How do you convince the world that certain people aren’t vermin? With a stage, of course.
Summary
They unlatch the Wonderful Fanny from the barges behind her once all the goblins are through. Stratford shows up again; he and Vimes begin a life-or-death scrap that Vimes is losing when Stinky shows up and jumps the man. Stratford manages to get Stinky off and stomps him, leading Vimes to knock him out and tie him up. The ship gives a great lurch again and Vimes is knocked out as he’s tossed overboard. He wakes in the Quirm Zoo, where a few Quirmian Watch officers get him up to speed. Everyone is safe, but Stratford has vanished and goblins have been sent on—Vimes insists they get a boat to catch the one carrying them, and Acting Captain Haddock hears that Wee Mad Arthur has been picked up and is looking for Vimes. They all get on board a ship and chase down the ship carrying the goblins (and Stratford, Vimes presumes), which stops without a fight and offers to give up the man they’re looking for. They drag him to the deck; it turns out to be Jethro. Vimes threatens to have the ship impounded and its captain (whose name is Murderer) brought up on far more serious charges if he doesn’t say who paid him to kidnap Jethro and transport the goblins. Jethro asks to fight the first mate, who was cruel to him while he was prisoner on their ship.
Jethro lays the first mate out in one punch, and Vimes gets all his names for the next part of this journey; his quarry cannot run at this rate, so he decides to head back to his family with Feeney, aboard the Black-Eyed Susan. Vimes passes out as they chug through the night and wakes to find Nobby waiting on the shore and a temporary clacks tower gone up on Hangman’s Hill. Detritus is up at the house for protection; they’re still waiting on Fred’s arrival. Vimes goes up to the house to talk to Young Sam about milking goats and get thoroughly snogged by his wife, who is very impressed with his heroics. He asks her if she didn’t discuss this trip with Vetinari, and if, possibly, this entire trip hadn’t been his idea from the start, but Sybil insists that she can’t remember, plus they both look out for Vimes, so what does it matter. He takes Young Sam on a walk to see the new clacks, which is being manned by a fellow named Tony and Stinky. A young lady goblin has taken a shine to Nobby. Fred has been cured by a goblin who took the pot off him. Vimes finds Sybil in the rose garden. She tells him about having a conversation with Lady Rust, who tried to get her on their side. She’s furious that Lady Rust thinks they’re the same.
They watch the young lady goblin, Shine of the Rainbow, cook snails in front of Young Sam and Nobby, and Sybil suggests that perhaps this might be a good match for Nobbs. Vimes finds that Jethro has been made a copper by Feeney, and has word that more people are confessing to what happened to the goblins years ago. He heads down to the pub, where a local man tries to apologize on behalf of the community. Vimes doesn’t absolve them, but he does open a tab for them all evening. Then Vimes’s family get on the Roberta E. Biscuit to Quirm, and the barman winds up making a drink named after him (which Vimes actually has a few of), and he hears someone note that the barman isn’t the usual man on the boat. That man (Stratford) heads into the room where he assumes Young Sam is sleeping. Vimes is waiting for him. (Willikins made him non-alcoholic versions of the cocktail; he’s completely sober.) Stratford wants to turn king’s evidence, and Vimes agrees to take him to Vetinari. While Vimes shows Young Sam around Quirm, Sybil writes letters to all the right people and begins to change minds about goblins. Sybil and Young Sam head home and Vimes goes back to the manor. A big to-do is happening at the Ankh-Morpork Opera House as Vimes heads into the pub (now the Commander’s Arms), and waits.
Sybil presents Tears of the Mushroom, to play before the elite of the city. The Times runs a very poetic piece about the performance. Vimes opens a tab at the pub, but not before letting folks know that the magistrates are being brought up on charges, and that the goblins are their neighbors now and subject to the same laws. Miss Beedle hugs Vimes and thanks him. The Colonel Makepeace approaches, nervous about what will become of his wife, but Vimes tells him not to worry too much and that she probably won’t serve time in prison. As Stratford is being transported from Quirm, he escapes, but Willikins is waiting for him: He’s believes that justice will only be served if Stratford dies, and gives him a chance to fight. Stratford doesn’t make it. Vimes goes to see Vetinari later on, and gets a talking to for creating and acting under laws retrospectively and generally causing a lot of headache for his boss. Rust’s son is going to pay hefty fines and be sent to Fourecks, which doesn’t make anyone happy, but is the best Vetinari can do without causing far worse problems down the line. Sybil insists that Vimes take another vacation in a few months, since this one barely counted. About a year later, they are invited to Emily Gordon’s wedding to an Ankh-Morpork pottery maven and her sister Jane dedicates her first book to Vimes: Pride and Extreme Prejudice.
