Chapter 7
- (Riddley's scar)
- Riddley is initiated into the role of connexion man and we see the first of the several duties that go with this job: serving as liaison between his community and the central government, the Ram. The two chief officials of the Ram have arrived to perform the Eusa show which takes place in Chapter 8.
- (37:6) "the divvy roof"
Apparently a designated area for dividing up the day's hunting.
- (37:21) "No rumpa no dum / No zantigen Eusa cum"
One of the more indecipherable pieces of ritual language in the book; derived from (in an earlier draft of the novel) "No trumpets, no drums, no dancing when Eusa comes." EE Rumpa elsewhere means a commotion or "rumpus."
- (37:27) "wotcher"
A British greeting, from "what cheer" (i.e., "how's it going?"). In this case it's a more formal welcoming ceremony.
- (38:14) "2 cuts hash and 50 rizlas each"
The other common currency besides iron: cannabis and cigarette papers (Rizla is the most popular British brand of rolling papers). It's not clear how the latter are manufactured in a pre-industrial setting.
(Ironically, Rizla is a word from Outland: Lacroix Fils was the original manufacturer, and riz = rice[paper], thus Riz La. Thanks to SF.)
- (38:32) "looking a head"
Another pun due to Riddley's habit of splitting up words into smaller words: the connexion man looks ahead to the future, and one way to divine the future is by looking at heads.
- (39:1) "the time for moving crowds is past .... You just cant have all of Inland for your forage groun no mor"
The conflict between hunter-gatherer groups and agriculture, alluded to earlier in the story of "Why the Dog Wont Show Its Eyes," seems to be the chief political issue of the day. Here, Goodparley is established early on as a cheerleader for centralized agricultural civilization.
Inland: see Places.
In a typical example of puns serving to convey the story under the story, "crossroads" and "interpretation" have both been given rather sinister connotations—the latter now resembles "trepidation" and "turpitude."
- (43:3) "3 stroaks for Eusa"
One of many significant appearances of the number three. As shown in Chapter 16, adding one stroke changes the E to a Z.
In Russell Hoban: Faithful to the Strange, Graeme Wend-Walker points out that the symbol ☰ is identical to the trigram Qian or Ch'ien (Heaven) in the divination system of the I Ching. He notes that the common English translation of I Ching as Book of Changes has a suggestive similarity to the Master Chaynjis—one of the central concepts in Riddley's religion—and describes this particular trigram's significance as
- ...(among other things) the force of the creative, which is the force running through the novel and through its image of history, perpetually susceptible to transforming into something destructive. (p. 149) GW
The three lines that make up a trigram in the I Ching can each be either broken or solid; these correspond respectively to yin and yang, so ☰ is the only trigram that is entirely yang. The yin/yang concepts are symbolically correlated with, among many other things, feminine and masculine gender—and Riddley has just joined an entirely male priesthood, after formally becoming a man—but yang also more generally connotes action in either a physical or creative sense. EB