Re-read reviews: Discworld, by Terry Pratchett. Part 3 - The Ankh Morepork City Watch
I've written previously about Discworld in general and about the books centered on the original witches. Another recurring set of characters - good for whenever there is a mystery involved are the Ankh Morepork City Watch. But these stories aren’t JUST mysteries or crime thrillers; They are always strongly political as well.
Commander Samuel Vimes is at the center of these stories. Vimes is in the odd position of deeply distrusting authority and traditional power structures - due to his working class background - while being an authority and agent of state power himself. He is also a deeply angry man, who at the start of his arc medicates his chronic state of "knurd"1 with alcohol and exhibits a pretty wide range of prejudices. Over time these lessen as he engages with a greater diversity of beings, and he learns to harness his anger in more productive ways. The latter often means "kicking over the status quo" as often as it does "keeping the peace". He is such a product of Ankh Morepork that he can navigate the streets blindfolded by the feel of the cobbles under his boots. His wife is Lady Sybil, a sensible, kindly, plus-sized woman who runs the Sunshine Sanctuary for sick or abandoned swamp dragons. Once their son Young Sam is born, Vimes commits to being home to read to him every night so strongly that he has nightmares about missing it.
Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs, like the clowns or gravediggers in a Shakespeare play, are buffoons who serve to illustrate some surprisingly deep points through their banter. Colon is a heavyset former military man with deeply conservative views. Nobby is a short, gangly, overall odd-looking fellow who started out as a petty thief and never really stopped being that while also being a copper. Nobby has some unexpected hidden qualities, though: he's a member of a folkdance club, has a sense of fashion2, and while ignorant is quite open-minded. Both are lazy and risk-averse, and absolutely useless at subterfuge. However, that has its uses - if Vimes wants to know the mood of the street, or to annoy a toff by having some incredibly indiscreet coppers search their mansion, these are the guys he calls. The pair could be considered another of Pratchett's sets of "platonic life partners".
Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson is a 6-foot tall redheaded human raised by dwarves and secretly the heir to the throne of Ankh Morepork. Should he ever take it he would undoubtedly be a benevolent ruler, as he has a passion for justice and a charisma that makes even hardened street thugs have the urge to "act like sensible chaps" when he refers to them as such. However, he is persuaded by Vimes' many rants on the subjects of hereditary monarchy and absolute power that that would not be a good idea. Sergeant Angua was the Watch's first female member, and is also a werewolf. This is quite useful, as it allows her to be her own K9 corp, but she initially has quite a bit of angst about her undead identity. This gets especially triggered by her relationship with Carrot, which she is sure is going to go wrong. She is a very competent officer who makes good use of both her wolf-like senses and, like Vimes, carefully leashed-in anger.
Soon the Watch grows and diversifies to include the likes of Detritus, a troll who gets significantly smarter in the cold; Cheery Littlebottom, an openly female dwarf3 with a talent for forensics; Dorfl, an atheistic golem4; and Reg Shoe, an activist zombie.
1. "The opposite of being drunk...It strips away all the illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever." Anyone who accidentally gets knurd usually ends up screaming and resolving never to do it again.
2. It never looks quite as intended on his frame, but he tries.
3. Even discrete lipstick and a long leather skirt is considered dangerously deviant by some dwarf elders.
4. In Jewish folklore, a clay man brought to life with a scroll of words in his head. The Golem of Prague was created as a protector of the community, but in other stories they go on murderous rampages, in an early version of the 'robot rebellion' tale.
Is this "copaganda"?
Well, it could be read that way. Vimes and the Watch are the good guys in these stories5, and Vimes at least considers police to be necessary. But potential issues with police power are also addressed explicitly, often in Vimes' own words. A careful reader will notice that the incentives are actually against the watch being "good cops". For instance, the fact that Vimes actually tries to make the law apply to the rich ('there was that business with Lord Rust's boy. You can't shoot servants for putting your shoes the wrong way round...too messy. He'll have to learn right from left like the rest of us. And right from wrong, too.') means he gets contracts put out on his life. He is trying to replace “privilege” - private law, in which the rich hire thugs to keep the riffraff in their place – with something more fair and impartial. But he is not a perfect man. You also get a very visceral impression of the anger that could tempt someone to put the boot in where they shouldn't, or to shoot instead of putting someone under arrest. All that stands between the good cop and the bad is the fragile fabric of personal integrity.
