Lincoln Memorial
In the Lotus Prince Chronicles
Jackie has come from the Sackler. He is shaken. He is also hungry in the way thirteen-year-olds are after revelations. The Hunter is already on the steps when Jackie arrives — sitting four steps down from the chamber, in a canvas jacket, with the pizza box open on his knees. He does not greet Jackie. He hands him a slice. He lets Jackie eat. After a long minute he says, looking out at the Reflecting Pool, that the building behind them is the only memorial in this city built around the question was the war worth it?, and that this is why he meets people here. Most of the other memorials, he says, are built around the answer. This one is built around the question.
The conversation that follows is the spine of Jackie's third act. The Hunter explains, in eight sentences and one long pause, what the Council of Eight Immortals is willing to do directly and what they will not. He explains why Mei walks past with tea trays instead of saying what she sees. He explains that the Universe Ring Jackie threw and caught at the campus is not a toy and is not a weapon, exactly, but a test of whether Jackie has learned to expect the return. He hands Jackie the second slice. The pizza is cold. Lincoln, behind them, is colder. The city below is lit and largely asleep. Jackie eats.
Locale
The Lincoln Memorial was completed in 1922, designed by Henry Bacon, with the seated figure sculpted by Daniel Chester French. The thirty-six columns name the thirty-six states in the Union at Lincoln's death. The interior chamber holds the Gettysburg Address on the south wall and the Second Inaugural on the north. Both texts are, importantly, structured around the question of whether suffering can be rendered meaningful — not the answer.
The books' use of the memorial is in keeping with its actual civic function: a place where Americans have gathered at night, in private, to ask things they cannot ask in daylight. The Hunter's choice of meeting place is therefore not arbitrary. It is, in the older world's vocabulary, a true threshold — a building that does not pretend to know more than it knows.
Key Ideas
The memorial built around a question. The Hunter's reading: most of D.C.'s monuments are answers. This one is the only one that holds the question open. That is why it is where the conversation can happen.
Cold pizza at midnight. The detail that makes the scene domestic. Whatever else is true, a man brought a thirteen-year-old food. The methodology cannot model this.
The Hunter's eight sentences. The exposition is short on purpose. He does not explain everything. He explains only what Jackie can carry from the steps to the rest of the night.
The Reflecting Pool below. The pool is where the city looks at itself and sees itself upside down. The memorial knows this. The Hunter knows the memorial knows.
Further Reading
- Lincoln Memorial — Wikipedia
- Gettysburg Address — Wikipedia