"An Uncertain Point Of View" - narrative, continuity, and the mental state of the characters....

Rereading the Exile teaser in Tempest the other day, I was struck by the neat trick that Allston pulled with Uran Lavint's narrative point-of-view.

In her first scene, there was no hint that she was anything other than a pro-Corellian spacer trying to run her cargo through the blockade. This wasn't passive misdirection; she was actively, unambiguously inhabiting that mindset.

But unless that was an imposter that Jacen met in her second scene, it's clear that she was simply acting the part, keeping her conscious thoughts "in character", avoiding any expression of her betrayal of the other freighters, even while she was carrying it through.

This has very important implications for the reliability of other character viewpoints in all the Star Wars novels - Mara, for instance, is probably a very good method actress; but it also got me thinking more widely about a couple of scenes or sequences I'd been mulling recently.

1: Jacen Solo, Force Lightning, and the Yuuzhan Vong

In Traitor, Jacen Solo remembers unleashing Force lightning against the Yuuzhan Vong:

---

He remembered swirling within the red tide, remembered feeling Vergere lose consciousness, remembered reaching for a new target, a new victim, reaching for Nom Anor with the lightning that had felled Vergere...

And being unable to find him. He could see the Yuuzhan Vong executor, could hear him shouting orders to the warriors around them all, but he could not touch him with the lightning. There had been a circuit missing: the lightning would ground harmlessly into the floor or the walls or arc back to make Vergere's unconscious body spasm in convulsions.

The lightning of his rage could only span gaps between poles of the Force... neither Nom Anor nor his warriors could conduct that current.[hr][/blockquote]

This inability contradicts what we saw in [i]Star by Star[/i]:

[blockquote][hr]In a motion so fast Jaina barely saw it, the warrior sat up and flicked his coufee at her throat. She could have dodged or blocked with her lightsaber, but she did not. Instead, with the fierce energy crackling inside her, she used her free hand to bat the weapon aside, then raised her hand toward her attacker and released the dark power inside. A fork of lightning crackled into existence a few centimeters beyond her glove tips, then blasted a hole through the Yuuzhan Vong's chest and hurled him onto the rubble pile smoking and motionless.[hr][/blockquote]

Now, on it's own, it's possible that that "warrior" was an illusion created by Vergere (disguising Anakin, perhaps :O)... but we also have to look at what Jacen does in [i]Destiny's Way[/i], when his anger apparently triggers a repressed memory of the same events from [i]Traitor[/i] that's very different than what we saw in that novel:

[blockquote][hr]Jacen felt rage building in him, a red fury that was his response to his own despair. The blaster hummed empty and he threw it at the warrior. And then he remembered the power he could call upon, the power fueled by the kind of despair and anger he felt now and had felt before, and he hurled it at the warrior, the brilliant emerald fire that lanced from his fingertips.

The Force lightning threw the first rank of Yuuzhan Vong back into their comrades, and in the confusion Jacen launched another blaze of fire. He hadn't killed them--the murderous form of lightning was a dark side weapon--but they wouldn't be waking for a long time.

"Young Jedi."

Jacen looked around, and somehow wasn't surprised to find Vergere standing there. "Hello," he said, and fired another sizzling blast at the Yuuzhan Vong.

Vergere looked up at him, her tilted eyes glittering and wise. "You're about to lose your air," she said.[hr][/blockquote]

As if to emphasise the point, that's a [i]hallucination[/i] of Vergere he's talking to there....

In other words, Jacen Solo [i]is not sane[/i]. The apparent continuity inconsistency between novels about whether Force lightning can affect the Yuuzhan Vong can be explained

 

I like where you are going with this.

It makes you think whats really going on in lotf.

 

I like the direction this goes, but be careful!

Jacen hallucinating makes sense in some cases but not always. Luke, well.. possible.

though, what does that mean for Tahir's Riina Kwaad dreams?

 

Tell us more, Ewok. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

I like that. The character's basic problem as a long-term love interest was that she was far too much like Luke to be interesting. And if she had died at the end of COTJ, that would be a perfectly workable theory.

::insert half-hearted curse in KJA's general direction here::

 

Are we sure it's unambiguous, in retrospect? I don't have the book on me...

Not only is that unrealistic - no actor is that good - it's a cheap trick on the author's part, like having the killer in a mystery novel be a deus ex machina, with no real clues or hints along the way.

There's a similar thread already up here...hm...I like this thread though...

Actually, the way I look at it - thinking IU and not about the wildly inconsistent characterization of the Vong's interaction with the Force in these novels due to different authors - it's Jacen's rationale that's in quesiton. In the first instance, Jacen's not hitting the Vong with Force lightning. He's trying, it's just not working. The explanation given is that Force lightning only works between poles of the Force. That's fairly suspect. I'm thinking Jacen's blasting away but, he's still got a mental block about using the dark side, and so simply can't direct it at them. Which leads us to the next point...

...that the "green Force lightning" is a way his psyche was able to cope with blasting Vong.

The Empire's done much crazier things.

 

As far as the Jacen vs. Jaina force lightning thing, you can think about it this way....maybe.

You can not use the force to pick up a Vong warrior and toss him across the room. You can however, pick up a boulder and throw it across the room at a Vong warrior. In the same vein, you see Jacen Solo looking to Channel force energy through a Vong Warrior. Jaina Solo is just producing a blast of energy and sending it on a straight path where it happens to hit a Vong.

Carnage

 

That works...

But I like McEwok's theory better

I can't really comment on the CotJ theory, though I haven't read that in a while.

 

TMcE I agree with you. Jacen Solo is insane. He has no self-restraint. "He's gone OCD on the galaxy" while unable to actually focus on what he thinks is most important to him; Allana. He fails to engage anyone in a loving and honest relationship for that matter. The Yuuzhan Vong War broke him and he was reborn a madman.

Jacen is the Joker!