[Matt Q]

Hi Richard.

Thanks for coming back on my question. Yes, maybe I could do something with "home" or something with a similar meaning. And 'house" instead of "home" is definitely worth considering for the reason you give.

I didn't think 'too menacing' but they are the only 'clue' as to why whales might be detested/despised.

OK. I didn't intend the whales' evolutionary ancestry to be a clue as to why the whales are despised, just wanted it for the idea of leaving somewhere, going far from home, and not being able to go back. But useful to know you see it that way. Maybe I should consider a more neutral term, like "primitive creatures". Or "limbed creatures", or "creatures that walked on land".

But doesn't he 'hero' status depend on what conclusion the reader makes of whales?

I just was using word 'hero' as it's used when speaking of fiction, to mean: the central character, the one with whom we're expected to sympathise. I wasn't intending to imply he was heroic.

I was inclined to see this as him having been punished for something (by whale society) and exiled amongst humans. Hence the regret and wanting to return. I assumed the transformation was done to him, not something he had willed for himself.
But if 'self-inflicted' then that's a whole other set of questions for the reader to answer. Perhaps too many?

I don't think I mind the banished-by-other-whales reading. Maybe the transformation is the result of his actions/choices, maybe an accident, maybe some other being or beings cause it -- the reader gets to decide how they read it. Although, I'd say the parallel with the song he sings would be that he'd left home, ventured too far away, in some sense, literal or otherwise, and now thinks he can't return. And maybe what he thinks is that he literally can't go back or can't be untransformed, that it's impossible, or maybe he just feels that he can't go back, for example for fear of not being accepted back for example, or maybe because he now has commitments in the human world: a wife, a family.

But doesn't this depend on the reader having reached 'your' explanation? That he achieved his transformation, rather than it being something that happened to him?

I don't understand why. He can pray that his legs fuse back, irrespective of how they were un-fused in the first place -- whether by banishment, accident, or by choice. And he can also pray that they fuse back while thinking this won't happen, or thinking it might.

You could simply have a mention of him being 'shunned' or similar from his church when he loses his family and job? I'm not religious so I always find that sort of thing 'sticks out'. I have only just so much disbelief to suspend.

I'm also not religious, and as I said, I didn't intend the word "pray" in its religious sense, I'm using it to mean, to "wish or hope strongly for a particular outcome or situation", as the OED puts it. Having the whale go to church would work against this reading. Anyway, useful to know that you read it in the religious sense.

thanks again,

Matt