Here we can continue on with a few more examples of S romanticizing his death.

S becomes sucked into the events and “he does not let himself look away,” but the nature of the storm here seems to change (64).  The wind is “thrumming now with low frequencies along with the deafening high-pitched howl” (64).  The control that the crew seemed to have either over the boat or over the storm has been lost as Malestorm has become “drenched and bleeding from a gash above one eye” and the storm “drowns the words” of his instructions (64).  We can now see more of a movement towards death from beauty as Straka’s diction includes drown, denoting both silence and death.  However, while all of this is going on we also get the strange image of the storm touching down with the “grace of a ballerina’s foot,” potentially furthering S’s obsession with death.

The much more important things to note on this page are in the margins.  First, we get a reference from Eric about Summersby’s confession and how it was stolen from him. Fortunately, however, Summersby’s confession was released about one year ago via the Straka twitter account so we now have access to his recording.

While as Eric said, this confession seems too easy, it certainly holds a lot of weight.  Killing himself after recording this, Summersby certainly meant a lot of what he said.  From this, I think what we do know is that Summersby was included in the writing.  However, I think that Straka would have released this for F.X.C. and not his fans if he made a tape like this.  Even in his final book, S.O.T., he includes a lot of hidden messages to F.X.C..  This recording does not have a lot of love or emotion in it, thus I do not think it is for F.X.C., and therefore this necessitates that Summersby was not the main Straka.

The other thing to take note of is the Tortuga Journals of Juan Blas Cavarrubias from the footnote.  According to the thoughts on S blog, the Tortuga Journals are about the Achilles and the Tortoise paradox.  This paradox basically explains that if a tortoise, a slow moving creature, gets a head start on Achilles, then Achilles can never catch him, because Achilles has infinite points that he must cover to catch the Tortoise, and the Tortoise will always be a little ahead of that last point.  While this is an idea stemming from a note from F.X.C., if Straka really referred to this story in his novel, then this could add onto this idea of the depression of S, and the sense he feels, that he can never accomplish what he needs to.

This is a page with a lot of very relevant information to the novel.  So far information in regards to Straka, and S’s fixation on death continue to pile up creating a stronger foundation for both of these ideas.