SPOILERS Mort Discussion *Spoilers*
- Thread starter Tonyblack
- Start date
Poohcarrots said:
I thought the wizards at UU are wizard professors who teach (or not) students how to become wizards. Once a wizard graduates, he doesn't automatically work for UU, but goes out into the big wide disc to ply his wares and earn a living. 
The magicians appear to live and function largely without money ( although UU doesn't, as per Unseen Academicals ) and the fact that Rincewind is specifically told his professorship does not provide a salary implies that most of the others do.
The various references to the indeterminate and possibly unlimited size of the campus, internally of not externally, the indeterminate duties of many of the faculty and its at times incomprehensible topography could well mean that any wizard who saw fit could base himself there and recieve bed and board at least for as long as he wanted.
Albert is an interesting character in this one. In some ways he's the opposite of Ysabell.
Ysabell was at the start of her life and had it put on hold and Albert is at the end of his life and managed to get it put on hold.
Ysabell is prepared to give up immortality for a normal lifespan, yet Albert guards his last remaining days like a miser.
As I said in my introduction: the book looks at people's attitude to death (small d).
The question is - is Albert's existence as Death's manservant worth the dullness rather than dying? What is he really afraid of?
Ysabell was at the start of her life and had it put on hold and Albert is at the end of his life and managed to get it put on hold.
Ysabell is prepared to give up immortality for a normal lifespan, yet Albert guards his last remaining days like a miser.
As I said in my introduction: the book looks at people's attitude to death (small d).
The question is - is Albert's existence as Death's manservant worth the dullness rather than dying? What is he really afraid of?
...and just how many people in the UK does that apply to? How many people are hardly "living" now?
Does eveyone have a super exciting life, or is it just birth, school, work, death for most people? Are you saying people with boring lives should just top themselves? Wouldn't that be taking assisted suicide a tad too far?
How many people on their death bed will say, "I wish I had done this or that."
You're alive for a very short time. You're dead for a very long time. So just do it - nothing is impossible! (my apologies to Nike and Adidas for stealing their slogans ) 8)
Does eveyone have a super exciting life, or is it just birth, school, work, death for most people? Are you saying people with boring lives should just top themselves? Wouldn't that be taking assisted suicide a tad too far?
How many people on their death bed will say, "I wish I had done this or that."
You're alive for a very short time. You're dead for a very long time. So just do it - nothing is impossible! (my apologies to Nike and Adidas for stealing their slogans
) 8)
In retrospect Tony, your comment sounds like something Glenn Beck would say.
Albert has a roof over his head, an easy job for life, as much food as he wants, as much tobacco as he wants and no money worries. He has everything Rincewind aspires to.
How many people in the world would give their right arm for all that?
Albert has a roof over his head, an easy job for life, as much food as he wants, as much tobacco as he wants and no money worries. He has everything Rincewind aspires to.
How many people in the world would give their right arm for all that?
Poohcarrots said:
In retrospect Tony, your comment sounds like something Glenn Beck would say.
Albert has a roof over his head, an easy job for life, as much food as he wants, as much tobacco as he wants and no money worries. He has everything Rincewind aspires to.
How many people in the world would give their right arm for all that?
Albert has a roof over his head, an easy job for life, as much food as he wants, as much tobacco as he wants and no money worries. He has everything Rincewind aspires to.
How many people in the world would give their right arm for all that?
He's almost made a prisoner of himself. He's been living with Death long enough to realise that people get what they deserve when they die. As Mort points out: (paraphrasing because I can't find the passage) 'So a bad person who believes he's going to heaven, will and a good person who believes he's going to hell will also get what they believe.'
Albert seems to believe that he deserves punishment and that's what he'll eventually get.
I don't buy the idea that he's content to spend thousands of years in utter drudgery. And why would Death have let him stay there anyway?
Surely Albert has found the philosophers stone, life everlasting, what everyone on Earth wants, and what Christianity claims it can deliver. How he chooses to spend eternity is up to him.
Maybe for him, he's in heaven. Do people get bored in heaven?
Death lets him stay because Death needs company. Death has taken on some human traits, one being, he doesn't want to be alone. Same reason for the Death of rats. Same reason he adopted Ysabelle, hired Mort and loves his grand-daughter Susan.
Maybe for him, he's in heaven. Do people get bored in heaven?
Death lets him stay because Death needs company. Death has taken on some human traits, one being, he doesn't want to be alone. Same reason for the Death of rats. Same reason he adopted Ysabelle, hired Mort and loves his grand-daughter Susan.
