Matt DeForrest
Active Member
As I was reading for tonight’s class, I was struck by three parallels in the text centering on the standing stone that sits in the hollow.
1) The first, of course, is to Old Man Willow. They descend to him after glimpsing the Wythiwindle from the bald hill in the Old Forest. Here, they descend into a hollow after noting the run of the road in the distance. In both cases, they hope for a way out and towards safety. Also in both cases, they come upon a supernatural thing that puts them to sleep.
2) The second is the way that they find themselves within a sea of fog when they awake, just as they find themselves within a sea of trees when looking out upon the Old Forest from the bald hill.
3) The third required me to jump ahead and reread the section on the Stone of Erech. It turns out they are both different (The Stone of Erech is a sphere sunk halfway into the ground while this standing stone is like a finger raised in warning.) and similar (Supernatural stones set apart from everything that are significant within the context of the dead.).
I can’t help but think that the first two parallels are intentionally placed there to help us understand how quickly the stakes of this game are being raised. The parallel with the Stone of Erech seems much more like a distant echo — perhaps an accident or there to stress the differences in the two events rather than the similarities.
1) The first, of course, is to Old Man Willow. They descend to him after glimpsing the Wythiwindle from the bald hill in the Old Forest. Here, they descend into a hollow after noting the run of the road in the distance. In both cases, they hope for a way out and towards safety. Also in both cases, they come upon a supernatural thing that puts them to sleep.
2) The second is the way that they find themselves within a sea of fog when they awake, just as they find themselves within a sea of trees when looking out upon the Old Forest from the bald hill.
3) The third required me to jump ahead and reread the section on the Stone of Erech. It turns out they are both different (The Stone of Erech is a sphere sunk halfway into the ground while this standing stone is like a finger raised in warning.) and similar (Supernatural stones set apart from everything that are significant within the context of the dead.).
I can’t help but think that the first two parallels are intentionally placed there to help us understand how quickly the stakes of this game are being raised. The parallel with the Stone of Erech seems much more like a distant echo — perhaps an accident or there to stress the differences in the two events rather than the similarities.