Analysis of chapter 1 part 1

In this opening section our main character, the mysterious SkinWright is invited to the engine room to help fix a problem. The Engineer extends his invitation to him based purely on our characters appearance.

Let's briefly try to get into the head of our poor doomed Engineer. He realises something is wrong with the engine. He tries to fix it, but it doesn't work. He tries to turn it off, so he can see what's going on, but that doesn't work either. He goes for a walk to try to clear his head and think of a solution. He notices a man, who by his dress and manner, must be an expert in these sorts of engines (his religious order being the manufacturers of a certain part of them). Members of the order are by reputation very honourable and discreet. Assuming the man will behave himself, as well as fix the engine, the Engineer asks him for help. He then takes the man to a vulnerable section of the ship, where he could do anything. This is a great risk, but he takes it because he is in trouble and assumes our SkinWright will help him and not cause any problems.

We have, of course, witnessed the results of this assumption.

In our story we noticed that the SkinWright (SW) found the Engineer to be horribly sycophantic. He treats SW with respect and listens to what ever he says, 'can we go in closer to the combiner?' At first he refuses, but after some encouragement he agrees to take the SW to the combiner, which leads to his undoing which I hope we will see in chapter 2. The Engineer trusts his belief in the SW over his own knowledge that he is in mortal danger.

I'm not suggesting that it is wrong to trust people! Obviously if a qualified medical expert tells you to take medicine then you should take it, even if you doesn't understand how it works. But in this case, the Engineer was also an expert in the area under discussion: 'is it safe to go on?'. But he puts aside his own understanding in favour of the SW, perhaps it's because he was always brought up to respect such people.

This reminds me of an experiment that was conducted some years ago. I'll skip the details, but it was found that most people were willing to give someone a lethal doses of electric shock under the instructions of a scientist. The researchers determined that people felt that the scientists must be right, that somehow it was OK to listen to them; that they had to listen to them even though they realised that they would be murdering someone.






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad