This is "slapdash?" I am in utter awe of your brain.
I'm going to have to find a copy of The Second Coming now, if it marks the start of the mortality arc, and if MD marks its end. Interestingly, RTD's said in interviews that he thinks he has only one more Torchwood story to tell, based around Gwen. So perhaps he's subconsciously admitting he's finished his discourse on mortality.
(It's interesting to note that it's always the women that play this crucial part, although Jack is certainly the most willing participant of the three male characters.)
Judith, Adelaide, Gwen... just out of curiosity, was Judith a mother or grandmother too? Because Adelaide sacrificed herself to ensure her granddaughter would reach the stars, and Gwen stated she'd kill Jack in a heartbeat for Anwen's sake (and she kinda did do just that). As green_maia says, it's all about the next generation--perhaps RTD believes that's where humanity finds its true immortality. Passing it forward, as it were. So perhaps these women symbolize the keepers of immortality.
The Blessing is linked to human mortality and maybe one could say that on some level symbolises a balance between life and death. Nature, the universe with all its mysteries, the polar opposite of the small life Oswald Danes created for himself, everything big and incomprehensible and uncontrollable? The principle of mortality? All of that, or maybe they are the same thing?
It's all the same thing. Everything in MD was about restoring balance. For every yin there was a yang. Jack and Oswald; Jack and Rex; Jack and Gwen; Old Shanghai/Old World and Buenos Aires/New World. Also it was about restoring balance to Jack--he finds peace which allows him to let go, and he finds a true immortal partner in Rex. A lot of people thought that was wrong, that Rex shouldn't have become immortal because it dilutes Jack's importance as a fixed point, but the symbolism is fantastic. "It's better with two," indeed. :-)
Jack's death in The Blood Line is submission. To what? Not to the will of God, obviously, but RTD comes dangerously close here to writing something actually mystical.
Perhaps it's simply submission to the natural order of things. I know a lot of people compared the physical appearance of the Blessing to a giant vagina, but oddly, the symbolism makes sense. The Blessing perhaps represents Mother Earth, a natural and ancient phenomenon normally in balance. Jack's immortal blood threw the balance off; Jack must give it back mortal blood to reset it.
In the end there's always a connection between the religious themes and the death/mortality themes. Or is it that everything is connected to the mortality theme?
At its heart, religion is all about mortality, the question of what happens after death. Back when life was "nasty, brutish and short", religion was there mainly to help people endure the suffering of life. (E.g., for most of humanity's history the average life expectancy at birth hovered around 35 years of age. That's a lot of premature death to bear, considering in some eras, 50% of children born didn't make it to 5 years of age. It's only in the past 100 years that life expectancy doubled.) The promise of an everlasting reward--Heaven, Paradise, reincarnation, some sort of pain-free life after death--would make the suffering worth it. Otherwise, the idea that this life is all there is would be pretty grim and despairing.
(OTOH, the realization that this life is all there is would make it all the more precious, and ideally we'd be motivated to make it the best life possible.)
(Maybe this was the real reason why suicide was a moral and religious sin for so long? You had to endure all the suffering God saw fit to give you, and you weren't allowed to take a short-cut to eternal life.)
All of which makes it so interesting that in MD, immortal life was linked to unending suffering, rather than paradise. If Jack is the "anti-Christ," then the Miracle is surely the "anti-Heaven."
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Date: 2011-09-16 04:07 am (UTC)I'm going to have to find a copy of The Second Coming now, if it marks the start of the mortality arc, and if MD marks its end. Interestingly, RTD's said in interviews that he thinks he has only one more Torchwood story to tell, based around Gwen. So perhaps he's subconsciously admitting he's finished his discourse on mortality.
(It's interesting to note that it's always the women that play this crucial part, although Jack is certainly the most willing participant of the three male characters.)
Judith, Adelaide, Gwen... just out of curiosity, was Judith a mother or grandmother too? Because Adelaide sacrificed herself to ensure her granddaughter would reach the stars, and Gwen stated she'd kill Jack in a heartbeat for Anwen's sake (and she kinda did do just that). As
The Blessing is linked to human mortality and maybe one could say that on some level symbolises a balance between life and death. Nature, the universe with all its mysteries, the polar opposite of the small life Oswald Danes created for himself, everything big and incomprehensible and uncontrollable? The principle of mortality? All of that, or maybe they are the same thing?
It's all the same thing. Everything in MD was about restoring balance. For every yin there was a yang. Jack and Oswald; Jack and Rex; Jack and Gwen; Old Shanghai/Old World and Buenos Aires/New World. Also it was about restoring balance to Jack--he finds peace which allows him to let go, and he finds a true immortal partner in Rex. A lot of people thought that was wrong, that Rex shouldn't have become immortal because it dilutes Jack's importance as a fixed point, but the symbolism is fantastic. "It's better with two," indeed. :-)
Jack's death in The Blood Line is submission. To what? Not to the will of God, obviously, but RTD comes dangerously close here to writing something actually mystical.
Perhaps it's simply submission to the natural order of things. I know a lot of people compared the physical appearance of the Blessing to a giant vagina, but oddly, the symbolism makes sense. The Blessing perhaps represents Mother Earth, a natural and ancient phenomenon normally in balance. Jack's immortal blood threw the balance off; Jack must give it back mortal blood to reset it.
In the end there's always a connection between the religious themes and the death/mortality themes. Or is it that everything is connected to the mortality theme?
At its heart, religion is all about mortality, the question of what happens after death. Back when life was "nasty, brutish and short", religion was there mainly to help people endure the suffering of life. (E.g., for most of humanity's history the average life expectancy at birth hovered around 35 years of age. That's a lot of premature death to bear, considering in some eras, 50% of children born didn't make it to 5 years of age. It's only in the past 100 years that life expectancy doubled.) The promise of an everlasting reward--Heaven, Paradise, reincarnation, some sort of pain-free life after death--would make the suffering worth it. Otherwise, the idea that this life is all there is would be pretty grim and despairing.
(OTOH, the realization that this life is all there is would make it all the more precious, and ideally we'd be motivated to make it the best life possible.)
(Maybe this was the real reason why suicide was a moral and religious sin for so long? You had to endure all the suffering God saw fit to give you, and you weren't allowed to take a short-cut to eternal life.)
All of which makes it so interesting that in MD, immortal life was linked to unending suffering, rather than paradise. If Jack is the "anti-Christ," then the Miracle is surely the "anti-Heaven."