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11/1/2006 2:24:51 AM
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"This is the way the world ends" T.S. Elliot and Halo 3
The words spoken by cortona at the end of the trailer is a quote from T.S. Elliot's most famous poem "The Hollow Men". The whole verse is as follows...
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
Now I believe that it was interesting to qoute the poem exactly in the trailer and I was thinking some parrellels might be drawn between the two for those who feel like trying the whole poem goes a follows:
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
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I think I have a theory about time dilation and halo, but that'll be for a separate topic.
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I am almost certain that time dilation is going on in some form or another. Anyone who knows about, or has played Marathon knows how Bungie likes to mess with timelines. There is a lot of speculation about the Marathon and Halo links...I don't have the research to go into them right now, so I'll delve into the Eliot links...and how this may affect Halo, and games as a whole. Eliot was Modernist. In other words, he was an artist obsessed with preserving the old forms of art while forging new territory. Eliot reached deep into the canon of literature across all cultures to create his most magnificent poems, in order to use the former traditions to create something new. One thing of particular interest is the fact that Modernist narratives typically like to mess with time -- that is, narratives are presented in an odd and disjointed format. The more I play the Halo games, and look at the story as a whole, the more I see Bungie creating an evolution of storytelling in games. The fact that we essentially have two divergent mysteries at the core of the plot is telling of this: the Forerunners -- who are they? Why did they exist? Were they good or evil? That's in the past. And what will happen now? How will the WORLD END? That is the mystery of today. And how will it all play out? The future. Cortana is in the past, the Chief is in the present. As Eliot noted, we can only save humanity by reconciling the muses of both past and present, to create new meaning in art. How does this play into Marathon? Does anyone remember when the protagonist and the AIs (Durandal specifically) jumped into the future, to see NOTHING at all? We glimpsed the future, but then jumped back into the present to fight a war for humanity. But just like John in Revelation (yeah, the Bible plays a key factor), Daniel and other Apocalyptic prophets, we glimpsed the end in Marathon. But we had our own race to finish. Now we are at the end, with the Chief, to finish the fight. But Cortana is in the future...so are we going there? To the land of true desolation? Where only flood and sentinels remain? But I think the answer lies in the past, with the mysteries of the Ark. That would make, according to Eliot's Four Quartets, "Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable." Time future in time past. They are one and the same. Everything is happening right now has happened before. This is one of the 'infinity' speculations from Marathon, when Durandal jumps us to the end of everything, with a grim message. Yet there is hope...just as when Eliot inserts hope into the Hollow Men, Bungie will insert hope for humanity. This is because Bungie not only specializes in the creation and honoring of myth, but because they SUBVERT it as well. As the central Christ figure of this epic saga, the Chief will break all of the rules that say humanity should go out with a bang, but he will save us all.
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I think the Cortana we're seeing in the trailer is NOT the Cortana we know. I believe she's the Forerunner AI hinted at in Halo 2. Ever wonder how the Covenant seemingly got copies of Cortana? What if we actually didn't "create" her at all? I know what you're all saying: "But Dr. Halsey made her out of her own mind!" Yes, but how did we get the technology for AI's in the first place? What if the Cortana we know is just a copy of the TRUE Cortana. The one we're now speaking to. It would then make her statement make a little more sense. "I am your shield" A shield. Heard that before? In the new book. Those of you who have read it know what I mean. "I am your sword." Not only can she protect, she can strike. I believe that what she means by this is that she controls the Forerunner artifacts. IE, the Halos, the Ark, the Sentinels. With command over those, she'd be one helluva sword. "I know you. Your past, your future." Okay, this one's a little tougher. How would she know the future? The time crystals. I'm still thinking the Forerunners can travel through time. If so, why couldn't Cortana come back to this time? She's on the ONLY Forerunner ship found in the known galaxy so far. Why only one? Why just hers? Maybe she -wanted- to be found. "This, is the way the world ends." Oh yes. It will. No matter what happens, that's definitely true. But how will it end? I think Bungie is playing with our heads on this one. The world will end, but will we end with it? The planet may be dead, but we live on. All is not lost. "I have defied gods and demons." She has defied her Forerunner "gods" by coming back in time, and denied the "demons" herself. Whoever the demons are. Either way, I believe this to be the most cryptic of her statements. Can't really explain it right now.
