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I am currently reading this book, so no spoilers if at all possible, but I was just reading and I dont feel any disdain towards Abner Doon, and I dont know if I should... Its not a big deal to me what he did and evertone hates him and associates him with the devil... Anyone who knows what I am talking about needs to help me out because I fear I am turning to the darkside or something......
Posts: 93 | Registered: Apr 2008
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I felt kinda the same way, the hate others feel from him i think comes more from the fact the he is an anomaly amongst the culture he lives in. That doesn't mean all he does is good,but he is also aware, or at least believes he is, something that needs to be changed in his society and in his view taht change is for the better
Posts: 1 | Registered: Sep 2008
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I think that Abner is hated less for what he does and more because people need to associate something with evil and at some point his name came up (no spoilers it confuses my post) and over time he became the antithesis of Jason
Posts: 143 | Registered: Feb 2008
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Done with the book now so spoilers are acceptable... Card does a very good job of creating hated characters that I end up liking... Peter for example is my favorite character... I dunno, maybe I am just a little bit more evil than I should be... Posts: 93 | Registered: Apr 2008
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Abner Doon was the hero to me. He did far more to save humanity and he sacrificed more to do it. He was only hated and evil because the people of Capitol and the empire had seriously messed up priorities. Doon corrected that.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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I agree, and if I had the choice I would take a full and happy life with the poeple I know over Somec any day.
Posts: 93 | Registered: Apr 2008
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Darth CGP... Doesnt really work... Off original topic, but speaking of the dark side, I love Jedi acedemy.
Posts: 93 | Registered: Apr 2008
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Worthing was an interesting book. It reminded me a lot of Asimov's Empire and Foundation series. I would be interested if Asimov's work influenced Card during its writing.
Posts: 197 | Registered: Jan 2007
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Crazy. I was just rereading The Worthing Saga for at least the eighth time, and thought I'd log back in here for the first time in ages to see if there has been any discussion about it, and lo and behold the very topic is at the top of the first page.
I didn't hate Abner either. I think that Card's intention with this character was not, in fact, to hate him, especially since his protagonist (Jason) ended up becoming Abner, in a sense. The association with Abner and the Devil is not accidental, either. In Biblical history the idea of Satan destroying the peace in the world simply for the sake of detesting it is a common tenant of Christian thought.
Which is something that I've always wondered about Card and this book. How do his beliefs, as a Mormon, reconcile with this idea - that Satan is, in a sense, good?
Posts: 3 | Registered: Jun 2006
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As I understand the Mormon view of Satan, Satan actually argued that the status quo -- that of no real pain and thus no real growth -- should endure. As such, Abner Doon -- while resembling the traditional Christian Satan -- is actually a Mormon anti-Satan.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Steve_G: Worthing was an interesting book. It reminded me a lot of Asimov's Empire and Foundation series. I would be interested if Asimov's work influenced Card during its writing.
I think Card states as much in the foreword or afterword of the book. Clearly the city-as-planet of Capitol and the decadent nature of the Empire is a clear tribute/homage (or similarity, at the very least) to Foundation's Trantor.
Off-topic:
Er... my spellcheck is making me doubt my reasoning on a word:
Foreword (as opposed to forward) is the correct term to refer to an author's notes prior to the start of a book. It seems to follow, then, that Afterword would be the appropriate term for comments that are written at the end of a book, yet my spellchecker insists that "afterward" is the correct term. But then, according to this Wiki article I am in fact correct.
And no...I didn't edit that Wiki...
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Ferahgo: In Biblical history the idea of Satan destroying the peace in the world simply for the sake of detesting it is a common tenant of Christian thought.
Along those lines, I've been searching through the forums and also the student research questions in an attempt to locate a discussion on the use of so many Biblical names in The Worthing Saga. I just found it intriguing that the story involving Elijah, for example, would include a drought and rain finally coming in the form of a cloud the size of a man's fist, just as Elijah of 1 Kings experiences. It makes me wonder, without having looked into it yet, if any other similar connections exist between the characters in Worthing and their Biblical counterparts (Peter, Amos, John, etc.).
Posts: 691 | Registered: Nov 2008
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I really enjoyed the Worthing Saga, and when finished, I spent the next week thinking about how I viewed acts of good and evil. Then of course, I told others. I've gotta read it again, I just hope I didn't leave it behind when we moved.
Posts: 115 | Registered: Apr 2008
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You can't take the views of the society in which Card's story takes place as the correct views. Remember, Ender Wiggin is hated as well.
Much of the reason the reader has a different view of him than the prevailing one is that you see him from the perspective of a one-time friend, and the rest of the world only knows him from ancient stories of the man who ended paradise; things got exagerated over time, and the reasons for what he did were lost, except to Jason.
I'm not sure how I come down on Doon, personally. While the narcisstic somec-addicted society of Worthing Saga is clearly sick--death obsessed, in a way--it's probably hard to over estimate how much turmoil, death and misery, Doon's destruction of it caused. But much of that is left to the imagination, so it's probably impossible to say how much harm came from his methods, although it seems he was one of the only ones in the galaxy able to diagnose the problem.
Posts: 105 | Registered: Dec 2005
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