Vox Mentis Discussion

A bit of worldbuilding geekery I have to get out of my system: Thoreau chooses the names of graduating poets, right? What was his reasoning behind the names given that we saw in the story (particularly of interest to me are Plath, Eliot, Austen, and also the author of the final supplementary material)

Can you share one work by each of the poets "resurrrected" within this story? Like a playlist but for poetry????

The way I saw it was that there was a sort of "board" at the Academy that handled naming of poets when they graduated. However, Thoreau could overrule/step in for cases that he took a special interest in... like Elise.

While some of the names had in-story reasoning behind them (like Woolf), many were chosen because I wanted to evoke a feeling about the character via the poetry of their, uh, poetsona, or present a sort of irony. For example, a Very Good poem by the real Thoreau is Friendship. This poem very much encapsulates one of the main "rules" of the story, which is revealed at the end:

In such case only doth man fully prove
Fully as man can do,
What power there is in Love
His inmost soul to move
Resistlessly.

If villain Thoreau had actually understood and internalized his namesake's outlook, he may have gotten a lot farther in taking over the world.

Woolf: The naming of Elise was very much a power move, and probably a sort of vain wish-fulfillment, by Thoreau. It's also a bit of foreshadowing for the twist that Woolf was acting under Thoreau's orders, in his thrall, consciously or otherwise, for much of the story.

Note these lines in this article:

Woolf saw Thoreau not as a misanthropic hermit trying to hide from society in the woods, but as a “noble” rebel attempting to teach his fellow man his unique philosophy on life through his writing and actions.

It was as if she saw him as she saw herself, a misfit trying to invent a new way of life...

Similarly to Schazer's question, why was the fact that Elise was named "Woolf" such a big deal?

Since the Organization dealt out poet names based on how good at word wizardry you were, getting the name Virginia Woolf would be seen as an absurdly high honor, since IRL Woolf had such a deep understanding of how words work.

Eliot: The Hollow Men is one of my favorite poems, and imagery from it ends up worming its way into pretty much anything I write at some point. You might notice echoes of post-bareword Broken Hill in there.

Though he would never say it, Eliot very much views himself as a failure. At the end, he realizes he let the Organization control him so much that for most of his life, his actions were not truly his own. He was a hollow man, a stuffed man, headpiece filled with straw. He failed to save Jane, he failed to save Elise, and in the end, his world ended: Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Austen: The reasoning behind the naming of Austen was twofold: I wanted to evoke an initial sense of "high society and prim and properness" when she is introduced, but then reveal that there is a bit more to her as you dig deeper throughout the story. The second reason might be more clear if you understand Jane Austen's writings as a model of Aristotelian philosophy/ethics. This is explained pretty well in this article. To briefly summarize the idea, Aristotle had the thought that "do excellent things, have excellent things happen to you, and vice versa". Austen's novels tend to show this as good guys ending up with good endings, and bad guys getting shitty endings. Karma, essentially. Jane represents this idea for Eliot. His own "compromised" state by the Organization leads to him doing bad stuff, which ultimately makes Jane, and what she represents, unattainable for him.

Plath: This one isn't super deep, but I think both real Plath and story Plath were quite troubled people. I also think her poem The Colossus hints at what are her underlying feelings about working under Thoreau: The sense of helpless servitude, her fear of the power he wields.

Dove: You might have noticed that the "front" for Labs was the Rita Dove Institute of Psychological Research. Behind the scenes, Rita Dove was the poet in charge of Labs, and became basically the highest-ranking poet left following the "shakeup" at the end. I wanted a fairly recent poet name belonging to someone who achieved a decently high level of fame (but not so high as to compete with Thoreau). Her IRL critics also thought "she valued an inclusive, populist agenda over quality", which I think speaks to her viewpoint at the end - stick to Organizational norms, don't shake things up too much, stay with what works.

Hopefully that sheds some light on a few of the thoughts behind the characters!

As far as a "poetry playlist" goes, here's my recommendations for the main poets from the story (that also played a role in the drafting of the story):

Thoreau: Friendship, Inspiration

Woolf: No poetry, but I recommend listening to this.

Eliot: The Hollow Men, The Waste Land

Austen: When Stretch'd On One's Bed

Plath: The Colossus, Words

I read Eliot's hesitation as him realizing that shooting Woolf wouldn't change a thing, but letting himself get killed might lure out Thoreau. As he said seeing Danny would make it impossible to know what she'd do, but it might end up with her killing Thoreau so he sacrificed himself for that slim chance. Am I off the base here?

After reading Douglas' post above, my understanding was that he just couldn't bring himself to kill her.

Yes, that's exactly it. He couldn't do it. Regardless of Thoreau, Woolf's kill order, anything, he couldn't bring himself to kill someone he saw as his daughter. To kill her would be another mistake in a long line of mistakes.