Commentary
So… how do we measure sentience?
The book lets you gaze down into a chasm here and form your own opinions about what happens. And I think the steps it takes are absolutely essential: Vimes is first. He believes that goblins are sentient probably from the point where he investigates that crime scene. The suffering is what tips him directly onto their side, and that’s consistent for him; people being hurt or derided or thought of as less than. Because he knows what that feels like, and has always felt it was wrong deep down in his bones.
Feeney is next because Vimes tells him to get on board. Sybil after that—because of the music. Everyone else after that… because of the music.
As with all moments like this in Pratchett’s work, the right thing comes from a bittersweet act. The sweeter side of this is the acknowledgment that art is very often what unites us, teaches us, motivates and connects us. Art is how we communicate, and one of the key markers of sentience as we know it. The drive to create for the pleasure and satisfaction of the act itself, and the need to connect with others through that act. It is how we know who we are.
But the bitter is the inverse thought: that someone should have to prove their sentience through an act of personal creation. That without the ability, the chance of any laws being quickly passed to assure their protections and rights could never exist in the first place. Because people know that the emotional appeal is always more successful; we’re emotional beings and that’s what we respond to.
Technically—and this is even more important—Felicity Beedle and Jethro Jefferson were first before Vimes. Felicity because she lived among them; she is part of them. She knew that teaching music to goblins would be an avenue of salvation because she was forced to bend to humanity’s rules. And Jethro was willing to stand for them from the beginning. He was the only one, and he was only a kid when he did it. The instant that he was mistreated by those with power, he recognized that hierarchy was a sham, and it changed his entire outlook on life.
The resignation Vimes holds in his heart for people, the wish (and fervent hope) that we were all better, and the knowledge that we’re often not, is perhaps one of the most devastating tools of the Watch books. Sam Vimes doesn’t believe that people can be perfect, but he does believe in them. Which makes his disappointment that much harder to bear. As he says to the locals at the pub when one of them tries to explain why none of them stopped the magistrates from shipping the goblins away:
“You could have done something. You could have done anything. You could have done everything. But you didn’t, and I’m not sure but that in your shoes I might not have done anything, either. Yes?”
Because that’s the other ugly truth in all of this: Vimes knows that what drives him to action are what he perceives as great injustices. He also knows that he’s in a very unique position to solve them. Which makes it a lot easier to do something about it when he comes across them. So he knows the people of the Shires were wrong, but he also knows that without his specific outlook and his helpful rank(s) and his enormous piles of wealth and his connection to an ancient force… he might as well be another face in that crowd. There was one of Jethro and an endless supply of everyone else.
And then he gets home and still gets a talking-to from his boss because he did pretty much everything here completely outside the book. Though, in honesty, I think that Vetinari’s real problem is that Vimes did exactly what he wanted in not entirely the best way possible, making his cleanup harder than he would like, and that Vimes also has assets like Sybil to call upon when everything seems impossible.
Be fair, Havelock, they’re all ultimately your assets at the end of the day. You’re just cranky about the crossword.
But the real check-in is about Stratford in their meeting. In truth, Vetinari is right that Vimes cannot and should not count upon retroactive law in the future because that is a slope so slippery it’s coated in oil and ice, but the murder is what matters most. He needs to be certain that Vimes did not seek revenge against Stratford because that wouldn’t be a clever loophole that he exploited just this once. It would be a betrayal of the clear line they’ve drawn to keep each other accountable all these years. And because Vimes did not cross it—and never truly intended to, importantly—Vetinari lets him go with a warning that he’s about to get written into the history books again. Their checks and balances remain true, and boy are they grumpy about it. And pleased about it. They’re weird like that.
With this book we have the last Watch tome. This is one of the few books that makes a significant jump in time when compared to the rest, and that we can see how different some of the characters are, in ways superficial (Vimes trading snuff for smoking most of the time and trying his best to eat healthy for Sybil’s sake) and profound (Vimes is so comparatively relaxed in his book? and so is Vetinari, at least professionally when he’s in front of people he trusts). A nice way to see this group off.
