Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
There is something early on about why Roger appears to both of them, but Magnus brushes it aside as something they'd need more trips to figure out.
I wondered if Magnus was not necessarily being truthful about his own trips--it seemed that for the most part Dick would report his experiences, and Magnus would say, Wow, same thing happened to me, and enlarge upon it, feed Dick more information, and then Dick's next hallucination would enlarge upon that, etc. Dick had previously spent time in the area, and he might have heard some of the names in discussions with Magnus's parents or neighbors, so the fact that those 14th-century people actually lived wouldn't prove that he wasn't simply hallucinating. Maybe Magnus was experimenting with controlling hallucinations.
I suspect my theory is full of holes, but it's what I was thinking as I read.
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Magnus suggested that Roger was the guide, like Virgil for Dante in the first two sections of
The Divine Comedy. In a way, Roger seemed to be somehow aware of Dick’s presence.
I agree that the trips are really a nonsense, but I was prepared to suspend disbelief and go along with the story. I don’t demand technical explanations for how something can happen as long as the author makes it work for me.