Cordy: Overconfidence much?
It''s better to be proud than to be cowed: the life expectancy is shorter, but the quality is higher.
The only rational choice in Cordelia's position is to surrender, as the Delapores did - and her fate would be much the same. Fighting on offers no hope of victory, only the certainty of a grisly death, a death which would not end her doomed struggle (by authorial fiat), so she should just give up and bow down before the dark.
She won't, of course, because she will not accept that grim truth. She has too much self-confidence to give up, even though fighting on is hubris. Eventually, though, she might grow stronger, strong enough to knowingly fight for a doomed cause, but that strength will be hard-earned.
What it's like to do that - fighting on, when all hope is lost - what it takes, and what it costs, is one of the things the story is about, below the surface gloss.
Tjalorak, I'm an optimist. I'm confident that most of us, in Cordelia's situation, would do exactly the same, and some would do better. We'd just take longer to recover afterwards, which is where her hellmouth-spawned mental defences come in. For you and me, it'd be a few months before the experience was just a bad memory; Cordelia only needed a few minutes.
It''s better to be proud than to be cowed: the life expectancy is shorter, but the quality is higher.
The only rational choice in Cordelia's position is to surrender, as the Delapores did - and her fate would be much the same. Fighting on offers no hope of victory, only the certainty of a grisly death, a death which would not end her doomed struggle (by authorial fiat), so she should just give up and bow down before the dark.
She won't, of course, because she will not accept that grim truth. She has too much self-confidence to give up, even though fighting on is hubris. Eventually, though, she might grow stronger, strong enough to knowingly fight for a doomed cause, but that strength will be hard-earned.
What it's like to do that - fighting on, when all hope is lost - what it takes, and what it costs, is one of the things the story is about, below the surface gloss.
Tjalorak, I'm an optimist. I'm confident that most of us, in Cordelia's situation, would do exactly the same, and some would do better. We'd just take longer to recover afterwards, which is where her hellmouth-spawned mental defences come in. For you and me, it'd be a few months before the experience was just a bad memory; Cordelia only needed a few minutes.