Frolicsome Fawn-Like Movements

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 28 May 2015.

Ophelia by John Everett Millais

On the relationship between the savage sisters and Arthur White:

I agree--it seems an effective plot point for the sisters to take Arthur under their pixie sprite wings. Perhaps they interpret his ignorance of Farthington’s evil scheming as an innocence and purity seldom seen in man. To them, this is to have triumphed over society’s corruption of the child.

To them, this is to have slaughtered society at its own game.

Picture, if you will: the savage siren sisters lure Arthur in with their song. As with all invasive species to their natural habitat, the sisters’ intent is to destroy him before he, like his fellow outer-world inhabitants, desecrates the sanctity of their enchanted inner-world. Little do they know at this point, Arthur is not like his fellow man. Yet still, the sisters gleefully watch him disappear into the murky depths of their river.

While all who fell before him had ferociously struggled against the river’s current, however, Arthur neither flails nor flops. Instead, he placidly sinks to the bottom of the water, as though inanimate. There is no fight at all. Bewildered, one of the sister instinctively dives into the river to rescue this enigmatic creature from nature’s grasp. Perhaps, in this moment, she sees Arthur’s innate ability to remain calm amidst the struggle as a trait worthy of protecting from the looming dangers beneath the river’s surface. Or perhaps she sees Arthur’s lack of basic survival instincts as childlike and innocent. Though she herself is not immune to these dangers, like any mother would, she places the safety of this man-child over the safety of herself.

Such a scene reminds me of that moment in Grahame Greene's The Quiet American when Fowler says of Pyle, "That was my first instinct--to protect him. It never occurred to me to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."

Arthur, though, is far from dumb. Though deemed insane in the outer-world, this reflects more on the type of society that interprets his childlike wonder as craziness than it does on Arthur. Far from dumb themselves, the sisters are able to interpret this wonder of Arthur's as brilliance and therefore worthy of redemption. They see the woundedness in his wide, blank stare and are dazzled by it. Maybe they even see parts of themselves in Arthur, whose every action in this strange land radiates with the saintly glow of his mother. Maybe in the sisters' gaze Arthur sees parts of his mother reflected back at him (and therefore parts of himself).

Upon pulling a calm Arthur from the torrential waters, the sisters soon discover that, much like themselves, Arthur has no fear of the depths. Instead, his (and the sisters') deepest fear is of shallow living.

Or perhaps after pulling Arthur out of the river, the sisters also discover that he was not lured by their song after all. A song that until this moment no man has been immune to. Like Farthington's evil deeds, Arthur was oblivious to their seduction. In this scenario, maybe he instead fell into the water while bending down to bask in the marvelous fragrance of the flowers growing along the shore. Maybe the flowers are the same flowers from that Hamtramck garden, the flowers that he once tended to with great care alongside his mother. Or perhaps they remind him of the flowers he used to pick to adorn the Virgin Mary statue outside of his childhood church. Whatever the case, Arthur feels like he's made his way back home, to the world he inhabited as a child. Though this childlike awe is the source of much of Arthur’s woes in the outer-world, in this inner-world it is this exact wonder that protects him from all potential dangers.

Another possible scenario is that Arthur doesn’t fall into the water at all. Maybe, instead, the sisters draw back their bows because of his reverence toward their world, his delicate demeanor, his frolicsome fawn-like movements. Perhaps, while standing alongside the riverside admiring the beauty, a band of misfit animals gather around him mistaking Arthur as one of their own. Catching a reflection of their world’s natural beauty through Arthur’s eyes, the sisters become certain that his intent is pure and his heart is full.

It is in this moment, perhaps, when the sisters realize that Arthur is the living arrow they've been searching for. He is the ultimate ammunition in their war versus man, in their ongoing battle with Gilbert. If this be so, then the sisters themselves are the weapons--they are the bows. (Take that, societal objectification of women's bodies for pleasure and enjoyment!) If Arthur as the arrow is the sisters' greatest hope for humanity, the sisters then are not only the bow that holds him but also the shield that guards him. They are his protection against humanity.

To borrow from Kahlil Gibran's poem "On Children,"

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. 

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

This could eventually tie into Steffi shooting Farthington in the tunnels. Is Steffi a direct descendant of the sisters? Are they the ones who taught her to shoot?  In her angsty teen years did she rebel against their savagery with a savagery all her own? Is she the fallen angel who forms her own kingdom? Or, maybe, Steffi is still one of the sisters. In becoming a follower of Farthington's (and seducing him along the way) she is able to learn all of his secrets and ultimately destroy him. Perhaps this was the initial plan, but maybe somewhere along the way she began believing the lies. She falls under Carlton's spell, seeking his garbage to fill the emptiness symptomatic of life's cruelty outside of the enchanted forest. In doing so, she betrays her sisters by falling victim to mortal temptation.

Or does she? Maybe Arthur is not the ultimate Christ figure in this story.

Maybe Steffi is.