5. Mostly. Given things like Nobby’s tendency to pocket small valuable items, or Detritus’ willingness to literally read people the riot act (an actual piece of legislation that allowed authorities one to demand a gathering of more than 12 to disperse or face police violence), they could still use some work.
Watch-focused books:
In chronological order, all briefly discussed below: 'Guards! Guards!', 'Men at Arms', 'Feet of Clay', 'Jingo', 'The Fifth Elephant', 'Night Watch','Thud', and 'Snuff'.
Guards! Guards! Book List
'This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off.' Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows. A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one arm...'You're wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left...What you've got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?'
This ridiculous and yet badass scene isn't how Vimes is introduced, of course. No, no - we meet him drunk in the gutter. The Watch is a joke, dwindled down to a petty crook and a fool led by a drunkard. But two arrivals soon snap them into action: the incredibly keen new recruit Carrot6, and a full-sized dragon. The dragon is something of a puzzle. The officers first encounter it when it turns a pack of muggers into nothing but shadows on a wall, Hiroshima-style, but it doesn't seem to travel through space normally: it appears and disappears. Vimes turns to Lady Sybil Ramekin for dragon advice; meanwhile, the Librarian of Unseen University appeals to Constable Carrot for help with a missing book: The Summoning of Dragons. Someone has been calling the dragon from wherever they vanished to7, in the hopes of using it to get a king on the throne on Ankh. But dragons don't take orders easily.
This book felt rather horrifyingly relevant when I re-read it recently. The person who is summoning the dragon, hoping to control it, fmakes use of small-minded men who feel done-wrong-by8. The dragon is meant to frighten the populace, and make them ready to accept the strongman who seems to free them from it. It helps that the plotter chose 'king' as the title for his puppet, because something about the idea of a king does weird things to people's thinking. But the first steps bear a striking resemblance to fascist-type demagoguery. And so does the last step: Getting a dragon as king. A dragon who then proceeds to claim all the vaguely sparkly stuff in the city, declare plans to go to war with every neighboring country to get more, and shut down protests over its demand for human sacrifice with extreme violence. The summoner wants to try and negotiate, to find a middle point, but Vimes points out: "There's no truce with dragons". Luckily for the city, it has on its side Vimes' stubbornness, Carrot's inspirational earnestness, a turbo-powered swamp dragon named Errol, and the Librarian, who thinks: "while of course what humans chose to do to one another was all one to him, there were certain activities that should be curtailed in case the perpetrators got overconfident and started doing things like that to books, too9."
6. On his second day on the job he arrests the head of the Thieves' Guild, who is very surprised and irritated at this development.
7. A dragon dimension I suspect was inspired by 'The Other Wind'.
8. "Let the other societies take the skilled, the hopefuls, the ambitious, the self-confident. He'd take the whining resentful ones, the ones with a bellyful of spite and bile..."
9. Inverted version of "It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people"
Men at Arms Book List
At the start of this book, the Watch has taken on three new affirmative action hires: Detritus, Angua, and a dwarf named Cuddy. Neither Colon nor Vimes is particularly happy about the new hires, but Vimes is reluctantly planning to retire when he marries Lady Sybil. Meanwhile a secretive loner works out that Carrot is the heir to the throne and begins plotting to put him on the throne10. And when people start turning up dead, killed with some kind of "firecracker stick" that shoots lead pellets, and the hasty arrest of a troll by the Day Watch threatens to lead to riots, the motley crew of Nights Watchpersons will come together to put things to rights - even if the Patrician has ordered them to stand down. They do this NOT by throwing the rulebook out the window but rather, thanks to Carrot's influence, being extremely literal with the law.
Prejudices are a major theme here. "It wasn't as if he was speciesist, [Vimes] told himself. But the Watch was a job for men." At least he doesn't have to consciously stop himself from using terms like "rocks" and "gritsucker" like Colon does. Cuddy and Detritus nearly come to blows several times due to an ancient rivalry - at one point while trying to prevent a street brawl between their respective species. And even Carrot, who gets on unnervingly well with just about everyone remarks to Angua, when he finds out the other residents of her building are undead:
'I just wish they'd go back to where they came from, that's all.' 'Most of them came from round here.' 'I just don't like em. Sorry.'11
Those attitudes start to change as the members of the watch start to work more closely with one another, and as they see the damage that these ideas can do when they play out on a larger scale. For Vimes, the change starts when he is forced to listen to the idle rich confidently pronouncing on "ethnic problems":
Vimes shook his head, 'You know, that's what's so damn annoying, isn't it? The way they can be so incapable of any rational thought and so bloody shrewd at the same time,'...Lord Eorle stubbed out his cigar. ' They just move in and take over. And work away like ants all the time real people should be getting some sleep. It's not natural.' Vimes' mind circled the comment and compared it to the earlier one about a decent day's work.
While Carrot's intrinsic bent toward friendliness and fairness would have probably brought him round eventually, the fact that he has a crush on Angua doesn't hurt. And Cuddy and Detritus follow a sort of Legolas- Gimli path of building friendship. Such personal changes of heart don't fix structural inequalities, of course...but they are the first step in building the solidarity needed to do so.
We also get a lot of Vimesian political opinions in this, including his 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness: A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten year's time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
When Carrot raises the possibility that a good man as king might fix the city, Vimes points out: 'Royalty pollutes people's minds, boy! Honest men start bowing and bobbing...But blood tells, and you end up with a bunch of arrogant, murdering bastards! Chopping off queen's heads, and fighting their cousins every five minutes!...And then one day a man said "No more kings!" and we rose up...and we chopped his bloody head off! Job well done!' 'Wow', said Carrot. 'Who was he?...The man who said "No more kings"'. The last man to hold the position of Commander of the Watch, it turns out - one of Vimes' ancestors.
10. There's just no curing the lure of monarchism, even with dragons, I suppose!
11. Was Pratchett, writing this in 1993, aware of the longstanding trend of queer folk identifying with movie monsters? I don't know, but this whole exchange with Carrot not knowing Angua is a werewolf - and her landlady's allyship coming from having a werewolf daughter, and the fact that Angua has, uh, 'wolfdar' - reminds me of one of the best metaphors for explaining bisexuality I've seen yet: "So, if you're a werewolf... that means you're human half the time, and a wolf the other half, right?" "No. I'm a werewolf. No matter which shape I'm in - always a werewolf."
Feet of Clay Book List
Things are looking up for the Watch. It has grown to thirty officers, headed by Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, who between his new rank and Sybil's is in a better position than ever to afflict the comfortable. Of course, that means he has to deal with assassination attempts first thing in the morning, but that's just a sign he's annoying the right people! But then two old men are found, killed with some blunt instrument, and even Angua's keen nose can detect no living murderer. At the same time, someone is slowly poisoning the Patrician with arsenic, but though new dwarf alchemist Corporal Cheery Littlebottom tests everything the Watch can think of they can't find it. And something is up with the city's golems, who despite supposedly being mere automatons are meeting in secret...and then smashing themselves to bits in despair.
The relationship between Angua and Cheery is interesting. The werewolf works out immediately that Cheery is female:
'Don't worry, I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to.'...Cheery dropped a test tube, and sagged on to a seat. 'How could you tell?' he said...'I've been so careful!' 'Shall we say...I have special talents?..Look, there's plenty of women in this town that'd love to do things the dwarf way...you can do anything the men do.' 'Provided we do only what the men do,' said Cheery. Angua paused, 'Oh,' she said. 'I see. Hah. Yes. I know that tune...I think you'll like it here...Normal people don't become policemen'...'You're normal,' said Cheery shyly. 'I like you.' Angua patted her on the head, 'You say that now,' she said, 'but...sometimes I can be a bitch.'
