Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 2:58 pmTo paraphrase Tolkien, if you want to send a message, write a message. Tolkien used to be very good friends with C. S. Lewis; the two fell out because of Tolkien's low opinion of allegory in general and the nakedly allegoral Narnia series specifically; he felt the story was being twisted to fit the preordained moral.
There's another author who I can't recall just now, who actually said it in so many words: "If I had wanted to send a message I would have written a message. I wrote a book."
In my view, the best messages are sent by stories when you don't see the message until your attention is called to it. The message of PitW, if any, is this: people are people no matter what shape they happen to be at the moment. You don't need, for example, Sarah doing soliloquies about the angst of being a monster, or Gus and Jean as shoulder devil-angel sets, to convey this; seeing werewolves at work, werewolves at the mall, etc. does it just as well, and more effectively.
And having read The Wotch for a long time, I don't see any Everyone would be better if they changed gender message, or indeed any overriding message at all. To me, that's a good thing.
There's another author who I can't recall just now, who actually said it in so many words: "If I had wanted to send a message I would have written a message. I wrote a book."
In my view, the best messages are sent by stories when you don't see the message until your attention is called to it. The message of PitW, if any, is this: people are people no matter what shape they happen to be at the moment. You don't need, for example, Sarah doing soliloquies about the angst of being a monster, or Gus and Jean as shoulder devil-angel sets, to convey this; seeing werewolves at work, werewolves at the mall, etc. does it just as well, and more effectively.
And having read The Wotch for a long time, I don't see any Everyone would be better if they changed gender message, or indeed any overriding message at all. To me, that's a good thing.