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Eric Overmyer's play "Dark Rapture" is dedicated to Ellen McElduff. In 1992 it was produced at the Powerhouse Theatre at Vassar, which is the same one in which CM appeared in "Bug", I think. McElduff was in the cast, which also included David Straitharn, Frances McDormand, and Bruce McVittie.

Reg E Cathey appeared in a 1989 production of Overmyer's "In A Pig's Valise" at the Second Stage Theatre in NYC. He played "The Bop Op."

In the "Acknowledgements" section of his "Collected Plays", Overmyer says "And last and always, to Ellen McElduff, for burning the pecan tree."

There is a passage in Iris Murdoch's "A Fairly Honourable Defeat" which bears on Oz in two ways. It deals with the myth of Apollo flaying Marsyas. First, it leaps out at the viewer in a jarring, unexpected way, forcing him to *think* about its application to the novel, much as TF jars us at times, provoking us to think about what a speech or exchange of dialogue means, without making the meaning obvious. Secondly, Murdoch raises themes (for different reasons) that TF explicitly raises in Oz as well. One of my purposes in discussing this passage is to show that in Oz what is sometimes decried as "bad writing" in fact has respected literary analogues.

The myth of Apollo and Marsyas arises in several Murdoch novels. The Titian painting of The Flaying of Marsyas was one of Murdoch's favourites. There is a portrait of her by Tom Phillips in The National Gallery in which she is shown sitting in front of the painting.

Here is the passage. It is a conversation between two homosexuals, Simon and Alex, who live together. They are in a car that Alex is parking in front of a house to which they have been invited for a party. Simon begins.

" 'I'll love you forever.'
'Decent of you ...'
'You're Apollo and I'm Marsyas. You'll end by flaying me.'
'That's an image of love, actually, Apollo and Marsyas.'
'How do you mean?'
'The agony of Marsyas is the inevitable agony of the human soul in its desire to achieve God.'
'The things you know.'
'The things they don't teach you at the Courtauld.'
'I don't believe it, though. Someone is flayed, really. And there's only blood and pain and no love.'
'You think our planet is like that?'
'I think our planet is like that.'
"No redeeming grace?'
'None at all.'
'None, Simon?'
"Well, only this kind.'
'What do you mean, *only* this kind? Now, Simon, please, *not* just outside Rupert's house.'"

The following are links to the Phillips portrait of Murdoch, and to the Titian painting.
www.tomphillips.co.uk/cgi...el6750.jpg
www.tomphillips.co.uk/cgi...ur1400.jpg

Part I

In the S6 spoiler thread, redina said, "Fontana elaborated more on existing characters in S5 but I'm left with a feeling there were growing problems, especially when Hill's monologues seemed to be 'disconnected' from the events going around them. Off the top of my head, 'Valhalla' had some weird monologues. I haven't watched S5 since its first airing."

I will offer a differing view of the Valhalla monologues here. In his NY Times review of Iris Murdoch's novel "The Message to the Planet" Anatole Broyard said, "Some readers resist her books because they make us think, as if novels should only make us feel. We have to keep revising our expectations of what her books are about -- usually because we find that we must travel farther and over more difficult terrain than we're accustomed to. Miss Murdoch is like one of those middle-aged English walkers who take you up steep hills without a pause for breath ... When she writes about moral predicaments here she sounds like Henry James on crack. In this book, Miss Murdoch pretty nearly persuades me that her philosophical clowning is the best way to treat men and women seriously in modern fiction. It forces them beyond themselves, flushes out their souls." I think these statements are applicable to Oz as well.

I see the Hill monos in Next Stop Valhalla as relating to TF's interest in the spiritual evolution of mankind (cf his New York mag interview in 1997), depicted in specific instances in his characters. In one of its earlier forms in Nordic myth, Valhalla was a hall of feasting and drinking where dead heroes were taken and restored to life after falling on the battlefield. Between festivities in the hall, they would go outside, fight each other all over again, die, be restored to life and brought into the hall for partying again. Valhalla could be seen as a celebration of valor on the battlefield. In later times, it got tied in with the concept of The Twilight of the Gods, (is a point of The Ring/a dark TF question that the gods are impotent?), and then that underwent accretions from Christian sources as the Vikings interacted culturally with other civilizations. I suspect TF's use of Valhalla is limited to its earliest version. Tacitly, TF might be asking us to make a comparison between the Viking and Christian concepts of an afterlife, or more interestingly to him, the code by which we should conduct our life. What we do in this life always seems of greater concern to him than what comes after.

