Repetition & Disguised Repetition

Spoiler alert: This blog contains spoilers for Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren as well as Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice.  

I recently finished Samuel Delaney's classic science fiction odyssey Dhalgren. It's an imaginative, dreamlike, often difficult book that was frequently compelling and, for me, frequently frustrating. Part of the frustration came from Delaney's intentional use of repetition. 

The novel is often regarded as a masterpiece. And, from a purely intellectual standpoint, I have to agree. It captures a feeling of dread, confusion, frustration, and alienation–not from people, necessarily, but from the societal conventions of America as a whole.

It's also a slog. I can appreciate the book. I can't say I enjoyed it.

I've been thinking about it a lot, and I think what it comes down to is this: use of repetition relies on repetition with difference.

In that way, good use of repetition in a novel presents the same challenges as teaching. 

Dhalgren follows an unnamed protagonist (referred to only as "the Kid" and sometimes, mistakenly, "Kidd") as he enters Bellona, a city in middle America that has suffered some kind of mysterious, catastrophic event. Television and radio are out, roving gangs rule the streets, there seems to be little or no surviving infrastructure, and racial tensions are to be ready to boil over into violence at any time. 

The Kid is in his twenties, a wanderer and a would-be poet. Part of the novel pursues his attempts to get his poetry published by a local press still at work in the city, but he is mostly a drifter. He is also dyslexic and, by Delaney's own words, an unreliable narrator who has a tenuous grasp of time. 

Partially because of the Kid's aimless nature, certain events seem to befall him more than once: he gets embroiled in casual sex with men and women, he gets drawn into local gang's movements around town, he tries and fails to get paid for moving a family's furniture, he finds himself witness to acts of confusing violence and mostly gets nowhere. The novel ends when he leaves Bellona, passing on a bladed weapon called an "orchid" that he received upon arrival to another wandering now entering the half-destroyed city. So much happens in the novel, and so much has happened more than once, that it's hard to say exactly what has changed. The Kid has developed some relationships…but it seems he is leaving them behind. The novel ends mid-sentence.

There's a lot of criticism and commentary on the novel, much of it from Delaney himself, who has been called upon to explain the "meaning" of the book in interviews. I'm not especially drawn to acts of decoding, but I think the novel does have clear interests, if not explicit theses: the tenuous state of all our systems, the liberatory and complicated nature of sexual and criminal subcultures, the predatory aspects of even the most (supposedly) mutually beneficial relationships, the very nature of time and consciousness—and how we seek system where they may be none to find. The book resists interpretation, and glories in it. At best, I think, it seeks to make the reader suspicious of meaning in the world at large.

None of these themes would be as powerfully rendered if they were not embedded in repeated motifs. It's an aphorism that people seek patterns generally, and all the more so in fiction. Consider the "rule of threes." If something happens twice in a story, we are perhaps dissatisfied. What about that third time, the payoff? It rankles.

Well, what about when we have something happen half a dozen times or more in the course of an 800-page science fiction novel?

Maybe it has the same effect, but in the opposite direction. We are not waiting for the final repetition but living with an unseemly abundance, trying to make it fit into a story-shape and finding none that will satisfy. That's not a bad thing, necessarily. Not for Delaney's project; it's disorienting, and Dhalgren aims to disorient.

But for most stories? The trick is to disguise the repetition.

This might sound like a nasty trick, but an experienced teacher and close friend once told me that a lot of teaching is just this: disguising repetition.

He didn't use this word, but it made sense to me. Human beings have an intrinsic novelty bias; we notice when something is being repeated, but we also notice when it is new. Too much repetition can have a lulling effect, and when the repetition finally breaks—we perk up. 

In martial arts training, this makes a lot of sense—and it's become an integral part of my teaching.

To take one example, one skill that's expected of pretty much all Kung Fu students: "horse position." If you've done a squat, you are familiar with horse position; if you've seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, poor Aang is forced to practice his horse stance when training with firebending master Jeong Jeong. It's basically a static squat, with the knees open and the body upright. It builds up leg strength, hip flexibility, balance…there's a lot of benefits of working your horse position.

And it's simple to practice! You get down into your horse position as low as you can, you breathe steadily and…you do that until your legs feel like they're going to explode.

Okay, so it's simple but it's not easy. And convincing kids to hold a horse position for, say, minutes at a time is a tough sell.

But there are tons of ways to disguise that repetition. Jump into horse position? Step into horse position? Horse position with a punch? Do a fan kick and land in horse position?

That list might seem silly, but it builds genuine skills and disguises the position. Students are focusing on the new thing being added, all the while building up their strength and flexibility.

