Dear Kelley,
Chocolate milkshakes.
Ah. Damn… And I’m usually pretty good with metaphors. I pulled a Buckner on that one (Red Sox player, ball went flying between his legs, lost the World Series, attempted suicide after the game, but the bus went between his legs). I completely missed it. I thought the crocodile was a metaphor for madness…
I am new to science fiction and have been reading more and more of it since last month.. trying to understand the scientific part of it. I think I overlooked the metaphor in order to understand something that I didn’t really need to… which is crazy… when I was in high school, I lived for metaphors… and even crazier when, here, it’s kind of the whole point. Well, now that I know the crocodile is a metaphor for that fear you mentioned, I’m going to reread Solitaire.
take care,
Lindsey
No Buckners here, amiga. You didn’t misread. The crocodile is certainly a metaphor for madness. That’s even made explicit in the text (“She wanted to lie back and rest in the jaws of madness.”) It’s just that I think the equation “well, she was alone for a really long time so she went nuts” is too simplistic. Madness, like anything else, is a specific experience. So it was my job to imagine it specifically, and to make it particular to Jackal. That’s why I describe the crocodile as being one embodiment of her fear – she is so afraid of “not being herself” that her fear threatens to pull her apart and swallow her up.
I believe this happens. Things we fear come to rule our lives, if we allow it. Jackal’s fear is influencing her to make bad choices right from the opening of the book. For me, the VC section was (among other things) my chance to explore that intersection of fear and choice. Jackal fights off the crocodile and doesn’t give in to madness, but that’s not the end of her struggle with fear. She falls into a much more subtle trap of fear when she turns herself to stone, when she erases the people and things that she loves so they can’t hurt her anymore. And so on. Fear has many ways to control us, some of which seem so sensible and comforting at the time. I regret the impact it has had on my life, which is of course one reason I write about it.
And please remember that this is just my version of the story. You get to read Solitaire any way you want. I can tell you what happens to Jackal, and I can tell you what it means to me, but it’s your job to decide what it means to you. That’s one of the biggest pleasures of story for me (and story can be words, music, movies, theatre, visual art) – it becomes mine, filtered through my experience, my imagination, my hopes and fears. The best stories help explain myself to me, or show me something that I want to be or feel or do. And if all someone takes away from Solitaire is a newly-discovered taste for brandy and orange juice, that’s cool with me. It’s the connection, large or small, that matters.