"Lucinda, when I finally forced her to start watching, correctly told me to stop bitching about the dragons: they were part of the deal, the price of voluntarily lowering oneself into the pit of the brain."
— James, Clive (b. 1939)
Author
Work Title
Date
April 18, 2016
Metaphor
"Lucinda, when I finally forced her to start watching, correctly told me to stop bitching about the dragons: they were part of the deal, the price of voluntarily lowering oneself into the pit of the brain."
Metaphor in Context
Plotwise, Cersei can thus raise a long-running question: Must she behave dreadfully in order to protect her dreadful son Joffrey, the heir to the throne, or is she just dreadful anyway? Would we, in the same position, be sufficiently dreadful to protect our offspring from a richly deserved oblivion? Tussling with such conundrums, we are obviously a long way below the level of the law; and indeed the whole thrust of the show is to give us a world in which the law has not yet formed, a Jurassic Park that has not yet given birth to its keepers. Once this principle is grasped, the dragons almost fit, although, personally, I could have done without them. Lucinda, when I finally forced her to start watching, correctly told me to stop bitching about the dragons: they were part of the deal, the price of voluntarily lowering oneself into the pit of the brain.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Clive James, "Thrones of Blood," The New Yorker (April 18, 2016). <Link to newyorker.com>
Date of Entry
04/22/2016