But before Angua can divulge her secret, Cheery says she hates werewolves because one ate her cousin. Angua expects slurs and dislike, and people being polite just because they're scared of her12. So she keeps quiet, and even shares her makeup and earrings with the dwarf who's trying to find herself.
There are still those hoping to use the Patrician's illness as an opportunity to favor their own interests by putting someone else in charge. But if Carrot were king, Angua would likely be queen, and the old powers in the city aren't keen on a non-human or their descendants getting that level of influence. So they pick Nobby Nobbs as their supposed hidden heir. That doesn't go as well as they expect:
It is not a good idea to spray finest brandy across the room, especially when your lighted cigar is in the way. The flame hit the far wall...'King?' Nobby coughed...'And have Mr Vimes cut me head off?'...'What're you talking about?' 'Mr Vimes'd go spare! He'd go spare!'...'You silly little lord, you'd be able to have him executed if you wished!' 'I couldn't do that!' 'Why not?' 'He'd go spare!'
The conversation ends with Nobby diving out the window in a frantic effort not to be volunteered for monarchy. Nothing good ever comes from volunteering.
12. Carrot isn't used to this, though, and he isn't the sort to try and solve that problem with his fists - and Angua could bite the offenders, but in doing so confirm their predjudices - so these sort of microaggressions are just stressful.
Jingo Book List
Vimes’ involvement in politics begins to reach beyond his home city in this story, which centers around stopping a war between Ankh Morepork and Klatch (the Discworld stand-in for the Middle East). An Atlantis-like island covered in vaguely Lovecraftian architecture has mysteriously risen out of the sea between the two nations. Both claim it, and the resulting patriotic fervor stirs up some nasty xenophobic feelings. Sergeant Colon voices some of these thoughts near the beginning of the book:
“Won’t last long. Lot of cowards, the Klatchians,” said Colon…He’d been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands To Reason, and was now a postgraduate student of What Some Bloke In The Pub Told Me…”And o’course, they’re not the same color as what we are…Well, as me, anyway,” he added…There was probably no one alive who was the same color as Corporal Nobbs. “Constable Visit’s pretty brown,” said Nobby. “I never seen him run away.”…”I heard where they’ve got a lot of odd gods,” said Nobby. “Yeah, and mad priests,” said Colon, “…Believe all kinds of looney things.”…”So how exactly are they different from ours, then?” said Nobby.
Making matters worse, someone has shot Prince Khufura, the Klatchian ambassador, and set it up to look like the work of a lone bowman. In pursuing this mystery, the entire Watch ends up in Klatch (one way or another). Vimes discovers a kindred spirit of sorts, who holds that “there must be a policeman, even for kings”. But can they stop the bloodshed if war isn’t officially a crime?
The sub-plot featuring Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs is unusually extensive in this book. The pair are kidnapped by a supposedly deposed Lord Vetinari and hustled aboard a submarine built by the Patrician’s prisoner/guest/confidant Leonard of Quirm13. It is a mind-broadening journey for both of them. Colon, of course, was in dire need of interaction with some real Klatchians. As for Nobby, while he might seem like an incel waiting to happen, he is actually rather a nice person under the general grubbiness. This trip gives him an unexpected chance to talk to some women and explore his feminine side.
Vimes and Lord Vetinari are very much on the same page regarding the undesirability of a war, if for somewhat different reasons. Vimes is adamant that a Watchman is not, and should not be, a soldier. He finds the fact that his symbol of office is a decorative truncheon rather than a sword quite significant. “I’m supposed to keep the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I’m reading the wrong manual!” Vetinari is much more aware of Ankh Morepork’s position than the lords calling for war, both in terms of the past – they used to invade and occupy a lot, and “the slaughter of thousands of people tends to stick in the memory” – and the present: they don’t have a standing army. After all:
“As they say, ‘If you would seek war, prepare for war.’” “I believe, my lord, the saying is ‘If you would seek peace, prepare for war,’” Leonard ventured. Vetinari put his head on one side and his lips moved as he repeated the phrase to himself. Finally he said, “No, no. I just don’t see that one at all.”
Fittingly, the book is dedicated “to all the fighters for peace”.
