Where's Mary Sue When You Need Her?: Difference between revisions

Line 44:

—"On What Is", Quine (emphasis added)</div></blockquote>

Per Quine, granting the existence of unactualized possibles leads to an infinity of entities with neither well-defined boundaries between them nor individuating properties to isolate them. Different entities may occupy the same space at the same time, while a singular entity appears in different places at the same time. The philosopher Quine may find this repugnant, but MacGillicutty the author (not the character) finds it appealing. Thus instead of traveling to another world, MacGillicutty the character (not the author) becomes ~~sensitized~~ to ~~certain~~ ~~chain~~ of events for ~~a certain group of~~ unactualized possibles in the single, real world.

Per Quine, granting the existence of unactualized possibles leads to an infinity of entities with neither well-defined boundaries between them nor individuating properties to isolate them. Different entities may occupy the same space at the same time, while a singular entity appears in different places at the same time. The philosopher Quine may find this repugnant, but MacGillicutty the author (not the character) finds it appealing. Thus instead of traveling to another world, MacGillicutty the character (not the author) becomes receptive to any chains of events for unactualized possibles in the single, real world.

For example, in chapter eight MacGillicutty shoots Jake and Daria shoots herself. Yet not long into chapter nine, MacGillicutty the character notices

<blockquote><div>...a flicker of light that resolved into Daria and Jake sitting at the table, Jake going through paperwork from Raft, and Daria reading the Lawndale Sun-Herald.

<i>“$15,000 a semester? We could all take a helicopter ride for that kind of money!”

“Guess I'll have to set up a pushcart and sell some of those left-over hot dogs from Basement Bob's, huh Dad?”</i></div></blockquote>

which is a variant of the opening of chapter seven, "Once at Lawndale." These are not ghosts or hallucinations: it's another possible chain of events. Likewise, when MacGillicutty later sees Jane put her head in her hands only to see

<blockquote><div>when she raised her head, it was Daria's face I saw, and suddenly the kitchen was the Morgendorffer kitchen, and then it was Daria who said, “But I guess it was the money that finally won me over to Jane's way of thinking. I mean, Mom was making good but not great money, while Dad was spending it, and I'd be damned if I didn't go away to college—”</div></blockquote>

the focus of his perceptions have slid from one chain of events to another.

Note that these are all objective, not products of the narrator's mind, but sense data coming to him. As Quine notes, such a universe is "overpopulated" and a "breeding group for disorderly elements," both cognitively—such as multiple inconsistent Darias and Janes—and morally—witness amoral drug-dealing Daria.

==Characters Introduced==