I’ve always been fascinated with one element of Jadis’ backstory (Jadis being an evil character from C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles Of Narnia, specifically The Magician’s Nephew). That would be the concept of The Deplorable Word.
What is The Deplorable Word, you ask? It is the Word Of Power. That which will wipe out all that exists upon its utterance. Jadis learns of this secret and all-powerful bit of magic and decides to use it during a war in which she is about to lose power to her sister. Rather than suffer defeat, she opts to utter the word rather than yield to her sister, despite her knowledge that all will be destroyed, even herself.
The concept of one word having the power to obliterate is kind of cool.
Would you ever be tempted to have this sort of power?
It scared the spit out of me, too…but in a good way. I got me thinking about the power of words, and how judiciously (or maliciously) they can be used.
As an aside…did you ever contemplate just what The Deplorable Word would be like? Would it be an ominous, multi-syllabic foreign-sounding word? Or something simple? I’ve always imagined it being something spartan, myself.
Jadis: I imagine it as rather spartan too. Something along the lines of the noise they made those “weirding modules” make in Dune (the movie, not the book) now that I think of it.
But I was only like 8 when I read the book so it just… scared me. Didn’t think too much about it.
The problem would then be, though, would the person, no matter how good hearted to begin with, then become corrupted by having this power? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, or so I’ve heard it said.
Insofar as I’m concerned, wouldn’t want it, have no need for it, would give it back at a moments notice. I’m a simple girl. Don’t give me more than I can handle.
Hmmmm…I just presumed that it could be written down without triggering destruction and chaos. It would be a real bitch if you mis-pronounced it in your moment of need, though.
Rasa, you reminded me of something I used to do in grade school. We used to make little paper “gadgets” that we drew various buttons on. We had buttons that would launch missles, zap people with death rays, communicate with others, deflector shields… and it was all make belive of course, but it was all in good fun. Well, one of the buttons I always put on mine was one that would blow up the entire universe. That sort of came about when one kid would say, “This button blows up the whole planet”.
“Oh yeah, well mine blows up the whole galaxy”. Nothing like a little one-up-man-ship to get a universe destruction button.
I’m reminded of the scene from “Take the Money and Run” where Woody Allen goes into a bank to rob it, hands the teller a note, and the following conversation takes place:
Teller: Excuse me, but what does this say? The handwriting is really very bad.
Allen: It says, “Give me all of the money. I have a gun.”
Teller: Gun? I don’t think so. It looks more like ‘gub.’ What’s a gub?
Allen: No, believe me, it says ‘gun.’ It says that I have a gun.
Teller: Hmmm. I really better check with the branch manager. Mr. Jones, could you come here please. Thank you. Mr. Jones, what does this say? Is this word ‘gub’ or ‘gun?’
At this point all of the tellers are standing around trying to decipher Allen’s note.
A similar situation could hold true here. What if the word was “red” or something that had an “r” in it and you had a speech impediment? “Red” could come out “wed” if you sounded like Baba Wawa or Elmer Fudd. The whole point of having The Word would be lost.
I’ll pass on The Word. Just give me an bunch of Hydrogen Bombs.
