The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World - Explain this to me?

[funkyturtle]

This is the full text of a story that has won a Hugo award:

http://www.scribd.com/chichocha/d/38435859-1969-Harlan-Ellison-The-Beast-That-Shouted-Love-at-the-Heart-of-the-World-09-10-23

It's not long (only nine pages) and it's poetic, violent and intriguing.

I don't get it.

I read it with my beloved Californian.  She and I both have English Literature

Comments

[lindenfoxcub]

From what I can see, it's suggesting that sanity and insanity/peace and violence/order and chaos are forces that will always be in balance, and for one person or group of people to be happy and peaceful, the violence and chaos in them will be counterbalanced somewhere else, in some other time, with another person/group being angry and violent. Thus when some alien race somewhere sought to create ultimate peace and serenity for themselves, the result would be dooming all other peoples in all other places to chaos and suffering, and thus on earth, WWIV breaks out.

It's possible that I'm just seeing this because my autistic brain likes to see ideas of balance and the idea that matter cannot be created or destroyed reflected in the idea that emotion cannot be created or destroyed.

[lookintomyeyes]

Not certain I got it, because i skimmed it quickly, then came back to read bits...but heres a few things i noticed???

Is the 7 headed dragon supposed to represent the source of the 7 deadly sins? A dragon instead of a snake?

Is it a metaphor for the "War on Drugs/Terrorism, etc", where a group of "well intentioned individuals" see to create a perfect world at the "center of it all", in hope that they can one day get the perfect world to be the entire world?

Semph drains the evil essense and throws it 'somewhere', instead of into a container where it could be contained and thus 'safe'. Linah is disturbed, wanting to know where it went. But Semph wont tell, because of his/her 'love of man'.
Semph also seems to suggest that we can't rid the world of our problems, just cast them elsewhere.

[worn_synapses]

hmm, i'll read it and get back to you. i like puzzles.

eta with my take on the story:

Semph and Linah are turning men into monsters and back into men. They’re disagreeing about what they should do with their discovery. Semph wants to see how much damage it can cause. Linah wants to know where the dangerous essences went when they drained it. Atilla the Hun is equated to the man-monster in the story; both legends. There’s a hearing, because Semph messed up in some way by draining the monster.

Semph was condemned, Linah proctored the hearing, and Linah told the Concord what happened. Semph thinks that Linah shouldn’t have done what he did at the hearing, and that he shouldn’t have said what he said, because he’s condemned a vast number of people. Do the ends justify the means? Just like Atilla the Hun turned back from Rome instead of burning the city, Semph drained the monster of its power instead of letting it continue to kill people.

[anonymous]

Well I am writing a paper on it now, but I loved how structurally fragmented it was and seemed to come full circle. Basically I found that he is showing that corruption comes from the center: even though the center may seem peaceful and perfect, "crosswhen" is actually the center of the insanity the rest of the periphery experiences. Since they suck the insanity and hateful emotions from the center and throws them "somewhere", that somewhere is the periphery. This is a postmodernist view, that the center is corrupt, and I'd like to think that Ellison planned this story around this concept; seeing that it is structurally fragmented and there is seemingly no plot or climax. And he alludes to the center of everything as fragmented. Also, I found that the idea that love does not exist, only pain, suffering, and hatred is in the story. Even though the characters say they "love", there is only hatred that is experienced throughout the story. And with the statue on the far off planet, it is a memorial and paid respect to the killer at the