Mixed Feelings

As I finished the book I had very mixed feelings about it.  While I was happy for Helva who seemed to have found a brawn she is compatible with I was anxious to see if the mission to Beta Corvi turned out.  I realize that the book is not about her missions but about her struggle with mourning and moving on.  But after all the hype about the mission and CV drive, I wanted to know if it turned out.  And...since she was going back to Beta Corvi where she left those other four passengers I want to know if they are happy there and if there is any sense of "human" left in them.  A huge chunk of the book was devoted to that mission and I feel like they have kept me hanging too much.  I like a little suspense, a sense of what happens next, in books but this is too much.  I need more!!!

Another aspect I have mixed feelings about is the whole mourning of brain ships.  These shell people and ships are designed to last hundreds of years.  So the makers know that the ships will go through many brawns in a natural lifetime.  Wouldn't it make sense to condition the shell people to deal with mourning and loss?  Especially if they are going to allow them to retain their feelings.  It seems to me that this should have been something the designers should have thought of when making shell people and pairing them with brawns.  If part of Helva's conditioning had been dealing with loss and grief, she may not have had such a hard time when Jennan died.  But, anyway, I am glad things worked out for Helva in the end and she seems happy now.  As for the mission, I guess we'll never know.

Being Conditioned

I ws very intrigued from our class discussion on Thursday and kept thinking about loss and mourning all the way home.  Someone brought up the point about being able to self-destruct and how Helva was conditioned not to but now she is not being conditioned.  Because she is not being conditioned anymore those thoughts, while still deeply embedded, may begin to lose their power and eventually, many hundreds of years later, she will just be done living.  Another student (or maybe the same one, it all gets jumbled together) mentioned the lack of physical sensation.  At first my thought was that you can't miss something you didn't know, such as how Helva can't move around like brawns.  But as I thought about it more I began to realize that Helva was rasied with other people like her so that was all she knew until she went to the ship.  She knew that others could wak and touch and do things she couldn't she didn't really experience it on a normal basis.  Again, I think she was conditioned not to want those things but she is not being conditioned anymore.  Perhaps she will start to see the avdvantages that brawns and others have.  After watching people walk and jump and hug and touch, will she start wanting that too?  Sure, it's nice to hurtle through space and fly at amazing speeds but the people she takes are also doing that, just experiencing it differently.  Perhaps she will begin to wonder what it is like to be a fully functional person.  Without her conditioning will she soon start to long for touch and affection in ways that she can't have?  Will she go mad from wanting those things?  This is becoming an very interesting book.