Discussion Post: 3.2.13

[bobbiewickham]

Discussion post for "Ce Que Fait Le Marquis," or "What the Marquis Does."

Comments

[primeideal]

"The hall on the ground floor had no loopholes, no air holes, no windows; about as much daylight and fresh air as a tomb…No one had ever been able to breathe in this low hall. No one had ever spent twenty-four hours there without being asphyxiated. Now, owing to the breach, it was possible to live there."

Not much happening in this chapter, but that’s an interesting metaphor/point. While La Tourgue might be a dead ruin in the narrator’s present, it was incapable of supporting life even in the timeframe of the story itself. What makes fresh air and life (to say nothing of the potential of light from outside) possible is for the republican army, with all their modern technology, to forcibly inflict violence on the building. It’s breaching the wall, but it’s making it possible for the ancient and dead past to get in touch with the modern world. Justifiable violence in the name of progress.