Applying 'coughing-bear' logic to this one is interesting, isn't it: had Peter not mucked up the boat exercise, he probably would have gone to Selby's for the holidays...and he and Nick probably wouldn't have walked along the Undercliff, and maybe not gone to Mariners, and . PESKY KIDS.
I like the detail of Peter leaving the window and making the bed all crumby: very much a certain sort of 14-year-old boy, perhaps one enjoying the the break from naval discipline. (Giles, one senses, is Bristol-fashion by nature.) I enjoy the Marlows' propensity to dufferdom, actually, being a bit of a duffer myself.
Traitor is pretty pitiless and dark, actually (Fabian's 'mistake' about the depth of the water, the rough lineaments of which are replicated by his descendant; Whittier's 'little corpusses'; 'the children are expendable'; Anquetil's caution in not attempting a solo rescue, &c. &c.). I'm pretty sure that Forest meant her older readers at least to intuit that Selby felt a sense of sexual threat from Foley, whether justified or not. Nicola's words are "I don't mean Foley wanted beer bought. I mean----' I think the long dash isn't her imagination failing her so much as her not having the vocabulary to say to her brother, 'I think the officer who you've got a bit of a rave for might have been trying to sexually abuse your best friend.' It's surely significant that it's explicitly placed in the context of Peter's poor judgement of character.
Peter's selfishness is surely also a child's inability quite to understand mortality: something he's going to have less of a problem with by the end of the book.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-06-20 10:42 pm (UTC)I like the detail of Peter leaving the window and making the bed all crumby: very much a certain sort of 14-year-old boy, perhaps one enjoying the the break from naval discipline. (Giles, one senses, is Bristol-fashion by nature.) I enjoy the Marlows' propensity to dufferdom, actually, being a bit of a duffer myself.
Traitor is pretty pitiless and dark, actually (Fabian's 'mistake' about the depth of the water, the rough lineaments of which are replicated by his descendant; Whittier's 'little corpusses'; 'the children are expendable'; Anquetil's caution in not attempting a solo rescue, &c. &c.). I'm pretty sure that Forest meant her older readers at least to intuit that Selby felt a sense of sexual threat from Foley, whether justified or not. Nicola's words are "I don't mean Foley wanted beer bought. I mean----' I think the long dash isn't her imagination failing her so much as her not having the vocabulary to say to her brother, 'I think the officer who you've got a bit of a rave for might have been trying to sexually abuse your best friend.' It's surely significant that it's explicitly placed in the context of Peter's poor judgement of character.
Peter's selfishness is surely also a child's inability quite to understand mortality: something he's going to have less of a problem with by the end of the book.