Posted by Howard Alan Treefrog on July 16, 1998 at 20:28:36:
In Reply to: Re: Demon Princes series posted by Hunt Stoddard on April 16, 1997 at 18:36:10:
: I agree with this explanation. The fact is that Kirth Gersen's entire life is and has always been governed by a completely pathological obsession for revenge instilled by his grandfather, a fact that he well knows but is completely powerless to change. I get the impression that he acts as much out of a feeling of duty to his grandfather as out of any hatred he has for the demon princes, but either way, with the end of the demon princes he has essentially nullified his entire reason for being. In the real world, a person like Gersen would probably have a nervous breakdown long before he reached his goal, but he would surely have one after reaching it. This is what makes the series so fascinating: It allows us to experience a remorseless and single minded drive that none of us would ever survive. It is a study of human obsession and compulsion.
Kirth comes alive for me in that passage from "The Book of Dreams" when, having killed the men who were attempting to throw him in the river, he jogs back under the night sky towards the pavilion where the erstwhile Fimfle is crashing his high school reunion. So often the "brooding man", Kirth is free of doubt in this moment; Vance conveys the moment cleanly and powerfully and it smacks of epiphany, though Vance himself would pooh-pooh the suggestion. Remember, Kirth was not trained to seek revenge; he was trained to remove evil men from the universe. His uncle's pragmatic recognition that a single man cannot both remove evil and create good provides the defining ethic of Kirth's existence and provides him with a basis for action.
Too bad Hamlet didn't have Gersen's uncle to consult.