EN119 Lecture 12: Week 12 notes
Document Summary
Like the narrator, the reader usually nds him/herself at rst agreeing (at least to some extent) with the artilleryman"s strategy and plans. The narrator meets up with the artilleryman after murdering the curate; the narrator is at his lowest point, realizing that he is now one with the weakest animal on earth: For that moment i touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. With us it would be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed away. (188). The idea of dethronement and humans as rabbits is taken up by the artilleryman. He seems, at rst, to share the curate"s defeatist attitude:
