![]() He needs a goal beyond ‘wandering.’ And to do that, he needs to understand himself better than ‘someone who wanders.’ So where is he to go to do that? To understand himself, he goes back to his beginning-not Gormenghast, though the prose echoes that with “not a road, not a track but will lead you home”-but to the Ur-Home: his journey ends when he finds Mervyn Peake happy and well. ![]() First he laments how he abandons everyone but he ‘cannot help it.’ But after he meets the Poet (who is obviously Mervyn Peake even if you Google nothing), Titus wants to change that. ![]() The key to Titus’ character is his realization of agency. Dotted throughout these major arcs are satirical encounters that feel like Maeve Gilmore has a personal vendetta against Communists (far be it from me to blame her). The second half is the reciprocal Titus gives back to society by becoming a caregiver, and then retreats to hermetical contemplation before setting out on his final journey. ![]() The first half is intensely depressing, as Titus abandons every single person who helps him, becoming more self-loathing as he does so. The plot’s real antagonist is Titus himself this is an intensely character-driven book. Rather, it is mostly episodic, where Titus runs into several different colorful characters. There is no central antagonist to the plot like there is in Steerpike from the main two Gormenghast books or even in Cheeta from Titus Alone. ![]()
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