| Isn't there a syndrome where captives begin to identitfy with their
captors? I thought I'd heard about this in the cases of hostages
we've had over the past several years.
I also read the book and felt it was quite well done. Rememer to,
Shane was not a rebel from the start. He was a VERY reluctant hero
and may well have wished, once things were over, that someone would
be taking care of him again. liesl
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| re .1
Is that it? I read this book and then I'll understand/empathize with
how ______________________ (insert your pet minority/oppressed group)
felt? Seems a bit simplistic to me, especially when after bondage had
ended the author presented the character most responsible for ending it
as having second thoughts. I don't think that a black person (for
example) at the time of the emancipation proclamation felt nostalgia
for their slavery.
P.S. Your reply comes across as quite condescending, do I sound THAT
stupid?
re .2
That's very true. and such identification does happen......but that
isn't the place where my confusion lies.....I'm confused because the
Author seems (to me) to be saying that Shane's whole course of action
was a mistake. Go back and re-read the last page of the
book......especially the last sentence.
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| I haven't read this, so I'm just reacting to what's been written
so far.
The hostage syndrome is called, I think, The Stockholm Syndrome.
Slaves who worked for compassionate, understanding masters, so I've
read, were indeed nostalgic for their state of captivity -- they
knew that they would be taken care of as long as they lived. They
didn't consider working hard (and for these masters it wasn't the
insane drudgery of other slave owners) too big a price to pay.
They knew they'd have medical care, clothes, a family, food to eat...
all the necessities. On their own it was much more precarious.
(Think about the difference between those who like to "enslave"
themselves to a big corporation for the great benefits versus those
who would rather be entrepreneurs no matter what happens to them.)
Maybe there's a commentary about the dichotomy between security
and freedom here. (Like I said, I haven't read it.) But, in any
case, alien life forms are a SF feature, and both the alien and
the fiction parts point out that maybe you aren't SUPPOSED to
completely understand them. I wonder what arrogances WE unconsciously
perpetrate on other lifeforms... one I know about is training dolphins
to do dangerous mine retrieval work for the Navy -- so who cares
if a smart "fish" dies -- at least it's not a human being, right?
(And the wars are ours, not theirs.)
Sherry
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| re .4
I believe that such a slave mentality could exist in some after several
generations, but the scenario in this novel is about the alien take
over being about 3 years in the past. Therefor all of the humans had
known freedom. And the hostage syndrome, is kinda because since this
madman holds your wilfare and future existance in his trembling hand,
you had damnwell be intrested in HIS welfare and in what he considers
good and just. Do not know if this feeling about your captor lingers
much beyond release however.
That being said, I'll allow that your point about arrogance and how we
treat other species could be the correct interpretation of the
metaphor. Another maybe that the Aallaag are a metaphor for Western
Man, in that the Aallaag would rather Die a Death as a race than
acknowledge that things had changed and that they needed to treat their
heretofor subject races as equals and allies in order to continue to
grow and survive.
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