What a sad story.
***
Page 7, Paragraph 4:
"Hold on, Mother", I say. "Don't joke around with me. Our people are getting up and wanting to journey on. Get up, so we don't fall behind them". Now I rub my hand on her leg to hurry her up. She's as cold as stone, and fleas [or lice, or ticks] jump off of her.
Paragraph 5:
I say more loudly, "Get up!", and take hold of her and pull her and hit her. There's no strength in my hold and she falls down. The dots of light move from out of her eyes and hang on the trees. Her head is lying in a puddle, hair floating.
Paragraph 6:
I don't know how to help her. I jump on top of her and go to put my penis in her, so that it will make her warm and make her move. Her legs are hard and crossed at the knees. I'm not strong enough to open them, and my penis is flaccid. I lie it against her belly hair and push and push. Her head moves in the puddle. Her belly hair is cold and she smells different. I push and push.
Paragraph 7 (ends at the top of page 8):
A man from our tribe comes now and pulls me off of her. He says I'm a shit and tries to hit me; I run a little ways off, beneath the trees. Now a lot of people come around my mother. They pull her head from the puddle and say, "She's cold", "She's not breathing", and so forth. Now our wise man [or shaman] comes there and sits by my mother. He's wearing a feather belt that must make his ass itch, because he scratches it constantly.
PS I won't be posting tomorrow as I have to work all day.
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I'm confused is his ignorance and...."odd" sexual behaviour meant to be just the way cave men acted, or does he have something wrong with him mentally
ReplyDeleteI forgot the "?"....bit stupid
DeleteHis behavior isn't just the way 'cave-men' acted - his people are upset with him when they see him trying this.
DeleteHe is quite 'slow'... there is much talk of how he doesn't get ideas/thoughts ("gleanings") as often as others do, and his gleanings are usually not very good anyway. which is why his mother is still taking care of him when he should be on the edge of adulthood, and why the rest of his people don't want him to journey with them once his mother has died.
In his interactions with 'the girl', later in the chapter, there is another aspect: he really is a simpleton, a bumpkin, and simple ideas and concepts (like "lying") evade him. So he's not just too dim to pull his own weight in the tribe, he's also a member of a simple people who, like the urk-kine before them, are being edged out of their world by more sophisticated people.
Among his people, he was an idiot. Among Hob's people, he was barely human... the perfect offering to Hob's fire.