More Overt Religious Tone

In reading the second part of The Three Stigmata, I thought it conveyed the religious tone that others said was present in the first part but that I apparently mostly missed. We got a sense of the god or devil (my interpretation, which contrasts with Barney's) metaphor that Eldricht was as he seemed to control more of the events and more omnipresent than I thought he was in the first half, where he was mostly an off-screen character.

I also never got the religious object that Can-D was supposed to have correlated with. Instead, I thought it was more in line with being a drug like was discussed on one of the discussion posts because it delivered a high and experience that narcotics also do. Chew-Z, on the other hand, seemed to make more sense as a metaphor to a religious object, as those effects lasted long after a first dosage of it, to the point that it was reasonable to wonder if it may have been a transport to a new spiritual plane. I likened it to a cult drinking the purple Kool-Aid on my discussion post. But while those people are dead in the real world, this is a fictional story. As such, it can establish as fact that a substance like Chew-Z may not be a gateway to death rather than a gateway to become stronger than what was thought possible before the drug, like an alternative to E therapy.

But there are many holes in my theory of Chew-Z, so I'd be happy to read whether someone agrees and wants to expand or disagrees and provides a small counterargument.

Eldricht, Bulero, and The Simulacra

While reading The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldricht, I kept on thinking Eldricht and Bulero was similar to the power structure. There is the political intrigue practiced by Eldricht and Bulero and how they operate in the shadows directly competing for the people's will with their drugs. I thought this was similar to The Simulacra's power struggle between Nicole, the council, and the rebels and how each side in this story and that story had their pros and cons.

With Bulero, it seems like you know what you're going to get. You're going to get a heartless businessman who doesn't have the best interests of the people at heart, with him seeing people as vehicles for profit in exchange for the Can-D he's peddling. But on the other hand, he hasn't done anything so drastic as something like a mass killing. Here, he seems similar to Nicole and the council, where they may have oppressed people, but they haven't gone completely off the deep end.

In contrast, Eldricht presents himself as kind of a savior for the people against Bulero, but his forcible drugging of Bulero with Chew-Z signals that Eldricht has a dark side that Bulero does not possess. This is similar to the Rebels in The Simulacra, where they were presented as saviors throughout most of that novel but it turns out they may be worse than the established government should they get power. Eldricht also seems to hold the political sway that the Rebels lacked, bribing the UN to be allowed to peddle his product even though it is directly competing with the illegal Can-D. No doubt I will have a clearer picture of these two characters when I finish the novel by this time next week.

Vague Endings

I enjoy the post-apocalyptic setting. When done right, there is always a gritty aspect about it that cannot be translated well to other genres most of the time. But for all the post-apocalyptic shows and media that I enjoy, I have always been irked at the incomplete endings they so often employ in regards to the characters.

Dr. Bloodmoney suffers from this. Sure, Hoppy is dead and Dangerfield is apparently not about to be, but questions remain unresolved. Is Edie essentially an orphan, considering her real mother and father are all too willing to pretend she doesn't exist? Or does she end up being raised by someone like George? If that's the case, George must be a saint of a guy. If not, well, Edie's life sucks despite the fact she played a major hand in stopping Hoppy.

What was Dangerfield's condition? Is he really suffering from a physical ailment, or is it all in his head? Also, isn't it disturbing to think that he is destined to die alone because there seems to be no physical way of getting to him? Also, I don't want to imagine how his wife's rotting corpse has impacted the shuttle. One must think Dangerfield must be slightly insane to carry out a lively show with his wife decomposing. Not being an expert in body decomposition, it could be that maybe seven years is enough time for that to go away.

Also, despite being a main character, Bonny seems to have done nothing of consequence except abandon her child and husband at the end. I suppose hiding Bluthgeld may qualify as something, but even that seemed to have no overall impact on people's attitude toward her.