While I think that most of what you've been saying, Pooh, is utter nonsense and unnecessarily offensive to Tony -- that's not the way discussions are supposed to work-- but you have the happy capability of ignoring what the book (and other people) actually say!
Mort gets DEATH to confirm what he's discovered-- that there is no justice, there is just "them". And the concomitant of that is that evil people who believe (through some delusion) that they have been living a good life will get the reward they think they deserve. By that theory, Hitler is in an all Aryan Heaven. But good people who are aware of all the things they haven't done that they should have, who believe they deserve to be punished, will endure punnishment.
This is one of the ways we see this as an early book of Terry's. The serious thought and analysis just aren't here. And far too much is made simply for a comc moment. For example, Mort is chosen (I think) in part because he comes from an area where raw magic is still very strong (as his father harvests the grapes he will plant next year). Someone with this kind of connection to power might be an appropriate person to perform death's job. But to the extent that Terry makes him look foolish, the plot doesn't work. Death doesn't understand humans--but even he's not so unrealistic as to fail to recognize that MORT has become DEATH.
And that it is only the fact that Isabel keeps hold of Mort that keeps him from supplanting Death in that role.
That's one of the reasons I find this book interesting, but quite frustrating. The plot and depth I have come to expect from Terry's later books are tantalizingly present, but not nearly enough.
Mort gets DEATH to confirm what he's discovered-- that there is no justice, there is just "them". And the concomitant of that is that evil people who believe (through some delusion) that they have been living a good life will get the reward they think they deserve. By that theory, Hitler is in an all Aryan Heaven. But good people who are aware of all the things they haven't done that they should have, who believe they deserve to be punished, will endure punnishment.
This is one of the ways we see this as an early book of Terry's. The serious thought and analysis just aren't here. And far too much is made simply for a comc moment. For example, Mort is chosen (I think) in part because he comes from an area where raw magic is still very strong (as his father harvests the grapes he will plant next year). Someone with this kind of connection to power might be an appropriate person to perform death's job. But to the extent that Terry makes him look foolish, the plot doesn't work. Death doesn't understand humans--but even he's not so unrealistic as to fail to recognize that MORT has become DEATH.
And that it is only the fact that Isabel keeps hold of Mort that keeps him from supplanting Death in that role.
That's one of the reasons I find this book interesting, but quite frustrating. The plot and depth I have come to expect from Terry's later books are tantalizingly present, but not nearly enough.
To start a different discussion--why is Mort somewhat in love with the Princess Kelli--at least enough so that he wants, in part, to save her from the death she's scheduled to have?
At the beginning of the book Ysabell treats Mort like dirt (horse manure in fact). Not that he's treated much better by either Albert or DEATH, but they just tend to forget about him or why Ysabell's father (adopted) brought Mort to his Kingdom. Mort seems to fall for Keli when he accompanies DEATH the first time. It is then that he is first introduced to the concept of DEATH'S philosophy, which is WHEN IT'S TIME, IT'S TIME. FAIR DOESN'T COME INTO IT. And from that one glance (strangers across a crowded room) he thinks he's fallen in love with her
Terry turns a neat trick because Mort doesn't know who the third person whose "soul" he is to collect is until just as he arrives at the castle. And it's not entirely clear that he intended to kill the assassin or to save her life. But it's Isabel who tells him that he's suffering from "unrequited love".
So my question is--how do these two women function in the book? and why does Mort marry Ysabell?
At the beginning of the book Ysabell treats Mort like dirt (horse manure in fact). Not that he's treated much better by either Albert or DEATH, but they just tend to forget about him or why Ysabell's father (adopted) brought Mort to his Kingdom. Mort seems to fall for Keli when he accompanies DEATH the first time. It is then that he is first introduced to the concept of DEATH'S philosophy, which is WHEN IT'S TIME, IT'S TIME. FAIR DOESN'T COME INTO IT. And from that one glance (strangers across a crowded room) he thinks he's fallen in love with her
Terry turns a neat trick because Mort doesn't know who the third person whose "soul" he is to collect is until just as he arrives at the castle. And it's not entirely clear that he intended to kill the assassin or to save her life. But it's Isabel who tells him that he's suffering from "unrequited love".
So my question is--how do these two women function in the book? and why does Mort marry Ysabell?
Poohcarrots said:
Surely Albert has found the philosophers stone, life everlasting, what everyone on Earth wants, and what Christianity claims it can deliver. How he chooses to spend eternity is up to him.
