Anyway, so the elves all bow and then start laughing and smiling like idiots. All of them. They’re even described as moving “as one”. Yup, this is officially a city populated by clones. And apparently they’re all Stepford Wives as well.
And yet, not so many chapters later, the elves are no longer uniform clones but go in for extreme individuality. Whatever Paolini was reading, watching or otherwise being influenced by must have shifted in between these chapters and the upcoming ones. The editors really should have picked up on that.
Apparently so, because she lays it all out in detail, and doesn’t panic or cry or anything else so disturbingly realistic. In fact, nobody cries. Ergs just gets angry, and Izzy sheds – say it with me – a single tear.
A couple of years ago, work forced me to go to a motivational business seminar. One of the speakers was John Peters, a British pilot who was shot down and tortured during the First Gulf War. While he never broke down or seemed close to tears when describing his experience, you could hear the pain and emotion in his voice, even as level as it was. And that was a man who had probably talked about that part of his life hundreds of times before.
Now, I do think that Arya could legitimately recount what happened to her without seeming emotion, provided she had detached herself enough beforehand. The problem is, that's neither healthy nor shown by Paolini. He wants to show the idealised stoicism of the elves, but isn't willing to go the whole hog in his depiction of to explore the potential consequences of having to live up to that ideal.
no subject
And yet, not so many chapters later, the elves are no longer uniform clones but go in for extreme individuality. Whatever Paolini was reading, watching or otherwise being influenced by must have shifted in between these chapters and the upcoming ones. The editors really should have picked up on that.
A couple of years ago, work forced me to go to a motivational business seminar. One of the speakers was John Peters, a British pilot who was shot down and tortured during the First Gulf War. While he never broke down or seemed close to tears when describing his experience, you could hear the pain and emotion in his voice, even as level as it was. And that was a man who had probably talked about that part of his life hundreds of times before.
Now, I do think that Arya could legitimately recount what happened to her without seeming emotion, provided she had detached herself enough beforehand. The problem is, that's neither healthy nor shown by Paolini. He wants to show the idealised stoicism of the elves, but isn't willing to go the whole hog in his depiction of to explore the potential consequences of having to live up to that ideal.