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Portico Arts

Readings | XVI The Tower

Readings | XVI The Tower

XVI

The Tower

Demolition, upheaval, deconstruction, disaster, destruction

Upright: Upheaval and chaos.  The results of questionable decisions.  Transformations and sudden change.  Wreckage.  Pain, turmoil and loss.  False assumptions and lies.  Harmful illusions.

 

The Fog Horn

(1951)

The plot follows Johnny, the protagonist and narrator, and his boss, McDunn, who are putting in a night's work at a remote lighthouse. The lighthouse has a resonating foghorn. A monster from the deepest ocean has been lured to the lighthouse and the foghorn for the last two years on the same day as the story opens. McDunn attributes the monster's actions to feelings of unrequited love for the lighthouse, whose foghorn sounds exactly like the wailings of the sea monster himself. The foghorn tricks the monster into thinking he has found another of his kind, one who acts as though the monster did not even exist. McDunn and Johnny turn off the foghorn, and in a rage, the monster destroys the lighthouse before retreating to the sea.

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"We waited a moment. And then I began to hear it.  First a great vacuumed sucking of air, and then the lament, the bewilderment, the loneliness of the great monster, folded over upon us, above us, so that the sickening reek of its body filled the air, a stone's thickness away from our cellar.  The monster gasped and cried.  The tower was gone. The light was gone. The thing that had called it across a million years was gone.”
- Ray Bradbury
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