13. The same inspiration-plagued genius who invented the weapon at the heart of ‘Men at Arms’.
The Fifth Elephant Book List
Lord Vetinari selects Sam Vimes – under his new title of Duke – as Ankh Morepork’s ambassador to the coronation of the Low King of the Dwarves. Sybil is hopeful that this will force him to take a vacation, but Vimes gloomily muses that wherever you have coppers, you find crime. And he is right: someone, it seems, has stolen the Scone of Stone14. Adding to his troubles, he will have to deal not only with two factions of dwarves on the brink of civil war, but also a powerful pack of werewolves (Sergeant Angua’s relatives), and a manipulative, teetotaling vampire (Lady Margolotta). Besides Sybil, he has on his side Cheery, Detritus, and a suspiciously harmless-looking clerk.
Sergeant Angua was meant to be part of the delegation as well. But by the time Vimes gets the assignment she is already on her way to Uberwald, having been tipped off by an old flame that her werewolf-supremacist brother is causing trouble. She is rather surprised to discover that Carrot, with the aid of a scruffy talking dog named Gaspode, has followed her, given his devotion to the city. He is unphased by the fact that her ex is an actual wolf – if a rather unusual one – but does have a bit of trouble understanding that wolves don’t usually like werewolves either15. Angua rather irritably explains:
“I’m not a wolf…I’m not human, either. I’m a werewolf! Get it? You know some of the remarks people make? Well, wolves don’t make remarks. They go for the throat…I can pass for human, but I can’t pass for wolf.”
Sybil gets to play a more active role in this tale than usual. For instance, she discovers a hidden room in the embassy containing secrets gleaned by the missing former ambassador. She also knows a good bit about dwarf opera, including one about the baking of the Scone and the love between Bloodaxe and Ironhammer.
“The song is about how love, like truth, will always reveal itself, just as the grain of Truth inside the Scone makes the whole thing true”…Vimes stared…”Bloodaxe and Ironhammer,” he muttered… “which one was-“ “Cheery told you. They were both dwarfs,” said Sybil, sharply. “Ah,” said Vimes glumly. He was always a little out of his depth in these matters.
That aria turns out to be quite crucial, later on. As does the whole dwarf gender thing, to a lesser degree.
The departure of both Vimes and Captain Carrot leaves Sergeant Colon in charge of the Watch. This does not go well – a fact predicted by the Patrician, who refuses to accept a permanent resignation from Carrot. Colon basically ends up mistaking creating a hostile work environment for effective command, resulting in Nobby and Reg Shoe leading the newly-formed Guild of Watchmen on strike. On the plus side, crime in the city is way down, in anticipation of the explosion that is likely to happen when Vimes gets home!
14. Sort of like the Stone of Scone, in that it is an essential part of the coronation ritual, but also an actual example of dwarf baking.
15. So you know that werewolves-as-bisexuality-metaphor thing I mentioned? Yeah, this storyline would fit quite well. Except, of course, for the fact that the suspicion from both sides is justified, given that some werewolves eat people (and not in the fun way).
Night Watch Book List
“We-ell,” said Colon… “when a man reaches a certain age…he knows the world is never going to be perfect…But when there’s a kid on the way, well, suddenly a man sees it different. He thinks: my kid’s going to have to grow up in this mess. Time to clean it up. Time to make it a Better World.”
Just as Sybil is about to give birth to their child, Sam Vimes pursues a dangerous man onto the roof of Unseen University. Both Vimes and Carcer are flung back through time to a critical moment, the start of a revolution. And that starts to change things. Vimes encounters Lu Tze, a Monk of History, who tells him that it is up to him to fix the timeline: Carcer has just killed John Keel, the mentor who taught Vimes how to be the kind of copper he is now. “Right now, out there, Sam Vimes is learning to be a very bad copper indeed. And he learns fast.” Fortuitously, Vimes has already borrowed Keel’s name, and has even ended up with the right scar over his eye.