Asides and little thoughts
- Okay, “Stinky don’t need no badges” as a riff on “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges” from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is not where I was ever expecting that to go, but that’s on me, I should have seen it coming.
- The Rue de Wakening? Are you kidding me?
- Love the idea of Nobby finding a goblin partner. And I hope Fred internalizes a few things from this experience? In a longterm way.
- With relevance to the time jump, I feel like we need to talk about the horniness of this book. Because we deal a lot with bodily functions and the rest, but this book is also the only one where Vimes and Sybil are all over each other at points? And it’s so cute? And this might just be down to comfort at writing it, but I like to think that Pratchett is subtly telling us all that some folks get more sensual with age and it’s good actually.
Pratchettisms
For a moment he thought he saw a naked marble lady tumbling with the debris and clutching her marble shift as if defending the remains of her modesty from the deluge.
He’d heard the crack of bones even while airborne, and so what hit Stratford was the full force of the law, and its rage.
Captain Murderer would be orientated to the world as seen by Commander Vimes at Commander Vimes’s leisure.
“I might be made up of your subconscious mind and momentary case of muesli poisoning occasioned by a fermenting raisin.”
Lady Sybil leaned back with her shears poised, and regarded the rose bushes like a bloody-handed revolutionary looking for his next aristocrat.
It had been said by someone years before that to see Sybil Ramkin’s upholstered bosom rise and fall was to understand the history of empires.
Only the horse, steaming patiently in the mist, saw what happened next, and being a horse was in no position to articulate its thoughts on the matter.
“You know, Vimes, sometimes your expression becomes so wooden that I think I could make a table out of it.”
We’re gonna take a short break and be back in the second week of July with another pause from Discworld—Dodger! We’ll read Chapters 1–6.
Thoughts
I was most pleased with Willikins’s resolution of the Stratford problem and Vetinari’s resolution of the Gravid problem (Arachne will see that he unfortunately and untraceably dies of a spider bite). Sometimes extra-legal is necessary for Justice. Vimes doesn’t want to admit it but he does recognize it in the case of Willikins. Vetinari, of course, uses it all time.
Beyond trying to make the law retroactive, Vetinari’s main disagreement with Vimes is that Vimes can’t accept the need for politics. Vetinari had to negotiate and concede things to the trolls to avoid turning Gravid over to them for execution.
When Vimes tells the villagers that he might have done the same thing, he avoids admitting that he used to be hiding in a bottle whenever trouble came.
Random thought – I wonder if the issue with goblins is sentience or if it is, like Nutt, all about worth. Gaspode is certainly sentient but does that apply to all dogs? Or maybe it is language that’s the key? Prejudice can always find an excuse.
I have high hopes for Nobby and Colon. Which is a pleasant change.
And Vimes can add King of the River to his titles.
And Young Sam finally gets his elephant poo.
Pratchettisms
“And make that another two bacon sandwiches. And a lot more coffee. And make that one more bacon sandwich.” (Vimes)
His job was to make sense of the world, and there were times when he wished that the world would meet him halfway. (Vimes)
He had slept the sleep of the dead except for the bit where the bits fall off and you crumble into dust. (Vimes)
Shout Forward
The Watch, Vetinari, and the goblins will be back. Sybil will not. This is her swan song.
Shout Sideways
The concert at the opera house by Tears of the Mushroom has a parallel in Marian Anderson’s becoming the first black singer to sing with the Metropolitan Opera. In both cases it was their introduction to the ruling elite who, as their name implies, makes the rules.
Shoutout to my vice
A good cigar had time and wisdom and personality. He would be unhappy to see this one go. (Vimes)
Vetinari being frank may be even more dangerous than he usually is. On the other hand, we get to see him actually admit to stress (to the two people who won’t peach on him), which is a nice setup for seeing him get to have (gasp!) fun in Raising Steam.
Sentience is an old issue in genre. ISTM that fantasies don’t usually touch it because most authors have certain givens, one of which is that all of the species that we run into are clearly defined (Pratchett is not most authors), but it pops up in interesting places in science fiction; I wonder whether Pratchett ever read Little Fuzzy.
Music does have a way of cutting through the fog; I once observed that the only justification for how difficult it is to make well is that it says things we can’t say in words.
