Re: [bookclub] Dad and the grey man (long)

[Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>]

On 7 Feb 2000, Lucian Paul Smith wrote:

> [Note:  Spoilers ahoy for Grip, and a couple small ones for 'So Far' and
> 'Hitchhikers'.]
> 
> Second April (dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu) wrote:
> : The following is a "firestarter" post about Stephen Granade's game Losing
> : Your Grip, under the auspices of the IF Book Club. The Book Club is
> : organized by Lucian P. Smith; for more information, visit
> : the web page at http://www.textfire.com/bookclub/. (With no period at the
> : end.)
> 
> [snip excellent analysis of grey man and father--essentially, that the
> grey man is an exaggeration of your father, with whom you have a poisoned
> relationship already.]
> 
> : Frankie and the head (one and the same, or at least strongly linked,
> : I think, given the mustache--Frankie seems to represent your powers of
> : introspection, and burying the head suggests that you've tried to avoid
> : introspection insofar as it might bring up something messy and
> : complicated, i.e., the sludge, when you really start poking around, i.e.,
> : getting the lights back on in the dark corners -- though who Sam is I
> : can't fathom)
> 
> Ah, you've missed some clues here.  I give you a quote from the head:
> 
>    "An interesting end, don't you think?  Jiminy Cricket never had such an
>    exit scene."
> 
> Jiminy Cricket was, of course, Pinnochio's conscience.  And, in fact, if
> you type ">X CONSCIENCE" it gives you a description of the head again.

Hmmm. I didn't think to try X CONSCIENCE, though I did catch the Jiminy
Cricket reference.

I'm still not sure this is wrong, in that conscience and the capability
for introspection are pretty closely linked--at least, it seems like Terry
has buried his conscience and refused to look inward, fearing the guilt
and shame he'll discover if he does (i.e., the sludge). If his conscience
were fully functional, he wouldn't be so unwilling to confront the
internal truth--turn the lights back on. But yes, you're right, it's more
accurate to call the head the conscience.

> The moustache connection with Frankie is interesting, but I don't *think*
> it means he's also your conscience.  Perhaps a play on words with his
> name?  Your 'frankness' or some such?  That would tie into your assessment
> of him as your introspection.  Would the fact that Frankie had the
> sunglasses mean anything?  That you need something from him to be able to
> see things clearly that would otherwise be overwhelming? 

I was thinking about this--yes, but it's also important that the things
that you can't see clearly are _outside_--outside the building, literally,
and outside of Terry, figuratively. Getting the sunglasses from Frankie is
a (somewhat contrived) indication that getting your mental house in order
will also enable you to put the rest of your world back together.

I'm still not sure how diverting the avalanche fits into all this, though.
The grey man calls it "my avalanche," but does that mean it's coming from
outside you--from your father, or your perception thereof? Here, and in
the sludge, is where I start to lose my handle (my grip, even) on the
metaphor. What on earth is the heater--what's enabling you to combat the
tide of guilt, shame, fear that most people seem to accept as the sludge?
And how does vaporizing it set off some other catastrophic event, in the
form of the avalanche? And when you sacrifice yourself to divert the
avalanche, what's the RL analogue--you keep the external catastrophe from
wiping you out entirely, but how?

It's worth noting that the first three fits all end with some sort of
self-sacrifice--for the faeries in fit 3, for Buddy or the huddled shape
in fit 2, for, um, Frankie/the building in fit 1.

> I'm afraid I'm blanking of any similar puns with 'Sam', though.  And why
> would Frankie swear at Sam when the sludge appears?  Did Sam have
> something to do with the sludge's reappearance?  Frankie's later comments
> seem to indicate Sam was only studying it.  Unless *Sam* is the
> conscience/head.  [Checks game--no, 'X SAM' doesn't work when in the
> presence of the head.  Scratch that theory.]

I can't think of any puns myself. Frankie refers to Sam as "one of [his]
colleagues," and says, "He left mid-afternoon yesterday" or some such
thing. "Colleagues" might suggest that Sam is also tied into the powers of
introspection, since we also learn that he thought there was a connection
between the spheres and the sludge...perhaps, in light of that, Sam is the
part of Terry's mind that's been trying to look at his troubles rationally
and make sense of them, and the breakdown that landed Terry in the ward is
Sam's giving up and leaving.

> And what, exactly, does it mean that the head's your conscience?  Going
> through the game without one is another connection with Pinnochio--in the
> original, Pinnochio stomps on Jiminy near the very beginning of book, and
> goes through the rest of his adventures without a conscience.  Does anyone
> know what kicking the head at the beginning does to the end game?  In
> fact, there are three events I'd like to know about:
> 
> -kicking the head
> -vaporizing the sludge
> -freeing the fairies

I can say that vaporizing the sludge doesn't affect the endgame, though I
don't know about kicking the head. I've never done anything other than
free the faeries--if you don't free them, you don't get the hospital scene
at the end (your father and the strings) though I think that's the only
difference. As I said in my review in SPAG a while back, it feels
analytically wrong to me that failing to vaporize the sludge doesn't
affect the rest of the game--I mean, I thought that meant that Terry
hasn't gotten his emotional ducks in a row (and I imagined the sludge
going on to fill up the entirety of his mind). Surely that should make
more of a difference than simply five fewer points. (Maybe I'm wrong here,
but the first time I played through it, I didn't get rid of the sludge,
and I got to the end with 95 points--and I didn't notice anything
different when I did get rid of the ssludge.

> So what does it mean that Terry's conscience's services "were no longer
> needed in the hall, so [he] was turned out in this rain,"?  Certainly, it
> makes Terry more culpable in his relationship with his father, and makes
> the strings a stronger reality in the end.  I suppose the whole quest of
> the game could be to reinstate your conscience, in a manner of speaking.

Where is the quote from? I don't remember it. I'd say the initial premise
is to reinstate your conscience--whether you lash out or go along
initially doesn't affect whether you decide ultimately to try to change
things. 

> : 3. But the point of Grip, to my eye, is straightening out your
> : relationship with Dad, and acknowledging the great extent to which you're
> : responsible for the problems by (a) inventing a sort of shadow- dad and
> : (b) provoking and manipulating your father rather than trying to
> : understand.
> 
> Are there specific examples that exist in Grip that point to the
> second?  I agree that that's what you're *told* you did, but I don't
> remember ever actually *seeing* it.  I could be mis-remembering, though,
> or it could be in bits I missed.

The end, really, is the main point where you see it, with the strings--in
fact, I think the point is that you couldn't see it before, not until
you put aside your hostility toward your father and stopped blaming him
for everything. Though your encounter with him in fit 3 also suggests that
you can, and do, hurt him just as much as he hurts you.

Duncan Stevens
dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu

But buy me a singer to sing one song--
Song about nothing--song about sheep--
Over and over, all day long;
Patch me again my thread-bare sleep.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay