfully) to conceal his identity as such: the only people who care are the black caps on the one hand, and prostitutes on the other. Is this intended to be men vs women? Rules vs empathy? I can't offhand see why all black caps should be male, but I also can't recall CP using "she" about any of them.

    The word discharge is what you might call multi-valued. We have talked about the two senses on the surface here - discharge from the military, and in the sexual sense. But we also use the word of discharging a responsibility in the sense of fulfilment, which is sort of akin to both those senses. And we also use it of firing a weapon, which again sits pretty close to the first two ideas.

    Anyway, I enjoyed this one and didn't have the sense of unfulfillment that we have talked about with some in this collection.

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    Another thing: Neil pointed out early on that all the main characters in this collection were not islanders, which suggested the islands were only a place you came to. One theme of this story is that the islands are also not a place you can settle down.
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    Unlike the rest of you, I didn't care much for this story. It was dull and predictable. CP again attempts to use technology as magic - the tactilist pigments - and fails through not understanding technology enough to lift my disbelief. His 3000 year old war is unconvincing and fails through not understanding war enough to lift my disbelief. These are not real things, these are metaphors he wants to employ. As soon as CP described how the artist arranged the gallery, I expected some group to chase him through it and get stuck in the paintings. The viewpoint character was a cypher, and I couldn't feel one way or another about him. While I enjoyed this book much more than the Islanders, it was very uneven for me. Some excellent creeptastic stories, and some meh. When CP can just assume a background on which to create his characters and plot, he shines. When he has to build something convincing, I question everything and render it unsatisfying. Perhaps it is just that I really dislike obvious authorial tricks. That would explain a lot.

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    @clash_bowley said:
    ...CP again attempts to use technology as magic ... and fails through not understanding technology enough...

    That's a really interesting thought, and (no doubt deliberately) reminded me of Arthur C Clarke's "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", an assertion I have never really bought into. Clarke, of course, did know technology, but I have never been convinced that he showed enough sympathy for the magical or spiritual sides of life to get way with that statement!

    But regardless of that, I have also been having something of an Andre Norton fest of late, and she was someone who could (IMHO) write successfully about both technology and magic in order to show both their points of contact and their points of divergence.

    So your comment about CP has sparked off some interesting comparisons in my mind about his writing and other people's.

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    @RichardAbbott said:
    That's a really interesting thought, and (no doubt deliberately) reminded me of Arthur C Clarke's "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", an assertion I have never really bought into. Clarke, of course, did know technology, but I have never been convinced that he showed enough sympathy for the magical or spiritual sides of life to get way with that statement!

    But regardless of that, I have also been having something of an Andre Norton fest of late, and she was someone who could (IMHO) write successfully about both technology and magic in order to show both their points of contact and their points of divergence.

    So your comment about CP has sparked off some interesting comparisons in my mind about his writing and other people's.

    Yes, I was indeed referring to Clarke's Law. And I agree about Andre Norton! Of course you know the corollary - "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology"?

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    @clash_bowley said:
    When CP can just assume a background on which to create his characters and plot, he shines. When he has to build something convincing, I question everything and render it unsatisfying. Perhaps it is just that I really dislike obvious authorial tricks. That would explain a lot.

    I think that's true. When Priest tries to give explanations for things, the stories fail. He's better at evoking feelings than revealing logic. When I read the "three thousand year war" I just rolled my eyes and moved on.

    @RichardAbbott said:
    I thought this was a good story - nicely constructed, and with an ending that while remaining on an unfinished journey, actually had some closure! This also made it a fitting end to the collection - though my kindle version tells me that the individual stories were separately published in a variety of locations and were only later drawn together.

    Looking at the dates, "Equatrorial Moment" and "The Discharge" were both published in 1999/2000, and the collection as a whole is copyright 1999 and 2009. So I suspect those two stories were written specifically to bookend the rest of the collection (and give fans a reason to re-buy old stories).

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