Maybe for him, he's in heaven. Do people get bored in heaven?
Death lets him stay because Death needs company. Death has taken on some human traits, one being, he doesn't want to be alone. Same reason for the Death of rats. Same reason he adopted Ysabelle, hired Mort and loves his grand-daughter Susan.
Maybe for him, he's in heaven. Do people get bored in heaven?
Death lets him stay because Death needs company. Death has taken on some human traits, one being, he doesn't want to be alone. Same reason for the Death of rats. Same reason he adopted Ysabelle, hired Mort and loves his grand-daughter Susan.
As to my comment about Albert not really living (and I have no idea why you should think that makes me sound like Glenn [expletive deleted] Beck. Take a look at this section of the book when Albert is bossing the wizards at UU around:
This is hardly someone who is happy with his lot in Death's Domain. It speaks more to me of someone who has been so afraid of what death holds for him, that he's been hiding from it for 2000 years.
Death didn't need companionship and he certainly didn't need a manservant. What exactly does Albert actually do for Death as a manservant anyhow?
The one thing that having Albert around does do is makes Death curious about the humans that he harvests. In another book Terry points out that rat catchers will often become fascinated by rats.
The house that Death lives in along with everything in it seem to have been created for the humans that live there rather than Death himself. It's unclear why Death adopted Ysabell - although it's possible that left without parents in the Great Nef, she'd have probably died. I think he saved her more out of curiosity than anything.
This is the book where Death really goes further with his fascination than he has ever gone before. The difference is that rather than just getting Mort to live with him, he actually gets Mort to do his job and that causes them to swap roles.
Death becomes more human and Mort becomes more Death-like.
It might be relevant at this point to consider that Death is unique among his "household" in that Mort, Ysabell and Albert all have, or had at one point, independent existences in their own right. Death doesn't, he is an anthropomorphic embodiment of belief; in Reaper Man, the new Death appears without his contribution or knowledge, as do the various Deaths of Animals.
Nor does he control the Lifetimers, only follow them; and since they appear to exist as fragile, corporate items ( he doesn't make them ) they must need to be kept somewhere. There are the biographies, writing themselves on endless library shelves; again he doesn't appear to be anything other than the guardian of these. He also appears to have administrative duties ( the "Nodes" ) although these aren't shown in detail, so he must need some sort of office or workspace. He has a horse, and that horse has a stable.
So his anthropomorphic personification must include the various functions he carries out, ie "Death's Domain" is actually an integral part of his being.
Nor does he control the Lifetimers, only follow them; and since they appear to exist as fragile, corporate items ( he doesn't make them ) they must need to be kept somewhere. There are the biographies, writing themselves on endless library shelves; again he doesn't appear to be anything other than the guardian of these. He also appears to have administrative duties ( the "Nodes" ) although these aren't shown in detail, so he must need some sort of office or workspace. He has a horse, and that horse has a stable.
So his anthropomorphic personification must include the various functions he carries out, ie "Death's Domain" is actually an integral part of his being.
Tonyblack said:
I don't buy the idea that he's content to spend thousands of years in utter drudgery.
Tonyblack said:
Poohcarrots said:
Surely Albert has found the philosophers stone, life everlasting, what everyone on Earth wants, and what Christianity claims it can deliver. How he chooses to spend eternity is up to him.
Maybe for him, he's in heaven. Do people get bored in heaven?
Maybe for him, he's in heaven. Do people get bored in heaven?
Why ever not? It's written down in black and white that he's happy, isn't it? 8) So SW, did YOU actually do any reading before you decided to go off on another of your Pooh-bashing tirades?
Before you criticise me unfairly again, please don't say I'm talking nonsense before you actually check to see if I am or not.
It might 'suit' him but that doesn't mean that he's happy with it. Hence the comment (in black and white no less) about him not going back and challenging Death (who I assume is "old boniface").
He was once the most powerful wizard in existence - he's afraid to day and so he's in hiding. Presumably, one day the Disc will end and then he won't be able to hide any more.
But this is, I think, really about a man at the end of his life, worrying about what comes next as opposed to Ysabell who still has her life ahead of her but has been stuck at the age of sixteen for such a long time.
He was once the most powerful wizard in existence - he's afraid to day and so he's in hiding. Presumably, one day the Disc will end and then he won't be able to hide any more.
But this is, I think, really about a man at the end of his life, worrying about what comes next as opposed to Ysabell who still has her life ahead of her but has been stuck at the age of sixteen for such a long time.
