[Nequam]

I was describing why I liked SE to one of my teachers who asked what my favorite books are, and while talking about the Chain of Dogs and the emotions attachted to it out loud it was then I realized how simliar the Chains of Dogs and The Long March (China 1934) are. Perhaps I am only seeing the major similarities and there really isn't much connection, but I would say this is where SE derived his inspiration for that storyline from.

For those of you who may not know:
The Long March was a huge running retreat in which about 100,000 followers of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party endeavored to escape from the province of Jiangxi to Yenan, a city in the Shaanxi province. They were fleeing Jiang Jieshi's (a.k.a. Chiang Kai-shek) Guomindang (nationalist party) and his "extermination campaigns" against the communists. Mao and the 100,000 people that followed him trekked over 6,000 miles facing daily attacks, crossing deep gorges, mountains, and powerful rivers. At the end only aobut 20,000 survived the retreat to Yenan.

That of course is a very brief summary of this event. My point is, this is where I think Erikson got his idea from for the Chain of Dogs.

So why am I telling you guys this, and why am I in the Reaper's Gale forum? Well, I was wondering if any of you agree with me or disagree with me. And also I wanted to know if any other story lines in any of the books so far made you think of real historical events. Would you say that history is a good place for inspiration for writing material?

Oh, I just found out that they are now making a movie of the long march...but that has nothing to do with my actual question.

[Adjutant Stormy~]

I would certainly say historical events are good inspiration or rubric for writing material, if drawn directly or unintentionally written in the style of a historical event. The first reason is that they conciously or unconsciously inspire a gut reaction of familiarity and recognition for the reader. The second is that even if the specific historical event isn't the direct root of a storyline, it rings true like a real historical event and is then associated with that air of reality.

I think that there are likely many parallels to be drawn between the storylines and history, if not only due to the vastness of the latter from which to choose parallels.

[Sinisdar Toste]

interesting stuff

then theres WoT, where all the various cultures are drawn from cultures in our world.

The Apocalypse could be likened to the explosion of the Arab/Islamic world into Christendom thanks to the message of Muhammed.

To be honest i see a lot of similarities between the Malazan world and the ancient Hindu legends: Soletaken ascendants= Zoomorphic deities; also there are endless overpowered sons and daughters of gods that take on demons and such. ancient india was a crazy place.

I believe its already been mentioned how the Letherii Empire is like America, and how the extermination of the plains tribes is like the genocide of Native Americans.

[Nequam]

Sinisdar Toste;263445 said:

interesting stuff
I believe its already been mentioned how the Letherii Empire is like America, and how the extermination of the plains tribes is like the genocide of Native Americans.

Oh man, I never thought of that. Why, that's a great analogy! wow, I can't beleive that never came to mind throughout both books concerning Lether.

[Sinisdar Toste]

yea man check it out, "indebted"=informal slavery=wage labour. were free yeah, but only to sell our labour.

[Optimus Prime]

Wow that is interesting, Toste. Lether as a metaphor for Greedy, Capitalist America....hmm...I can totally see that. Nice. *reps*

[Ain't_It_Just_]

"frowns"

Chain of Dogs is cooler than Long March, doesn't matter what history says. It deserves to be history, imo. As you can see, i am a huge Coltaine/Duiker/Bult/Lull/Chenned/Sulmar/Mincer/7th/Wickan fan. :cool:

Ltherii= America, eh?

How about:

7C- Africa, coz of tribes and shit.

Genebackis- Europe, maybe? Lots of different civilsations.

Extrapolate, gentlemen.

[Optimus Prime]

Quon Tali people look Asian, don't they?

Seven Cities is kind of a mix of African and Middle Eastern cultures, IMO.

[Shadow_God]

I remember reading Winston Churchill's "The River War," which deals with the British war in the Sudan against the Mahdi, a messianic leader inspired a nation-wide uprising and who was able (to hear Churchill tell it) to Khartoum and killed the widely lionized General Gordon mainly due to the incompetence and indecision of the imperial authorities back home, and was then defeated and destroyed by the avenging British forces. Overall the entire Whirlwind arc (Deadhouse Gates, House of Chains, the Bonehunters) sort of reminds me of that particular historical event more than any other.

[Aptorian]

When I just started University I couldn't help draw a paralel between the T'lan Imass treck into the Jhag Odhan, just before GotM, to start a Jaghut war with ancient Roman controlled Africa and Marius and Sullas war on the numidian prince, Jugurtha (spelled Jagurtha in danish).

There's hardly any connection, I just thought the names and the locations were remarkably similar.

[Kalahinen]

Sinisdar Toste;263445 said:

To be honest i see a lot of similarities between the Malazan world and the ancient Hindu legends: Soletaken ascendants= Zoomorphic deities; also there are endless overpowered sons and daughters of gods that take on demons and such. ancient india was a crazy place.

Such legends/mythology can be heard all around the world, in different cultures, I think.

Also, in Rome they built temples for deified former Emperors and their wifes, for example the Temple of Divus Julius, or the Temple of Divus Antoninus and Diva Faustina. So it could be said they 'ascended' after their death.

[Khellendros]

I think there's definitely a lot of historical connections to be made in SE's work. After all, he was an archaeologist, so he would have come into direct contact with history. The Apocalypse/Whirlwind storyline made me think of Gordon in the Sudan and the Mahdi as well, the parallels are enormous (expect for like, the fantasy stuff).

