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Thoughts On "S"

~ by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst

Thoughts On "S"

Tag Archives: Szalome

Is Sola Deliberately Hiding Her Identity?

29 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by Brian Shipman in S, Ship of Theseus, Who Is Straka

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Doug Dorst, Filomela, FXC, JJ Abrams, Samar, Sola, Szalome, Vevoda, VMS

Sola appears to be cloaking her identity (intentionally?) throughout Ship of Theseus. This presents an interesting counterpoint to S’s situation: S is searching for his lost identity, while Sola appears to be concealing her known identity.

Here are clues that seem to indicate this. Please discuss your own observations in the comments…

  • She goes by different names (Sola, Szalome, Samar)
  • She costumes herself as a man in El H__
  • She changes roles repeatedly
    • Wealthy traveler on the liner Imperia, appearing as a casual reader in the tavern
    • Factory worker in B__
    • Part of the resistance in El H__
    • Companion to The Lady on Obsidian Island
    • Traveler on a ship like S’s
    • She is the girl in the century-old picture in El H__. And Khatef Zelh, when describing Samar, describes at least six separate roles she was known to have possibly played. Is it because she played all of them and different people are describing the Samar that they knew at the time?
  • She somehow seems to keep up with S’s valise in an undercover manner.
    • Someone seems to have obtained Stenfalk’s valise between B__ and G__. S left it at the base of the limestone wall but notices that the agents don’t have it when they arrest and murder Stenfalk. Sola was last seen in B__. Did she follow the group and recover the valise?
    • After S receives what appears to be the same valise in El H__, he is stripped of it briefly by a would-be assassin. Sola returns it to him, costumed as a man.
    • Sola recovers the valise that S left in The Territory after his encounter with the Governor and returns it to him in The Winter City.
    • Sola ensures that all of S’s supplies in the valise are in order before he takes it to Vevoda’s chateau.
  • She somehow seems to be aware of and secretly spying on and/or working against Vevoda before S even knows who Vevoda is.
    • She is in the tavern in the Old Quarter, appearing to casually read a book but probably watching one of Vevoda’s agents/detectives who is there taking notes. (16)
    • She secures a job in Vevoda’s factory under the name Szalome, doing some sort of book work that Pfeifer didn’t think needed done before. (116)
    • She leads S to the two detectives next to the Central Power plant so that he can witness the bomb exchange. (100)
    • She (probably?) is the one who rescues Stenfalk’s valise from the posse of detectives. (172)
    • She obtains the map to Vevoda’s chateau, along with the intelligence about the gala nine months away and find’s S in the Winter City in order to help him confront Vevoda and write the ending. (401-402)
  • She and S both conceal their identities together while on Vevoda’s estate as they prepare to confront him and his guests.

Is Sola concealing her identity? If so, why? And why conceal it from even S, as in El H__ when she is costumed as a man when returning the valise? What are your thoughts?

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A Stitch in Time Saves Nine?

24 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by Brian Shipman in S, Ship of Theseus, Uncategorized, Who Is Straka

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Doug Dorst, FXC, JJ Abrams, Samar, Sobreiro, Sola, Szalome, valise, VM Straka, VMS

In the ninth chapter of Ship of Theseus, S is summoned to a ninth-story apartment building. At the base of the building he sees that Arquimedes de Sobreiro died here on January 9th, 1625. S climbs nine flights of stairs and, for the first time in his life, connects with Sola face-to-face. They touch. S gets his valise back. S learns that Sobreiro actually lived – and died – in/from this apartment. S appears to actually hear the voices of Sobreiro and a woman, followed by a fading scream that might be someone plummeting nine stories to his death (p388). Sola tells S she has found Vevoda’s chateau, and that they can face him nine months from now in land time (p391).

It is also apparent that S spends the entire nine full months writing the ending of the story while in the orlop – all but the direct confrontation with Vevoda in the wine cellars (p412).

So many nines encircling the culmination of connections between Sola, S, Sobreiro, and the valise.

