Dead or alive?

[Jamie Andrews <jha%lfcs.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>]

     So much of what's going on in The Ninth Wave goes on in her
mind, and in the fantasy world, that I think it's impossible to
say whether the "real" character "really" dies or not.

     However, if I had to put a real-world interpretation on it,
I guess I would now say that she does die, and is reincarnated.
I was very swayed by the long analysis that appeared here last
fall (sorry, don't remember the writer), suggesting that the
JCB/"Over here" male voice(s) finally succeeded in tempting her
toward death.  So I would say that she dies at the end of "Jig
of Life", travels astrally a bit in "Hello Earth", and is reborn
at the beginning of "The Morning Fog".

     As I say, however, this may be all going on symbolically
inside her head, whereas in "real life" (whatever that means in
this context) she does get rescued.  (I don't believe in astral
travel or reincarnation in real life, and maybe neither does
Kate.)  Perhaps it's better to just look at it as a
"transformation".

     All this is just the hermeneutics of my reading, of course!
I don't know what Kate has said about it, but I note that in
IED's recent posting he doesn't say that she has specifically
*denied* that the character dies.  She just says something about
there being hope at the end -- which doesn't clash with the
reincarnation interpretation.

--Jamie.
  jha@lfcs.ed.ac.uk