I was going to write this as a goodreads update, but decided to move it here, since it’s relevant to continue “the head on the pole.”
Chapter 4 is rather troubling. Some of it seems disappointing, or dismaying. If the whole cryptic section on the head on the pole was open to suggestive interpretation, this chapter implies the head on the pole is the No-God. At the very least the purpose of the chapter it to lead the reader there. Is it misdirection? I don’t know and I don’t worry about it, because I’m not reading to outsmart Bakker, or anticipate the story and guess it right. I’m only trying to… understand.
The head on the pole being the No-God “flattens” the number of interesting possibilities. It’s kind of plain and not especially surprising or insightful. It is not meaningful. Kellhus has gone mad, he’s now doing what he himself accused his father would have done: side with the No-God and fight the heavens. It doesn’t add to it or solve anything. It only hammers it back to what it was.
But as I was reading, I realized that I was going through similar emotions as Proyas. The interplay goes on so many different layers that I can’t even properly backtrack them again here.
Kellhus/Bakker and Proyas/me as a reader.
Is Kellhus an impostor?
Is Bakker an impostor?
In the same way Proyas is dismayed, but clings desperately to his own faith, he seizes not the present, but the past. He was there. He has seen those days of the holy war. He knows. In the same way, I, as a reader, know what Bakker is writing about. I know what it is and why it’s meaningful. It’s not in the present, but cemented in the past of what I already read before. In the same days of the holy war, but physically as a book.
And yet Serwe burns in Hell.
And yet, for all I’ve done, the world burns.
What is left here?
Sorrow and scrutiny.
There is no recompense… save knowing.