But didn't SE himself say that the whole Malazan Book of the Fallen was inspired to an extent by a history of the Goths he read. Having studied this text to death during my history undergrad and Master's, I can see the parallels (though I think SE missed the point of the work).

Ahem, now for some history: The work is a mid to late-sixth century text called the Getica, put together by a dude called Jordanes. As such, it is the only surviving text on the Goths written by a Goth, which is what Jordanes claimed he was, and it is a meant to be a universal chronicle (i.e. pretty much from the creation of the world to the present time of writing) and history of the Goths.

What SE mentioned he particularly liked was the way the text dilated time. Sometimes, thousands of years would pass in a sentence, and at other times, one event (such as the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields between Atilla the Hun and the Ostrogoths on the one hand, and the Roman general Aetius and the Visigoths on the other) could go on for pages and pages (the entire work is only about 80 pages in print). This is much like what SE does in his prologues, things happening hundreds of thousands of years back described in a few pages, while things closer to the present described in much greater detail - incidentally, a common occurrence in chronicles, for the simple reason that the things happening closer to the present are just better known.

So yep, direct historical inspiration for at least a part of SE's MBotF structure I won't go into why SE interpreted the Getica incorrectly, though, too much geekdom coming out in one post

[Thelomen Toblerone]

Sinisdar Toste;263509 said:

yea man check it out, "indebted"=informal slavery=wage labour. were free yeah, but only to sell our labour.

Ah, I knew that module on Marxism would come in useful.

So, new theory: SE is a communist/has communist sympathies.

Reasons: Criticisms of capitalism (wage labour = slavery), Chain of Dogs/Mao analogy.

Plus the whole Empress Lasseen = bad thing (anti imperialsm).


On another note, Id always thought of 7C more as the Arab countries (N. Africa and Mid. East). Mostly Arab tribes (look at Iraq as evidence for tribal issues), with some predominantly black areas, and a mingling across the whole, generally.

The analogy of 7C as the "breadbasket" of the empire (where Lasseen's talking about the lack of being able to rely on 7C for food any more means the Wickan plains have to be made agrarian) also syncs up with the North Africa/Arabia theory, as North Africa was the food supply region of the Roman Empire. Most of the region is desert-like and arid, but certain areas are incredibly fertile (Nile Delta, Tigris/Euphrates valley, etc).

My two Denarii.

[Nequam]

Thelomen Toblerone;263786 said:

Ah, I knew that module on Marxism would come in useful.

So, new theory: SE is a communist/has communist sympathies.

Reasons: Criticisms of capitalism (wage labour = slavery), Chain of Dogs/Mao analogy.

Plus the whole Empress Lasseen = bad thing (anti imperialsm).


On another note, Id always thought of 7C more as the Arab countries (N. Africa and Mid. East). Mostly Arab tribes (look at Iraq as evidence for tribal issues), with some predominantly black areas, and a mingling across the whole, generally.

The analogy of 7C as the "breadbasket" of the empire (where Lasseen's talking about the lack of being able to rely on 7C for food any more means the Wickan plains have to be made agrarian) also syncs up with the North Africa/Arabia theory, as North Africa was the food supply region of the Roman Empire. Most of the region is desert-like and arid, but certain areas are incredibly fertile (Nile Delta, Tigris/Euphrates valley, etc).

My two Denarii.

I like your two Denarii
I'm going to be the first follower of that 'new' theory. Se is a commy!
...I would say more on what I think but I'm in school right now and I have to get around the blockers to just get here. We aren't aloud on forums and such
during school.

EDIT: spelling

[Urb]

Thelomen Toblerone;263786 said:

Plus the whole Empress Lasseen = bad thing (anti imperialsm).

SE does not hold back with telling us how the Malazan Empire (real world equivalent to the British and/or Roman Empire) spreads civilization, good trade, etc. But he does point out the bad parts too of course

EDIT: And better infrastructure. They do build better roads and stuff.

[lorddarkflare]

Thelomen Toblerone;263786 said:

Ah, I knew that module on Marxism would come in useful.

So, new theory: SE is a communist/has communist sympathies.

Reasons: Criticisms of capitalism (wage labour = slavery), Chain of Dogs/Mao analogy.

I am not too sure of this. Erickson presents several views and does not seem to really endorse them TOO much. One thing that it is obvious that he is saying is the advent of "Civilization" and how it destroys cultures.(Karsa and Samer Dev are great examples of this)

[Skywalker]

Found another Chinese connection...

From an NY Times article: "Xiang Yu was a Chinese general in the third century B.C. who took his troops across the Yangtze River into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision making. He crushed his troops’ cooking pots and burned their ships. "

Sound familiar? The Adjunct burnt the ships when the Bonehunters reached the continent of Lether!

[Coco with marshmallows]

personally, i always thought of the chain of dogs as having being inspired by the march of the ten thousand, as chronicled by the anabasis.

as for the betrayal and crucifying of the Aren army, well that seemed to be inspired by Crassus and the crucifying of Spartacus's army at the end of the third Servile war.

the whole Lether = US thing was, i thought, actually a little overdone. Especially the whole issue of the Patriotists taking people being a rather obvious commentary on people being arrested and held without trial. in fact, i found that to be one of the weakest areas of RG as i thought the parallels were too obvious.

Still liked the book mind

[greenteam]

how bout the people from falar being related to the irish: red hair and beards drink alot and always punching people

[Ain't_It_Just_]

Lol.

If QT is Asia, then could the Wickans/Seti be like... Mongolians? Horse-warriors, born raiders... my two jakatas. :heyhey: