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Chapter 5 - part 1

PostPosted: December 7th, 2009, 7:16 pm
by Kanakaberaka

Mark's assignment

PostPosted: December 7th, 2009, 8:20 pm
by Kanakaberaka
Of course Mark wanted the N.I.C.E. to give him a job to do so that he could prove himself. It was Fairy Hardcastle who finally gave Mark what he was seeking. What he did not expect was to be put in charge of writing a propaganda piece whose purpose was to "rehabilitate" the murderer Alcasan. When Mark expresses disbelief that any educated person would belive such obvious rot, Hardcastle sets him straight. She tells Mark that the lower classes have too much common sense to be fooled by what they read in the newspapers. It is the educated classes who are far more gullible about what they read in their high brow publications. This rings true today when you see people with advanced college degrees following every fad that comes along while folks with high school diplomas are far more reluctant to belive what the media is trying to sell.

Fairy Hardcastle gives the example of Basic English as something promoted when it was invented by progressive Don. It was then shunned when a Tory (conservative) politician took it up. Basic English was a simplified form of the English laguage developed by Charles K. Ogden for those who used English as a second language. It has a vocabulary of only 850 words.

After Hardcastle is done with giving Mark a warning about what happens to those who leave the N.I.C.E. Mark fills the rest of his dreary day with a walk around the cemetery like gardens surrounding Belbury. It's quite the opposite of what Lewis likes about taking leasurely walks, lacking any connection with nature. The really disturbing part is when Mark hears the beastly cries of the animals the N.I.C.E. has caged on the premises. Rather than feel empathy for them, Mark fears being left out of the experiments, including vivisection, the N.I.C.E. plans to perform on these poor animals! After a while their howls are too much for even Mark to bear (no pun intended) so he goes back inside.

Re: Chapter 5 - part 1

PostPosted: December 7th, 2009, 8:42 pm
by jo
Mark's views on vivisection really bothered me. I've seen it defended - I can't remember who by - as being a different era and one in which sensibilities about the ill treatment of animals had yet to reach public prominence but that just does not ring true to me. Mark simply did not care that the NICE were experimenting on live animals; all he cared about was that he did not have a part in that.

The part with the newspaper articles was fascinating... not only do we see Mark, without his apparently realising it being taken fully into the bosom of the NICE but we also see what he is capable of. The articles he writes would fit perfectly to this day into respectively any high brow broadsheet or red topped tabloid. And Mark, fuelled by alcohol and the feeling that he is for once 'onto something' does not care about his dishonesty; he is merely excited to be moving into the Inner Ring.

Re: Chapter 5 - part 1

PostPosted: December 7th, 2009, 9:21 pm
by a_hnau
What interests me - especially as someone who likes to write as well as read - is when Mark finds that once a thing is written and looks like a newspaper article, or a paper, it is much easier to believe, even if it is your own writing and you have serious doubts about it - 'When a man has crossed the T's and dotted the I's, and likes the look of his work, he does not wish it to be committed to the wastepaper basket. The more often he re-read the articles, the better he liked them.'

Heinlein (in Stranger) notices the same thing - '[Madame Vesant] felt much better now and started writing out the results of the two horoscopes for the Douglases. That done, it turned out to be easy to write one for Smith, and she found, as she always did, that the words on paper proved themselves - they were all so beautifully true'.

Re: Chapter 5 - part 1

PostPosted: December 9th, 2009, 3:56 pm
by Kanakaberaka

Re: Chapter 5 - part 1

PostPosted: December 9th, 2009, 5:53 pm
by jo
That's an interesting perspective. And yes, I guess we've all seen that occur on the internet ..

What I was very interested in - and slightly amused by - was the idea that one must always have a left and a right media constantly at odds with one another, to keep the public on its toes, so to speak.