Other occurrences of the number nine…

  • S hears “nine sharp reports” as three boys throw rocks at the streetlights in the Old Quarter (p11).
  • Nine of the Agents S appears to be assigned with assassinating are women.
  • The sum of the numbers of the Agents (4, 34, 26, 47, 8, 9, 41) that we see S killing is 171, or 9 * 19.
  • FXC spent the better part of a year trying to translate the first nine chapters of Ship of Theseus. She went to Havana, Cuba for the 10th.
  • The symbol for #9 on the cave wall looks like the symbol S (p184)

Do you see other appearances of Nine in “S”?

Do you think Nine is some sort of clue? If so, what?

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Art, Interrupted

15 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Brian Shipman in S, Ship of Theseus, Who Is Straka

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Doug Dorst, JJ Abrams, Obsidian Island, S, Samar, Sola, storehouse, Szalome, The Territory, V.M. Straka, Vevoda, VM Straka, Winter City

ArtInterrupted

S experiences a pattern of experiencing great works of art, but before he can focus on them and truly experience them the way they were intended – he is interrupted by hardship and even tragedy.

The Tavern
In Chapter 1, S enters a tavern full of drunken strangers. But then, S notices a beautiful woman in an emerald green dress seated across the room. He gets the chance to sit with her briefly and talk with her, noticing that she is reading a large book called The Archer’s Tales by Archimedes de Sobreiro. But before S can learn the woman’s name or get a chance to peek inside the book, he is shanghaied.

The Wharf in B__.
After the bomb goes off, S lies in a semi-conscious state on the pavement. He has a flashback or vision of a young man on the same wharf with a young girl. She is rejecting him or his manuscript or both. The weight of the rejection in this tragic and poetic scene is so great that the young man appears to be about to throw himself into the sea. But then, S is interrupted by Stenfalk as he is wakened to reality and urged to leave.

The Cave
S, Corbeau, and Pfeifer race through the caves to escape Vevoda’s detectives and, as they do, stumble upon ancient cave paintings by the K__ people. The paintings appear to tell the story of their lives and even their creation. But S has no time to ponder them more than a glance as the trio rushes for safety. Even the paintings themselves seem to show the last cave painter interrupted as he attempts to tell his story.

The Storehouse at El H__
S spends less than two hours on land and probably less than a half hour inside the storehouse, but while there he sees priceless antiquities and scrolls and artworks being rushed underground to safety from the impending innovation of the city. He also notices an old painting of what appears to be Sola, here named Samar, painted by Archimedes de Sobreiro, author of The Archer’s Tales. Before S can learn more, his package arrives (the valise) and he is quickly rushed back to shore.

Obsidian Island
S enters the cabin atop the volcanic island and visits briefly with The Lady. S asks to look at the book labeled S and she says, “Sit. Look all you like. But mind the time.” S flips through the book, where every page is a charcoal drawing of his xebec in different states of assembly, and then realizes he must return to the ship. The Lady is gone because no one lives here.

The Governor’s Mansion
S climbs his way up to the mansion where the governor of The Territory lives. Along the way, he hears the out-of-place birdsong of a merlin, crow, oystercatcher, and magpie (Stenfalk, Corbeau, Ostrero, and Straka). But he is in a hurry to discover the identity of the governor. He finds the governor in an amazing rose garden, but he has not time to stop and smell them. He rushes to his task and then flees just as quickly.

The Winter City
S picks up a newspaper every single day in the Winter City. Each day he holds the paper to his nose and inhales, hoping to catch a whiff of the fragrant ink, but he never does. He takes the newspaper back to his modest apartment and writes in the narrow spaces between the newsprint.

Vevoda’s Chateau
As S prepares to poison the wine, he walks outside and notices in the distance a barn full of ill-gotten art. He longs for the time to investigate further, but he cannot because he must carry out his task. S. has no time to listen to Vevoda VI’s speech, which itself is interrupted later by the sound of a single gunshot. In the cellars, S moves past barrel after barrel of wine in his frantic attempt to locate Vevoda.

