Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 22:39:15 -0700 (MST)
From: Michael Bahr
Subject: Another long winded post!

        Yup, my second long post in as many days! Live with it! :) I'm stuck
at home invalid with fever, and thus, need to blow time this way.

        Okay, I checked into the Silent Man. Here are just the tip of the
iceberg on ways it's based on Arabian Nights.

        * A question well served, is silence like a fear, or a
          voice never heard, or a message with no receiver?

        This is right out of the prologue of Arabian Nights, the story of
        King Shahryar and Shahrazad, the woman who tells the tales for a
        thousand and one nights. Shahrazad is the daughter of the royal
        vizier, and they argue when she says she knows how to get King
        Shahryar to stop killing a maiden every night (which was what he
        had been doing) and she asks him if silence is like a fear, or if
        a voice never heard or a message with no listener might have the
        answer. This sets up her telling the King the tales so the King
        won't kill her, every night, as she tries to get the message to
        sink in.

        * Pray they won't ask

        This is out of a bunch of the tales, most notably the Merchant's
        tale, the Barber's tale, and the tale of the Ox and the Ass. In
        each one, a person holds a secret at some point that they fear
        they are cursed to die if they ever reveal.

        * Behind the stained glass, there's always one more mask

        The women of the Nights were usually up to no good in some form or
        another, and it usually involved disguise.

        * Has man been a victim, of his woman, of his father?

        The following men in Arabian Nights were victims of their women:
                King Shahryar
                Shah Zaman
                        (from the framework tale)
                The 3 Shiekhs
                        (from the Tale of the Merchant and the Djinn)
                Prince Mahmud
                        (from the Tale of the Enchanted Prince)
                Badar Al-Din Hasan
                        (from the Tale of the 3 Apples)
                The barber's first, second, and fifth brothers
                        (from the Hunchback's Tale)
                Every male character in the tale of Dalilah
                Sinbad
                        (from Sinbad the Sailor)

        The following men in Arabian Nights were victims of their fathers:
                Aladdin (guess)
                The Sage Duban (from the Fisherman's tale)

        When I refer to being victims here, I mean the women/fathers
        deliberately screwed them over in some way, the effects varying
        from a blatant betrayal to death.

        * If he elects not to bother, will he suffocate their faith?

        This refers to the Silent Man directly (the barber). He
        is a saver of lives and a mediator of disputes, and more
        importantly, the world's biggest teller of tall tales. (He
        calls himself The Silent Man and is all but silent). At one
        point the SM himself says "if I decide not to bother, where will
        be their faith in me?"

        * Desperate to fall behind the great wall that separates us all.

        This is a heavily recurring theme, it shows up in the stories of
        the Ebony Horse, Ali Baba, Aladdin, Julnar the Mermaid and her son
        Badar Basim, Prince Behram and Princess Al-Datma, the tale of the
        Nur din-Ali and his son, and Sinbad the Seaman. In all of these
        cases, the princes w

Somewhere along the line, this file got cut off and no one noticed!

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