Date Posted:Saturday, February 11, 03:01:02pm Author: JayBee Subject: Re: Drifting back - In reply to:
Nell
's message, "Drifting back -" on Saturday, February 11, 09:01:43am
So - in the case, for example, of Michael and Elena, my gut feeling is that, had she ever learned the truth, she would be reeling not from one big lie that encompases all the other smaller lies, but from (at least) two, related, lies of near equal intensity.
And that's an essential difference in our perspectives, because my gut feeling is quite different. It's not that I don't think she'd be hurt and angry about the sexual infidelity aspect, but that my feeling is that it would be dwarfed by the intensity of hurt/anger about the *entire context* of the lie/betrayal.
I suspect it boils down to the two of us simply having different life experiences, so that our "gut feelings" come from very different places. No way to debate that to a resolution, really.
So - I was thinking about adultery in relationship to Section as both a thing in itself, and also a metaphor for the whole place - in which no promise can ever be taken as fully sincere or possible to honor.
And for me, the metaphor wasn't instinctively or even readily apparent, so it wasn't until you said so directly that I had any idea what you meant.
Part of my problem in "getting" that you were speaking metaphorically is that for me, a metaphor works only if the symbol is consistently present -- and because I didn't think that sexual infidelity actually *applied* to several of the characters, the metaphor seemed broken (to me).