The End
It is only at the end of the book – the very last page – when finally S looks through Maelstrom’s spyglass and sees a vision of the xebec as it should be, with all parts in order and every board and sail in place and looking as perfect as can be.

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Unifying “S” and the Alternate Endings for Chapter 10

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Brian Shipman in S, Ship of Theseus, Who Is Straka

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Carl Jung, JJ Abrams, S, Samar, Ship of Theseus, Sola, Szalome, Unified Self, V.M. Straka, Vevoda, VM Straka

Broken S

At the beginning of “S.”, our character S. has no idea who he is. As the book Ship of Theseus begins, so does S’s memory. Near the end of the book, as S. travels to the Territory, he is in search of himself.

Maelstrom objects to S‘s quest to the Territory (p337)…

Int no time f’excursin allwheres jus’ so y’can solve y’self.

And Sola says of this same excursion (p337)…

Keep going. Keep paddling and you’ll find yourself.

And yet, on the way to the Territory, S. sees the petroglyphs in the hills, and one of them is his symbol – but half of it has been destroyed. Somewhere back in time, this symbol (like S.) was whole. But now (like S.), it is broken. It is missing a part of itself. It is dis-unified.

During S‘s trip to the Territory, he sees himself in Pfeifer – he sees that he has become exactly what he hated and attempted to destroy. He has become like Vévoda (see p316).

After S’s trip to the Territory, his ship is destroyed (like S. himself). He wakes up in the Winter City until Sola rescues him. And then he goes on his greatest quest – the quest to destroy Vévoda. In the orlop of his reconstructed ship, he writes the story of what will happen. He is able to write all of the story down except for what happens when he enters Vévoda’s wine cellar. He can’t seem to write down the ending of the final chapter …

He lays down his pen, cradles his head in his hands, concentrates for what might be hours or days, but he just cannot see it, and finally he understands that he is not meant to see it, not here; he must descend into the dark maze himself, before he will find Vévoda, this man who has had more influence over S.’s life than S. himself, find him and write the ending. (p412)

And so “S.” goes – both he and Sola – to descend in the dark maze and confront his greatest enemy – Vévoda – a man that neither S. nor we have ever actually seen.

When S. does actually descend into the cellars, there are four key characters in the official 1949 release of Ship of Theseus and in the four known alternate endings: S., Sola, Vévoda, and the monkey.

Is it coincidence that our book opens with S. desperately trying to find himself and it climaxes ambiguously with four alternate versions about four characters in the fourth level of the dark maze? No, it is not. This is by design. And it is here that S. does find himself – reconnects with himself.

S. does not know who he is in the beginning of the book because he is disconnected from himself. He has no memory of his past, no understanding of his present and no clue of his future. But there are threads that connect him to these other three characters. Notice just how closely they are connected. Below is a very skeletal, preliminary sketch of how S. finds himself…

Sola once said to S (p419)….

 We are we, and we have been we for a long, long time. And in that way, I am you.

S. once thought this about himself and Vévoda (p316)…

Perhaps he is a bit like Vévoda himself: a man whose physical presence is intangible but whose influence on the world.

S. and Sola once discuss the monkey (p401)…

“It’s as if the thing is following me,” S. says.
“Or you’re following it,” she says.

Wait for it. Wait for it…

Does S. find himself in the climax? Yes, he does. And the alternate versions help us see that

S. is the S. he is. S. is himself. S. is the monkey. S. is Sola S. is Vévoda. It takes all four characters, each a self-reference to “S.”, to form a unified S. – a unified self.

