Hand of Oberon, Chapter 5

Some thoughts (not all-inclusive, of course...)

* Does he mean truly "possessed" as perhaps something he, ahem, developed (in that disease sense) in his "mediations upon the Abyss?"

* Perhaps he owns abominations, like having demonic familiars?

* Who are "they"?

* Is "Order" the disease, or is there truly something viral about Pattern's design and how it replicates Shadow?

* "Beyond their aid, their power," could be a very powerful piece of this. The obvious side of this shows how tyrannical Chaos might have been pre-Pattern, in that aid was available at the cost of being under someone else's power. (The idea of 'fealty' is just a loose version of choosing to be near one of the stronger who might protect rather than eat the weak, right?) But just here we see that there are those that Dworkin might have called out to for aid, and those that were interested in keeping him for Power, and even more - that he WAS beyond them, and that was something important. "Beyond" being possibly both in the sense of knowledge, intent, and action, as well as the idea of location?

What does this mean to you?

To me I have no idea, but I have guesses that maybe in his "senial" mind he felt it would be better to go back to Chaosian rule, the base for this guess is that when he asked Corwin, which he thought was Oberon, is it time to destroy the Pattern?. And maybe the Pattern did have a bad side effect to the Royal Family Oberon from what was said about him was rarely if at all close to his childrend, and the children fighting amongst themselves save for few. The whold family became distrustful of each other to the point where most of them were paranoid of each other.

That's certainly possible. For my own part, I don't see Dowrkin worried about mundane things like who rules whom.

I see it more as a debate upon the nature and ownership of cosmic power along the lines of Logrus, Unicorn, and Serpent.

I always assumed the entire thing was a metaphor for creation, combined with the fact that Dworkin is clearly an artist, and likely views the universe from that perspective.

To explain by example, I'm always a bit bi-polar when it comes to creative stuff - if I get a story idea or something, I absolute have to write it down somehow. If I don't, I still keep thinking about it in a sort of OCDish kind of way, and there have been times when I honestly cannot sleep, because an idea has come to me and I absolutely have to spend however long it takes to write it down and get it out of my system before I can concentrate on other things or rest.

Now, take that and multiply it by about a thousand. Dworkin, already an artist, having a revelation upon seeing the jewel hung round the neck of a unicorn, his meditations upon the abyss giving him a deeper insight into the nature of the universe than anyone else has ever known... his mind was filled with new ideas, concepts, connections - and ultimately, the desire to find a way to translate that new understanding into the ultimate act of art and meaning.

So he's filled with his sort of manic insanity, the only thing that matters is the Pattern that he sees in his mind's eye, begging to achieve physical form. Like a sculptor seeing a full statue in a lump of stone, or an artist seeing a masterpiece on a blank white canvas, Dworkin visualizes the Pattern - and everything it represents - in his mind. Perhaps he even has a single moment of clarity, realizing that nothing he creates will ever compare to this ultimate act of art - but the NEED to create is greater than any other consideration. It might kill him - he doesn't care. It might destroy the universe as he knows it - he doesn't care. It might lead everyone he's ever known to hate him for all time - he doesn't care.

And so he draws.

When he says he is beyond their aid, beyond their power, he is referring to the fact that they will not be able to stop him in time to prevent his work. They lack the power to oppose his vision. And even if they sought him out, in order to SAVE him from the irreversible changes this work will inflict upon him, they would not be able to do so - he has already been infected by his vision of the Pattern, and so the only release for him would be to either draw it, or to die. Nothing else will free him from the compulsion to create.

Even in his madness, Dworkin tends to speak in somewhat flowery speech. I take most of it as poetic allegory for the idea that, once he looked into the Jewel and saw the three-dimensional Pattern there, once he understood the nature of reality, his fate was sealed. There was nothing he could do, other than create this thing and then deal with the consequences afterward, whatever they might be.

It's also interesting to think of Dworkin as different people, because he almost certainly changes over time. Dworkin the Chaosian is not the same man that Dworkin the Embodiment of Pattern was. Dworkin the Embodiment of "Stained" Pattern is different from both, as he possesses the enlightenment of his former self, but is driven to madness by the gaps and holes in his mind. The Dworkin that Merlin meets may simply be the same Dworkin as he was before Brand damaged the Pattern, or he might be yet another variation of the personality, having learned much by experiencing the damage/restoration of the Pattern, or simply because Oberon's repairing of the Pattern imprinted some of his own essence into it (which would then feed back into Dworkin because he and the Pattern are still One).

And from that perspective, the Dworkin who is filled with a vision of the Pattern and a need to create may be different from the others as well, a fundamentally changed man from the simple Chaosian artist he once was. Dworkin is constantly finding "higher octaves" to the universe (and himself), and perhaps there is a part of him that yearns for the simplicity of his youth, half-wishing that his Chaosian cousins COULD have saved him from his fate, letting him live out his days in peace, a simple man.

When I read your bit about Oberon having now infected a bit of his own personality into Dworkin's mind, I thought of Star Trek: Nemesis where in the end, you have B4 (Data's brother) singing, "...never saw the sun... shining so bright.." at the end. A little piece, carried over.

and then you just had to go and use the word octaves... *chuckling*

Maybe everyone gets to meet the part of Oberon who was Ganelon now.

It could help explain why the Dworkin of the Merlin books seems more proactive, whereas the Dworkin of Corwin's youth, before his mind was broken, seems content to simply hang around, drawing pictures and giving Oberon advice.

On the other hand, it's possible that Dworkin has become more proactive simply because Oberon is no longer around to be the proactive one.

Disease, perhaps as in a mental disease? As in madness?
What is madness to a Chaos lord?

Consider, in a very powerful shapeshifter, perhaps mental aberrations can take physical form in their bodies.

After meditating on the Abyss, perhaps a thought, a design of perfect order manifested in Dworkin's body like a psychosis made physical illness. The other Lords of Chaos could not help him. Either they could not understand this philosophical antithesis to their power, or they feared becoming infected by this strange order cancer that was growing inside Dworkin.

In desperation, Dworkin stole the Eye of the Serpent and used it to extract the physical manifestation of this concept of order, through his blood. Little did he know that this process was giving birth to a new power.

So the Pattern could be a living Order Cancer, expressed via the Jewel of Judgment.
Perhaps the Eye didn't have a Pattern design in it originally, but that it absorbed the true essence of the cancer as the Pattern was first removed from Dworkin's body.

My interpretation of Dworkin is that he is badly broken and mostly used up by the time he is saying these things. Perhaps like an exhausted man, gasping out information between breaths, does he have the strength to lie or dissemble?

Does he remember it all? This was a long time ago.
Has he decided (based on the looking back through time) that what happened had a greater meaning and now he can speak more clearly of it?

Dworkin is badly used by both sides of this drama. I suppose he didn't foresee most of what happened to him and subsequent events. I think there is plenty of narrative interest in Dworkin post-Corwin five tales because he might be on the mend and actually acting on his own plans.