1.2.4-Acegrantaire

Tormentum Belli
People have already done a way better analysis of what exactly the cannon symbolizes than I could have, so it’s mostly flailing over Hugo’s prose under the cut.

I’m????? Really in love????? Because the prose of this chapter is incredible and the images conveyed are very clear in spite of being highly metaphorical and kind of abstract? “It weighs ten thousand pounds and it rebounds like a child’s ball. Its flight is a wild whirl abruptly cut at right angles.” THIS IS NOT VERY SPECIFIC. And yet I have a very clear image of what this cannon looks like below the decks? HUGO.

My translation’s version of the “lightning in its stomach” line is “The ship, so to speak, has lightning imprisoned in its womb which seeks to escape.” Which is really cool to me because not just the juxtaposition of life and death—the cannon is within the womb, and yet it kills so well—but because of the way that it anthropomorphizes the ship as well? Because ships are female, and so this is a ship of deception carrying a ‘child’ that kills her crew.

EVEN YOUR SHIP DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SUCCEED.

In some ways, relating to that metaphor of the cannon, while I understand it as a war metaphor and a metaphor for the people, I think it might also be a symbol of the regime that this ship sails for? Because it’s described as “a machine which transforms itself into a monster” and politics is so often described as a machine. And then once a political machine is corrupted, it becomes monstrous and terrifying and horrific and near-impossible to stop.

That’s probably not worded very well, so maybe I’ll come back to this thought later and try to clear up my ideas and put them into words better.

Anyway, we have another cliffhanger. Jays, Hugo, are you ever going to get sick of these?

(tbh i’m really excited to see what exactly the passenger is going to do.)

Commentary
Kingedmudnsroyalmurder Hugo’s prose is so good! I am also seriously in love.

And I also pinged on the cannon maybe being Actually Monarchy/Actually Counter-Revolution. Because yeah, it’s all out of control and monster-made machine and dead but still moving. Honestly it’s probably Actually Everything because this is Hugo and he never saw symbolism he didn’t like.

I did not pick up on the idea that the ship itself is against them here. That is an excellent observation. (And it ties into the blood-soaked trees of 1.1.1 in a way — in both cases the very thing that is supposed to contain/protect the soldiers is opposing them.)

Acegrantaire (reply to Kingedmundsroyalmurder) The cannon is Actually Every Symbol All At Once.

I think that, as annoying as my translation can be (JOBY, REALLY?) the “womb” line definitely helps that bit of interpretation! The ship definitely is opposing those it’s supposed to protect, but I think in some ways the forest is more, hmmm, kindly intended towards the soldiers? It certainly contains that which could destroy them, but it also contains Michelle and her children and offers the soldiers something beyond the war? So it fosters human connection and looking beyond ideology, which maybe means it holds both the destruction of the soldiers, in the form of an enemy ambush, and their not-exactly-salvation-but-maybe-something-close in the form of Michelle and three children that the regiment adopts.

Whereas the ship just kills the men. This could change now that Mr. Not Actually A Peasant has stepped in, but there’s no sort of connection on a human level between members of Claymore's crew.

Um. Human connection and empathy vs. disdain and arrogance?

Pilferingapples OH WOW the womb metaphor both makes sense and is SUPER CREEPY, like ALIENS creepy, Pardon me while I flail a bit in nautically-inspired Body Horror.