S. represents the intellectual side of the self.
In our modern, “progressive” society, the intellect has taken over as the supreme self. But in so doing, the self has lost its true sense of identity. The self is more than mere intellect.  And to focus only on the intellect is to lose ourselves.  As Carl Jung said in his book The Undiscovered Self…

Nothing estranges man more from the ground plan of his instincts than his learning capacity, which turns out to be a genuine drive towards progressive transformation of human modes of behavior. It, more than anything else, is responsible for the altered conditions of our existence and the need for new adaptations which civilization brings. It is also the source of numerous psychic disturbances and difficulties occasioned by man’s progressive alienation from his instinctual foundation, i.e., by his uprootedness and identification with his conscious knowledge of himself, by his concern with consciousness at the expense of the unconscious. The result is that modern man can know himself only in so far as he can become conscious of himself – a capacity largely dependent on environmental conditions, the drive for knowledge and control of which necessitated or suggested certain modifica- tions of his original instinctive tendencies. His consciousness therefore orients itself chiefly by observing and investigating the world around him, and it is to its peculiarities that he must adapt his psychic and technical resources. This task is so exacting, and its fulfillment so advantageous, that he forgets himself in the process, losing sight of his instinctual nature.

The monkey represents the instinctual side of the self. Follow the monkey = follow your instincts.
Each time we see the monkey, we see a metaphorical manifestation of the instinctual drives of S. Our modern, intellectual selves too often attempt to repress our instinctual desires and pretend they aren’t there – but they are there. And we must follow those instincts if we are to regain the connection with our true selves.

Sola represents the anima – the intuitive, creative female side of the male self. 
Men have largely lost sight of this side of themselves. S. is learning slowly to reconnect with this part of himself by opening up to intuition. This is why Sola is always a step or two ahead of him – intuition precedes intellectual understanding.

Vévoda represents the shadow – the evil part of the self that we attempt to deny exists within us
It’s easy to point to an external source of evil, give it a name, and demand its destruction. This is why Princip assassinated the Archduke. It is why World War I began. It is why S. became an assassin – to destroy the evil named Vévoda and all the agents who follow him.

It is not so easy to confront the evil that exists within us. This is the shadow – the dark side of ourselves that we deny is even there. Its presence frightens us, and so we lash out at the external, “drifting twins” of what exists in our own souls and demand its eradication from the earth to ease the cognitive dissonance.  This is why the Man in Black in LOST was never given a name. He was Jacob’s twin – a drifting twin. To name him would be to place evil “out there” for targeting. But the evil we must confront lies within.

All Four are Part of S. and Must Be Unified
The only way for S. to find himself is to unify these alienated parts. He must realize that his intellect is not all there is to himself. He must accept his instincts, his anima, and his shadow in order to truly find himself. And this can only happen when he “descends into the dark maze himself.”

What a lesson for us. We have lost our way when we see ourselves only as an intellectual beings. Our whole selves – our souls – are much more spiritual and complex than that. To discover our true selves, we must look deep within and embrace all that we find there.

You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. – Walter M. Miller

(often misattributed to C.S. Lewis)

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Those Campfire Stories

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by Brian Shipman in S, Ship of Theseus, Who Is Straka

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Corbeau, JJ Abrams, monomyth, Narrative, Sobreiro, Sola, story, Szalome, The Hero's Journey, The Winter City, V.M. Straka, VM Straka

campfireThis is precisely what campfires are for.
The sharing of stories.
There’s a spiritual connection between flame and narrative.
(p146)

As S. flees the city of B— along with Corbeau, Stenfalk, Ostrero, and Pfeifer, the group pauses one evening to escape their troubles by sharing stories around a campfire (p145-151). This is an analysis of those stories.

Pfeifer Tells the Story of His Grandmother’s Ghost (p145)
Pfeifer shares that his grandmother’s ghost haunts the wealthy family she once served. Every time the family thinks they are rid of her, “plates and glasses start smashing against the walls.”

Stenfalk Tells the Story of the Hjaarn (p145-146)
The Hjaarn is a mythical creature akin to Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. It devours livestock until there are no more, then turns its attention to farmer’s daughters. The farmers attempt to chase it down, and when weary seek shelter in an icy cave. In the cave the farmers “hear a rustle in the dark cave behind them , and then–” Stenfalk then screams to scare his listeners and enjoys their startled reactions.

