Patrick O'Brian Discussion Forum

>On Wed Mar 25, Martha Sherwood wrote:
>-------------------------------------
>>Request for synopsis
>>I have been involved in a discussion with a number of writers concerning whether novels with well-developed characters in a sense write themselves, taking directions that the author did not intend at the outset, and I wonder if contributors to this forum would be interested in providing some data which might support (or refute) this contention. Specifically, I'd like to collect as many versions as possible of synopses for what people think will be the plot of the last novel in the Aubrey/Maturin series. There's some foreshadowing in the earlier novels, but not a great deal, and mostly it's ambiguous. For example, Jack is portrayed in the later novels as being overweight and suffering from cardiovascular disease, suggesting that he's not going to live to a ripe old age or die in battle (If O'Brian intended to kill him off in battle, would he bother to emphasize the character's ill-health?) but there's nothing to suggest the exact date or circumstances of his demise. Stephen, on the other hand, knows he's going to kick the bucket in the spring of 1821, and since he's robustly healthy and will, at that point, be in his early fifties, you can guess that the cause is not natural, but again, you don't know the circumstances.

>>Anxiously awaiting a reply (please e-mail me or send snail mail, you may also want to post to the forum). I'll let everyone who responds know what the results are.

>>Martha Sherwood
>>Department of Ecology and Evolution
>>University of Oregon
>>Eugene, OR 97403
>>msherw@oregon.uoregon.edu<

>A number of people asked - how do I know Stephen is going to die in 1821? The following is the answer. As for Jack being overweight and suffering from cardiovascular disease, he's six feet tall and weighs twenty stone (240 lbs) and there are numerous references to him being red in the face and out of breath when he exerts himself. He's strong, and capable of being active, but he's not fit.

>> ***It's in "The Fortunes of War" - Stephen is ruminating on Macbeth' Tomorrow and tomorrow.. soliloquy and thinks in aside that so far as
>> he personally is concerned, the last syllable of recorded time is so and so many years and days in the future, from which one can calculate the 1821
>date. It's one of those little details O'Brian puts in to create a
>characters who's just the tiniest bit fey (his daughter is even more
>> so, as Padeen points out), but if you're the sort who doesn't believe in fairies, you're apt to miss them.
>>
>Wow, I sure did. Good catch!

> While Steven has his share of bad habits, there's no evidence that
>they are adversely affecting his health, except when he accidentally overdoses on opium.
>>
>I just shudder every time he turns from cutting up a cadaver, casually
>wipes the scalpel on a cloth, and carves the poultry with it. As an EMT, I am perhaps a bit overly squeamish about bloodborne disease.

>> Chewing raw coca would have no effect on life span, and in Steven's
>> case the opium may actually be having a positive effect since he's
>> using it to treat depression and to enable him to sleep soundly. He's not a heavy smoker so the effects may well be minimal. I would say that anyone who can survive typhus, yellow fever, and the Spanish inquisition probably has a very strong constitution.****
>>
>True -- not to mention the attentions of an enraged duckbill platypus.

>> ****My version of the demise of these two fellows goes something like this: At the end of the war, Jack, at Stephen's prompting, becomes an active member of Parliament, representing the ancestral rotten borough. Jack is seriously woulded in the "100" days and would have been forced to retire from the sea even if the war had not ended. Parliament proves to be extremely stressful, because Parliamentary politics in the postwar years were a nighmare, especially for supporters of the government.
>> In 1820 Stephen and Aubrey are preparing to embark in the Surprise on a voyage of natural exploration round Cape Horn to the Galapagos
> Islands, with a little spying in Peru thrown in. But being involved in the awful business of the trial of Queen Caroline proves to be the last straw for Jack, who succumbs to a stroke or heart attack. Stephen takes off alone in the Surprise, with Bonden, but he's lost heart, can't work up any enthusiasm for life without Jack. This leads him to be reckless in his spying activities, and he's captured by one of the Peruvian factions and shot at sunrise, but not before he makes a full and detailed confession to
>Sam Panda, and the reader finally learns what it was that happened in
>Ireland in 1798.**** Martha Sherwood
>>
>What an imagination you have! I'll have to save this and see if events in the
>upcoming book point this way.

>It's been a pleasure to talk about this.

>Your ob't servant,
>Karen Black
>
>
>One other respondent, Kerry Murphy, also had the Stephen travelling to the Galopagos and killed in faction fighting in Peru, with Sam officiating at the funeral.

>If Stephen had written Origin of Species (and he is portrayed as someone who would have been capable of it) it would have been rather different, because Stephen is more of a Lamarckian and finds Malthus totally distasteful.