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AlphaOne I must congrate you.. You must be one of the most deepest thinking people in the bungie forums. But serious if you can please do.
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the intertextuality between Bungie and Eliot goes deeper than the trailer. It has to, if Bungie are going to use the work of the greatest poet of the 20th century...it's not Bungie style to make a half-arsed references of that magnitude. Take a step back. Eliot believed that humanity had become a wallowing husk of glory, paralyzed by inaction and moral decay. It's why he defined modernism in his poetry...there are no protagonists, no antagonists...just these barren settings. (Read the Waste Land...) From that, if we can extrapolate that Staten and Co. have read more than the Hollow Men, it may give us a clue as to how the final act of the trilogy will play out. Sure, THIS is the way the world ends...but is that how it is supposed to end? Eliot deliberately cut up the couplets in the end to instill a slight semblance of hope...he uses the same technique in the Waste Land. So does this mean that we have differing views? If so, which does Cortana hold? Would that mean that Cortana is perhaps in the future, where this has already happened? Think about it. What if during the jump, a moment of time dilation occurred. This would make Cortana's transmissions to the Chief fatally prophetic -- it would allow her to be the 'shield and sword,' for the Chief, guarding him from events that SHOULD happen, but won't, because Cortana knows the future. With that knowledge, the Chief will survive, as he wanders through his diaspora (see Eliot's commentary about wandering Jews). Eliot believed that the only way to save humanity from its lost ways was to reconcile art, spirituality, and the soul, with human action. Cortana represents the more esoteric function, as she is an ethereal being. The Chief is the action. The Chief must reconcile himself with Cortana to save humanity. In a nutshell, that is. Of course I could go deeper...
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I dont know about you , but when I fart .... my heart stops . Is this normal ? ( A poem by Elder Watts , I think this has something to do with the world exploding )
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It does have to do with T.S. Elliot's poem, but most of the stuff is from the Cortana letters. It says, "Oh, and your poet Elliot had it all wrong, THIS is the way the world ends." Basically implying that it's going to end with a bang (the Ark) not a whimper.
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"This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star." Bingo -blam!-es, the dead land? Middle of a desert in africa, Stone images are raised? Giant forrunner structure looks like a type of stone. The Supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star? Man adding to the deaths caused by the forerunners blindness, and the twinkle either the structure activating or a halo going off and destroying a star.
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dude get a life we al understand the connection between t s elliots poem an cortanas words. we all understand what she means if u r retarded she means the world will end with BANG
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Pezza I believe it was in the Cortana letters that we first heard this. Something like: "Your poet Elliot had it all wrong, this is the way the world ends." I forget the exact phrasing.[/quote] Yup. The first Cortana Letter: I have walked the edge of the Abyss. I have governed the unwilling. I have witnessed countless empires break before me. I have seen the most courageous soldiers fall away in fear. [I was there with the Angel at the tomb] I have seen your future. And I have learned. There will be no more Sadness. No more Anger. No more Envy. I HAVE WON. Oh, and your poet Eliot had it all wrong: THIS is the way the world ends. [url=http://marathon.bungie.org/story/cortana.html]Link to all 6[/url].
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Assault on Mind Do you really think they went that deep into it? It's just a trailer to stir the audiences you just take it to a whole new level...[/quote] Bungie goes way to deep into everything...*cough* ilovebees? *cough*
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I believe it was in the Cortana letters that we first heard this. Something like: "Your poet Elliot had it all wrong, this is the way the world ends." I forget the exact phrasing.
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Do you really think they went that deep into it? It's just a trailer to stir the audiences you just take it to a whole new level...
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Old, but whatever. [Edited on 10/31/2006]
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that had quite alot to do with the Halo 3 Trailer dudes...
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I cant go on like this anymore BANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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What?
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