In the fifth part of Soul Music, Susan tries her hand at a new job, and Imp’s band plays their first gig. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Discworld.Â
Trigger Warning: For discussion of misogyny.
Well, at least Susan is trying her new role! I got the sense that she did so out of curiosity and because she wanted to see if she could disprove any of it. She’s not exactly interested in being Death at all, and yet she finds herself quietly drawn to this world, no matter how much her conscious mind rejects it all. It’s here in the early part of this section that she bickers a bit with Albert about her duties, which sheds light on the whole affair. It’s interesting to me that again, memory plays such a huge part in all of this. Why is that? What am I missing? I suspect that this is related to this idea that she “inherited” the position, rather than qualified for it. (Part of me feels the answer is super obvious and was already in Mort, but just humor me for the moment.)
Susan actively forgot her time at Death’s home as a child, yet the more time she spends there, the easier it is for her to remember everything. And when she remembers, it is with clarity. It’s not just an image here and there, but a deep understand of what things look like, what it feels like to be in that cottage, and then, later, what it means to be Death:
Old certainties drained away, to be replaced by new certainties.
Now she understood whose granddaughter she was.
So what does she do after this? Well, she gets on Binky, and she gives the whole thing a good try. I feel like this understanding is the clearest she’s experienced thus far, and perhaps that means she gets why it’s important for someone to be Death. Well, somewhat. She does make my favorite point of ALL TIME when arguing with the Death of Rats about it:
“I’m not happy about this,” said Susan. “It can’t possibly work. I’m human. I have to go to the toilet and things like that. I can’t just walk into people’s houses and kill them!”
I LOVE THAT THIS CONCERN IS DEEPLY IMPORTANT TO HER BECAUSE NO ONE EVER ACKNOWLEDGES IT IN BOOKS. Ever!!! Of course, she doesn’t understand the logistics of being Death, and that’s how I read most of this section of the book. Like her father, she’s learning what’s in the details, and those details aren’t that pretty all the time. (But what about going to the bathroom? Are her bodily functions rendered unnecessary while she is being Death? CLEARLY WE ARE ASKING THE REAL QUESTIONS HERE.) Her first soul is a total jerk who, beautifully, wills his stuff to his cat. BLESS. It’s not the worst possible first case, and it’s not all that upsetting either.
So what’s next for her? A battle field. Surprisingly, it’s also not as bad as I expected it to be, either. But it’s a vital task for Susan because it brings her face-to-face with something she’s avoided her whole life: the power of belief on the Disc. She’s initially quite hesitant when she arrives, since she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. Which gives us this horrible fucking line:
“You’ve got to be more assertive,” said the raven, who alighted on a rock. “That’s the trouble with women in the professions. Not assertive enough.”
Or maybe she’s not assertive because she has no goddamn clue what she’s doing. It’s not like this came with a manual, you know? And I waited for something in this text to counter it, but nope. The raven says this, it’s never challenged or even turned into a joke. What the hell? It doesn’t feel funny at all, and it doesn’t help that there’s that really bizarre joke about the “shiny 46 D-cup breastplate” that follows it not long after. Like, I get that this is the manifestation of these soldiers’ beliefs, but come on.
Regardless, the scene acts as a powerful chance for Susan to witness how belief works. Can she deny it any more at this point? Sure, since I don’t know that she fully comprehends it. But it’s only a matter of time, and I am guessing that time is rapidly approaching. Now that the next person on her list is Imp y Celyn, the two main plots in this book are going to come crashing together.
How??? Is Imp going to die at his first gig? What about the power of that guitar? What does it actually do? I’M NERVOUS.
The original text contains use of the words “stupid” and “mad.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15VK54nAmLY
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