The bit about poisoned by a fermenting raisin is a lovely callback to Dickens: “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato”.
I know enough English English to know why everybody was sniggering over the Fanny, but not whether Biscuit is supposed to be a takeoff on Lee or just a cute made-up bit. Any thoughts?
Pratchettisms:
Some parts of his body reported for duty, others protested that they had a note from their mother.
He had slept the sleep of the dead except for the bit where bits fall off and you crumble into dust
…Sergeant Detritus, who was merging with the landscape, a feat a troll officer can achieve by simply removing his armor and sticking a geranium behind his ear…
Some weapons are called a Saturday Night Special; Detritus’s multi-arrow crossbow would last you all week.
“Captain Haddock”?
A bit of crossover there.
I admit I had to Google it to figure out what you were talking about. To save others the trouble, Captain Haddock was a recurring character in Tintin. Pratchett may have reused the last name.
But as far as Pratchett, Constable Haddock was introduced in Thud as a member of the Ankh-Morpork Watch. Vimes made him an Acting Captain in this book (to outrank the Quirm watch). Which is why he considers Sergeant a promotion.
The only question in my mind is if he originally introduced Constable Haddock as a sort of generic joke and later decided that it would be a good joke to have him addressed as Captain because of the Tintin character or whether he named Haddock that with the intention of eventually arranging his somehow occupying the rank/title of Captain
A question: do we think Pratchett was just bored of writing Death, or that there was no way to make the death of Stratford funny? I recall that Death didn’t appear in a couple of Tiffany Aching novels, but not that he was missing in any previous book not intended for younger readers.
I hadn’t noticed it but you’re right. The viewpoint of the horse could have been the viewpoint of Stratford’s ghost and “but not fast enough” the words of Death.
I suspect, though, that at this point in what was left of his life, writing Death cut too close for Pratchett.
I was wrong. I’ve been reading Raising Steam and Death will be back.
Perhaps Pratchett just didn’t want to complicate Stratford’s and Willikins’s story arcs.
Looking back:
Stratford has ‘a gift, being indescribable.’ Rather like Moist Von Lipwig.
There’s a mention of Brick, who Detritus has adopted.
Regarding Nobby’s romantic prospects, Sybil says Verity Pushpram is engaged to a man who owns a fleet of fishing boats. Good for her!
Looking ahead:
Goblins will spectacularly rise to prominence in Ankh-Morpork and beyond, becoming ubiquitous in a number of industries and demonstrating arrays of natural skills along with other qualities.
Pratchettisms:
“You save goblins. Big hero. Hurray! Everyone get clap.” — Stinky
“One down, one across. She has won, and I am cross.” — Vetinari
(Thank Offler we only have two Discworld books left. Trying to get this new website to accept a copy-paste is such a pain.)
The society-changing power of Tears of the Mushroom’s music is heartwarming for some readers, but “jarring” (as TV Tropes used to put it) for others. In our world, many (if not all) demographic groups have contained widely-lauded artists, geniuses, and heroes…but most of their people continue to be treated with dehumanization, discrimination, and abuse.
Snuff won the 2012 Bolliger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and was nominated for the Locus Award and Prometheus Award. According to Wikipedia, it’s also “the third-fastest-selling novel in the United Kingdom since records began, having sold over 55,000 copies in the first three days.” I don’t know why there was such an extraordinary rush to buy it, as it was published only a year after I Shall Wear Midnight.
I think it’s because it was 6 years since the last Vimes book (and 4 years since the last Moist, the other main Ankh-Morpork lead character). Plus the world knew he was dying.
I would’ve liked it if the Quirmians had called Haddock “Églefin” after they learned his named — it’s French for “haddock.”
“They want to die from the day they’re born, but something gets twisted, so they kill instead.” — Vimes, re: people like Stratford. I’m always saddened by thoughts about people whose inborn mental wiring dooms them to only ever do harm.
Pratchett once listed Life on the Mississippi among his favorite books. It shows in the riverboat sequence in this book (as well as in Witches Abroad.)
Near the end of the book, right after Vimes gives a short speech to the townspeople “before there is a law, there has to be a crime”, he sets the tower on the green on fire. Why?
I originally thought that it was just a signal to start arresting the magistrates and others. But then I looked up ‘hurdles’ and besides being something you jump over it also means fences. I suspect that they were the fences that trapped the goblins when they were enslaved.