Besides “young Sam”, we get to meet younger versions of many established characters. Fred Colon is just a constable, and Nobby Nobbs a grubby street urchin – the Gavroche of this story. Rosie Palm, now head of the Guild of Seamstresses, was then a streetwalker revolutionary who persuaded a not-yet-zombified Reg Shoe to modify the slogan to: “Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love…” And Vimes learns why Lord Vetinari – who at the time was a student assassin interested in camouflage – has always worn the lilac on the anniversary of the revolution, like his other surviving comrades. Their opponents are not so much the army – who don’t function well in city streets – but the Cable Street Particulars16, the secret police known as the Unmentionables. And this time the Particulars have Carcer on their side.
Of course, if Vimes helps history play out as it did before, then the revolution will fail, his friends will die, and the city will be ruled by true dictators for the next three decades. An essential Vimesness rebels against that. He recalls his oath:
I [recruit’s name], do solemnly swear by [recruit’s deity of choice] to uphold the Laws and Ordinances of the city of Ankh-Morepork, serve the public trust, and defend the subjects of His/Her [delete whichever is inappropriate] Majesty [name of reigning monarch] without fear, favour, or thought of personal safety; to pursue evildoers and protect the innocent, laying down my life if necessary in the cause of said duty, so help me [aforesaid deity]. Gods Save the King/Queen [delete whichever is inappropriate]17.
Nowhere in that oath, you might notice, does it say “obey orders unquestioningly” and whoever wrote it clearly didn’t think to add that keeping the peace should not involve building barricades to keep other armed government employees away from citizens. But if the Glorious People’s Republic of Treacle Mine Road survives…will Vimes have a home, a wife, or a child to go back to?
16. Only this year I learned that this is a reference to the real ‘Battle of Cable Street’, in which working-class Londoners fought the police to keep a fascist march out of their neighborhood
17. Edited for clarity – the recruits tend to read out the bracketed bits and punctuation, and Vimes does here as well, to obscure his thoughts.
Thud Book List
A little over a year after his journey back to the bad old days, Commander Vimes is once more up to his neck in politics. A war is brewing between the trolls and the dwarves, starting with the threat of street fights in Ankh Morepork. Someone has stolen a famous painting of the Battle of Koom Valley, the legendary start of this ancient rivalry. A deep-downer named Grag Hamcrusher has been riling up the dwarves with anti-troll speeches:
Beware of the troll…He is nothing, a mere accident of forces, unwritten, unclean…The only purpose in his miserable life is its ending, relieving from the wretched rock his all-too-heavy burden of thought.
Then Hamcrusher turns up murdered, supposedly by a troll. Orders were given not to tell the Watch…but Vimes means to show that the law goes all the way down.
Sam Vimes is arguably in a very good place, by the time of this book. He has been off the booze for several years, he has let go a lot of his old prejudices – except about vampires, and even that one is fading – and he has a reputation for incorruptibility and tenacity that stretches over half a continent. Perhaps the only exception to that uprightness is his family: he will abuse his authority a bit if it gets him through traffic and home by six to read “Where’s My Cow?” to young Sam. But that old well of anger is still there, deep down, and there is nothing like a threat to his family to wake it; that, and the kind of ‘leadership’ that treats ordinary people as disposable. And that is significant, because deep below the city a dying miner has scrawled a symbol that calls the Summoning Dark, an ancient entity of vengeance. And it is looking for a host.
The League of Black Ribboners (‘Not one drop!’) have been lobbying for some time for a vampire in the Watch; Vimes tries arguing that vampires are too smart and too high-class to want to be coppers. But, lo and behold, Sally von Humpeding has applied. And she is pleasant, and clever, and stronger than anything but a troll, with excellent night vision. So, while wondering a bit at the timing, Vimes figures: why not? Sally is a little under-used, in my opinion. We mainly see her play out a bit of vampire-werewolf tension with Angua, and then the two go on a hen night with Cheery and Tawnee (AKA Betty), Nobby’s stripper girlfriend. There is a funny and fairly stripper-positive sequence where Nobby argues with Colon about what sort of nudity constitutes Art18. And the bit where Sally and Angua have to borrow some clothes from Tawnee and her colleagues is worth it just for the reaction when someone unwisely attempts to wolf-whistle a werewolf. Otherwise, the whole subplot kind of feels out of place alongside the main narrative of trying to stop a race war. Perhaps Pratchett felt that the main plot was getting too dark, but it would have been nice to see these three female officers bond more in that context.