Dhalgren is, I think, trying to draw the audience through a state of confusion…and to accept that for many people living on society's edges, that is the status quo. The repetition in the novel trains the audience's tolerance for puzzlement, giving them something to hang onto. Sometimes the repetition might be unclear, as when the Kid wakes up not sure where he is or what happened the night before—a somewhat tired narrative twist that gains new life in Dhalgren partially because of the sheer number of times it is used. Other times a repeated image might be more explicit—the Kid notices apparently identical scars on the back of multiple people's calves—but with a difference that is hard to name or discern. It makes the world into a puzzle and drives interest…something crucial in a doorstopper like Dhalgren.

Dhalgren might not be your cup of tea, but I did find it at least interesting. And its use of repetition will bother me, at least, for some time.

How can we borrow from Delaney? How much repetition is too much, whether it's disguised or not?

Okay, one more example.

Robin Hobb's classic 1995 Assassin's Apprentice is the first in her epic fantasy Farseer trilogy. It follows her protagonist, royal bastard Fitzchivalry Farseer, as he is scooped up by the ruling royal family and trained to be a court assassin. Written in a retrospective first-person, the book is meditative, deliberate, and often quite melancholy. Fitz is aware that he is being used, and his life as a bastard at court is one of suffering. For much of this first book, his only ally is the gruff stablemaster, Burrich…and Fitz's dog, Nosy.

Spoiler alert and trigger warning in one: the dog dies.

Sorry, let me amend that.

The dog dies three times.

Or at least, there are three dog deaths. When Burrich learns that Fitz is using his "wit"—a magical ability that's basically telepathy with animals—with a puppy early in the book, he kills the puppy as a lesson. Burrich argues that the wit is unwholesome, unclean; in the world of the book, wit-users used to be burned at the stake. Later, he does the same when Fitz, older now, develops a bond with Nosy…

Only he doesn't, really. At the book's climax, it is revealed that Burrich couldn't bring himself to actually kill Nosy but has kept the dog alive. At a pivotal moment, Nosy gives his life to save the day—sacrificing himself in the process. For real this time.

Three dog deaths? Yikes. For an animal-lover like myself, it seems like a bit much. Isn't that all unnecessary? Just a little too grimdark?

Well, not really. Each dog-death serves a different narrative purpose.

The first time, we are learning about the wit and magic in general in the Farseer world. Fitz doesn't fully understand why he is being punished; it's surprising and brutal.

The second time—Nosy's first "death"—the stakes are higher. Fitz is older, still a child but very much aware that he was using the wit against Burrich's instruction. There are consequences for his actions, even though the reader might view Fitz as too young to shoulder the kind of terrible responsibility that the plot will soon lay upon him as an assassin. Fitz is learning this, and so are we. What was simple cruelty the first time is now a lesson in keeping secrets.

And the third time? Well, the fact that Nosy was in fact alive these many years reveals that Burrich, despite talking a big game, has a heart of gold; he couldn't actually bring himself to kill Nosy. And, now, Fitz has lost Nosy a second time—through no fault of his own, but because of the simple loyalty of the dog.

The whole book ends on this note, a reflection on the love and loss and of animals, something simple and pure that stands in stark contrast with the selfish court intrigues that have made Fitz's life an agony. Fitz writes, "Men cannot grieve as dogs do. But they grieve for many years."

What a last line…and what a narrative choice!

Hobb's first Farseer book travels many miles and follows Fitz from the age of six into his teenage years, yet it lands here on this solemn meditation that will probably leave anybody who has lost a pet in tears as they close the book.

This follows the rule of threes, in some ways. But what strikes me most is the patience Hobb displays. The first two dog "deaths" are clearly different, and Fitz's narration frames them as such. He blames both Burrich and himself for the first time Nosy "dies"; he is growing up.

But this final death is a revelation, and one that changes the entire theme of the novel. It is also different from most readers' experience. Living with pets is, for most of us, an experience of repeated grieving, at least over a long enough timeline. It doesn't get easier, but it does become part of the fabric of our lives; everything that lives also dies. But Nosy's sacrifice is abnormal, extreme, and powerful. It casts the events of the novel—including Fitz's perceived loneliness and isolation—in a new light.

It's the same…but also different.

I think in all but the leanest novels, repetition of some kind is a necessity. Characters will speak with one another more than once. Our hard-knock protagonist will get injured a couple times. The killer will strike again! And so on.

But if you can disguise the repetition, wrap it up in some subtle changes, it might draw our reader's curiosity as well as their attention.

And, at best, it will make every word on the page mean something different…even when some of those words are inevitably the same.