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