The opening monologue states we have "misconceptions about the Vikings" and ends with the statement that "they only pillaged to survive." Valor is something that could be prized as a virtue in a society dependent on fighting for survival, and may explain the origin of the Valhalla myth. In Oz, much is made of the fact that the inmates face a daily struggle for survival. TF might ask if that is all that can possibly govern their/our lives or if there is more. The episode begins with a continuation of the Alvarez/Velez/Guerra story begun in Dream A Little Dream of Me. Velez has developed a kind of hero worship for Alvarez, not because he sees Alvarez as morally principled, but because he exhibits a new kind of valor, he is "the next wave." When Velez tries to kill Guerra in the shower, it is his deference to Guerra's valorous "request" to be allowed to die like a man that costs him his life.

Hill's monologue suggests we mnight have misconceptions about people's motives based on their external actions, which is all we can see. "Judge not ..." Up to this point, based on external actions without reflection one might have thought Alvarez was going crazy. In this episode he reveals that was at least partly a defense mechanism for survival. But much as TF contrasts Keane and l'Italien in Capital P, he will contrast Alvarez and some other inmates with the Aryans in this episode. That raises the question of whether the Aryans' actions are attributable to survival also, or whether there is a residuum of evil beyond that.

The next few scenes deal with Alvarez' realization there is something beyond valor and survival. He is going to modify the code by which he lives. He has been slowly moving to that. His offer to end hostilities with Guerra by letting the latter stab him is valorous, but it is a crude approximation to the "satisfaction" for his sins he will work out through the dog program. He is going to transform himself inwardly. Mukada sets him on the road to this transformation, but without a set of magic instructions to accomplish it. He basically tells Alvarez that the latter will have to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.

While dogs are not good analogues of humans, the training the dogs undergo can be viewed as symbolizing the inward transformations that will take place in Alvarez and other inmates.

I will continue with the second mono later.

Part III

The next monologue begins with a discussion of the myth of the creation of the world and of mankind. "Man was made from an ash tree, and woman from an alder. Then the great god Odin gave them both life, and souls, and a place to live called Midgard which Odin created from the eyebrows of a giant he slew..." That could be viewed as a discussion of God's providential love for humans, glossing over the fact Midgard was a kind of barrier to keep the giants from reaching the gods. It depicts God as the source of life, raising the question later on in the season of whether society is entitled to take lives through capital punishment. This monologue is wedged in between scenes of violence. It is preceded by Nathan's attack on Martinez, and followed by Beecher's attack on Vern. One might see an implication that mankind is not living according to God's code. In the previous post I indicated that in a sense Alvarez was now looking at Oz and "turning around" to go "home" -- by that I meant he sensed there was a code superseding the code of valor and survival, namely God's code, to which he owes a greater allegiance.

Part of God's code might involve proper use of the gift of sexuality. Is it accidental that the mono refers to "man" and "woman", and the preceding and subsequent scenes deal with the evil uses to which sexuality can be put, namely that it can be turned from an instrument of love into an instrument of power? Don't forget in Visitation Hill discoursed on the difference between sex as part of love and sex as part of abusive crimes.

Why might man not be living according to God's code? We get back to the nature vs nurture argument raised in Gray Matter (as opposed to Joel Grey in S6, which is a different matter altogether.) I can't recall whether it's in the Elder or the Younger Edda, but the account of the slaying of the giant Ymir contains an offhand statement that Ymir was "evil." Do humans possess a component of evil that arises through evolution? Teilhard de Chardin has spoken of the evil of growth in evolution. Some qualities that ensure survival in fact have much in common with qualities we think of as evil. TdC goes on though to ask whether there is a "residuum of evil" that even that cannot explain, which again is a question TF might ask about the Aryans in this episode. TF said he has always been fascinated by the question of whether pure evil exists.

The mono ends with "Sounds almost true, doesn't it? All of us living on the edge of an eyebrow." We talked about possible meanings of that before. I think Christina suggested it referred to man's insiginificance in the cosmos. I would say it might also refer to man's inherent "instability" and his need to learn "self-control." The volatility of human emotions is depicted in the Nathan and Beecher scenes before and after the monologue. Again, as I more or less indicated above, this volatility might be built in through evolution. But if a human can teach a dog self-control, can a human himself learn self-control? Can spirit triumph over genes?

While I am not serious about this, I can't keep from associating images of Said's eyebrow raising with the fact Said is in the scene following the eyebrow monologue!