Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Coatlicue Complex

Ever since the first scene in the book, I always feel like I never hear enough about Hal from a neutral (maybe not neutral, but third-person) point of view. So, when Dr. Dolores Rusk is referenced as talking about Hal's "Coatlicue Complex" (pg 516), I was instantly intrigued. Unfortunately, after trying to find out what that even means I've come up with only a loose theory at best.
Wikipedia says that Coatlicue is essentially the Aztec fertility goddess/mother of the gods and represents the Life/Death/Rebirth cycle as well as the power a mother has over her infant. From which I took "Coatlicue Complex" to mean that Hal's mother appears to Rusk to exert an unnaturally strong influence on Hal, or that Hal (this is less likely) deeply reviles Avril (the babies of Coatlicue {all four hundred of them} eventually get together and decapitate their mother). All that to say it's fairly certain that Hal has the type of unusual relationship with his mom that would give Freud the howling fantods.

Just some other stuff:
What's the significance of JOI's first interests in annulation? (From what I understand, JOI invented a new type of fusion that became the main energy source for the ONAN called annular fusion {annular means "circular" or "ringlike" which reminds me of those giant torus-shaped plasma containers} which made him insanely rich)

The happy-face symbol shows up again, this time on the face of the leader of the Quebecois insurgents, this doesn't exactly fit with my previous theory, as Quebecois insurgents only indirectly correspond with the themes of addiction and Entertainment, but it does reaffirm my belief that it's an important symbol that should be looked further into.

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