From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: (whorl) The Secret: Shame?
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 16:02:17 


Could it be that when Horn talks of the secret returning the inhumi to the
vermin they once were that he is speaking metaphorically?  

Humans currently view the inhumi as intelligent, dangerous enemies and
predators, but what if they knew that they are "really" just reptiles who
derive their intellegence from human blood.  They would perhaps see them
as vermin that merely mimick intellegence.

All of the inhumi that hang around Horn seem very insecure and unsettled
about their identity--they want to be human, they want other humans to see
them as human.  Perhaps the reason they are so desperate that Horn not
reveal their secret is that it would be intolerable that humans know what
they really are.  Perhaps it would be so demoralizing that they would be
less effective predators, but maybe the real threat is not so much tipping
the balance in the humans vs. inhumi struggle as shattering their fragile
identities.

Krait affects a superior attitude toward Horn, talking of him as cattle,
but if he feels as Jahlee, Fava, and Juganu did, then that is surely a
front for his insecurity.  How different might their relationship have
been if Horn had known from the start that Krait would be an unthinking
beast if not for Sinew's blood and that Krait was continually tormented by
being almost but not quite human.

-Rostrum


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