S. Longs to Tell the Story of Sola (p146)
S. feels left out because he has no stories to tell other than Sola. But that story involves only two brief scenes – the bar in the Old Quarter and the wharf-sighting in B—. He decides not to say anything.

Ostrero Tells the Story of The Flute-Charmed Children (p147)
This is a “cautionary tale” for disobedient children. Itinerant traders would steal the children out of their beds, place them in baskets, and then sold at the Arab suqs, where flute-playing charmers would buy them and use them for entertaining dignitaries.

This is the first story around the campfire that reaches beyond its evening utterance. Later in Ship of Theseus, as S. walks through the night suq in El H—, he comes across a scene that could very well be this story coming true (p235-236).

Compare this story to S‘s story. He is stolen away from the Old Quarter, placed in a room aboard a ship, and occasionally summoned by flute-playing crewmen who summon him with a series of notes that indicate Land Ho (p60, 307, 413). S. then emerges, goes on land, and then returns to his room until he is summoned again.

Stenfalk Tells the Story of the Winter City (p147-148)
This is another “cautionary” tale for disobedient children. Those children who were truly bad would wake up one morning in the Winter City, where everything was covered in ice and snow and no one could talk to each other. They would be truly alone.

The entirety of Chapter 9 is devoted to the story of S. as he endures a purgatorial visit to the Winter City. It is exactly as Stenfalk described it.

Is S. a disobedient child suffering the fate of the “cautionary tales” told by both Ostrero and Stenfalk?

Corbeau Tells the Story of the K— (p148-149)
This is a true story, though that is not yet known by the group. The K— lived in the same region of the country that the group now travels. They chronicled stories inside a system of caves that illustrated events and beliefs.

A day later, Corbeau, Pfeifer, and S. discover that the story of the K— is true in its entirety. However, they have no time to relish the truth of the story because they are relentlessly pursued by Vevoda’s detectives.

The story of the K— is a story within a story within a story within a story. The story the K— tell in the caves is in the story that Corbeau shares in the story of Ship of Theseus which is just part of the story of “S.” How Inception-like.

Stenfalk Tells the Story of Listening to His Father Read The Archer’s Tales (p149-151)
Stenfalk recalls hearing of the K— (or at least a people like them) in a dusty old book that his father would read to the family. Corbeau shows surprise that the story of the K— ever made it into a book. Stenfalk recalls the name of the book: The Archer’s Tales and comments that “it was full of the most wonderful stories.” As he struggles to remember the name of the author, S. reveals it is the Portuguese sailor Sobreiro and that he saw Sola (who is also called Szalome) reading the book in the city where he was taken. Stenfalk is surprised that anyone has ever heard of the book. Everyone finds this very strange. S. asks Stenfalk if the book is still in his family, but “No. It was stolen. As most beautiful things eventually are.”

The final four stories seem to be increasingly true to S. He is the flute-charmed disobedient child. He does end up in the Winter City. He does discover first-hand that the story of the K— is true with his own eyes. And as for The Archer’s Tales, S. seems to discover that the Book of “S.” on Obsidian Island is somehow parallel to The Archer’s Tales (p290-292). Every schematic of S.‘s ship has the word SOBREIRO “cleverly concealed in the artist’s shading of the hull.”

Thoughts
What if “S.” stands for story? And what if each story in The Archer’s Tales is paralleled by every iteration of S‘s ship in the Book of “S.”?

If every board and sail and bowsprit and bulwark and mast and deck and hatch and porthole and scupper have been replaced on a ship, is it the same ship? If every word and character and setting and plot and detail have been replaced in a story, is it the same story? The answer is yes.

There is only one ship, no matter how many transformations it goes through. There is only one story, no matter how many different ways we tell it. Though every story we tell may have completely different details, in the end all stories follow a similar pattern – the monomyth (aka The Hero’s Journey).

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