18. Colon is adamant that there has to be an urn or some cherubs involved, while Nobby rightly points out the skill required to spin around upside-down by your knees.
Snuff Book List
This book starts off as if Sam Vimes had been dropped into a Jane Austen novel - and he doesn’t like it at all! Sybil has finally convinced him to take a holiday at the country estate they’ve inherited from her family. Young Sam, now six, is having a grand time learning about different sorts of poo, but Vimes is not only experiencing the disorientation of a city boy facing the wrong sort of nocturnal noises, but class-based whiplash, getting funny looks for shaking hands with a gardener AND being accused of “grinding the faces of the poor” on the same day. However, one conversation with Lord Rust over a game of crockett has Vimes’ copper-senses tingling. This proves right, as a few days later someone is trying to frame him for murder, and a goblin braves the threat of human violence to demand “just ice”. Oh, and Vimes’ old acquaintance the Summoning Dark seems keen to help him give it to them.
The goblins in this book are a literal underclass, barely recognized as the sentient humanoids they are. I suspect that the choice of goblins was inspired by ‘The Princess and the Goblin’, in which the goblins are the antagonists, but arguably have reason for their antagonism to humans and end up getting accidentally self-genocided19. The injustices they have suffered in 'Snuff', which include being treated as pests to be eliminated, accused of being inherently criminal, and being enslaved on tobacco plantations clearly allude to the real oppressions suffered by groups such as Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, enslaved Africans, and the Roma. I would guess there is a substantial influence of ‘The Mission’, both in the arguments made by the goblin’s enslavers and defenders, and in the role of music and artas proof of ‘soul-having’ . Of course, the problem with using narratives like that as a model is that they tend to lead to something “white savior” flavored. Having allies who are respected within the dominant system can be extremely important, of course. But the goblins are overly passive, compared to most oppressed peoples. Of course, they probably would be demoralized under the extreme conditions described, and I think Pratchett is trying to make the point, as he has in other ways previously, that just because someone suffers meekly doesn’t mean they don’t deserve rights. However, the story could have included some more goblins actively working for their own liberation and been the better for it.
The portrayals of the humans provide some food for thought as well. For instance, Vimes is puzzled by the fact that the housemaids refuse to speak to him; she explains that her grandmother instituted this practice to protect them from young aristocrats who might seduce and abandon them. But Sybil allows this weird practice to continue, even though neither she nor Vimes would allow that sort of behavior from their guests or son. Lady Sybil’s main fault here is in wanting to give her ancestors the benefit of the doubt, and not wanting to upset traditions that everyone is used to. To her credit, she gets very angry at obvious injustice and at the assumption of other nobs that she’d automatically view any sentient being as being subhuman – which is why she and Vimes get along! I was briefly excited to notice a pair of characters who are basically “Discworld Anne Lister and wife”…and then remembered they not only don't get any real page time, they are on the wrong side. Of course, if it is a deliberate reference, that’s not exactly wrong. Much as I liked ‘Gentleman Jack’, the class dynamics were a little uncomfortable, since Anne seemed to seek her own liberation by taking on the roles and behaviors traditionally held by male landlords and capitalists. As Sergeant Angua notes, “the melting pot melts in one direction.” The motives and justifications of the people perpetrating the crimes against the goblins and those who turn a blind eye are, as mentioned, pretty accurate-sounding.
Overall, this is still technically a comedy, but it is a much darker one than most Discworld books. Pratchett may have got in a little over his head on some of the social commentary, but it is still an enjoyable story that contains both some obviously good messages and some not-so-perfect elements that one can chew over to come to one’s own conclusions.
19. In that video, Dominic Noble notes that early on he was convinced the story was meant to be an allegory for gentrification. But…no. He also notes that the ideas about nobility in the book are just the kind of thing that Pratchett likes to deconstruct.
