Flesh

by Philip José Farmer

  Once Stagg had begun his journey down the Great Route, his shipmates were released from captivity. They were told they had a month to start acclimating to Deecee society or be executed. Exile was not an option. The Asian and European members of the crew decided to try and escape to make their way to their homelands, even though they knew they were no longer remotely like the lands that they had left.

  Churchill and Sarvant explored Deecee together and befriended the Whitrow family. After an evening together, the Whitrow family asked Churchill and Sarvant to be their guests. Res Whitrow was a wealthy man with powerful connections to Deecee society. His main wealth came from shipping, which greatly interested Rudyard Churchill, who immediately began thinking of somehow acquiring access to a ship from him. His task was made easy by Whitrow’s daughter, Robin, who found Churchill intriguing. Churchill played up this interest for his own purposes but quickly discovered that he also had romantic feelings for Robin.

  The Whitrow family gives a slight peek at Deecee family life. It is a very earthy society with a lack of the social graces to which Churchill and Sarvant were accustomed. At their first dinner with a Deecee family, Churchill and Sarvant were exposed to open discussions of sexuality and proof that table manners were among the knowledge lost during the Desolation. The Frats, in addition to being religious cultic societies, also functioned as lodges or other fraternal organizations did at the time that Farmer wrote Flesh, that is to say they were social organizations used by men and women for entertainment, charitable causes, business, and social networking. It is no coincidence that Farmer indicated that the most powerful frats were the Lions, Elks, Eagles, and Moose, since these were also among the most prominent fraternal orders at the time he wrote Flesh.

  One of the more interesting things about the Whitrow family, and it appears in Deecee society, is the role of the father. Although the Deecee society is matriarchal and Res Whitrow had acquired his wealth and social standing through his wife Angela’s family, Whitrow, like his father-in-law, was the breadwinner for the family, for he speaks of working for Angela’s father, not her mother. Res Whitrow also seems to be the dominant figure in the family unit; in fact, it is noted that although Angela talked a lot, she never interrupted her husband. Her role seems to be that of a housewife. This seems typical for Deecee society, for only those women who are dedicated to religious orders work outside of the home. This is not to say, however, that women did not participate in important decision making. In conjunction with her father, Robin Whitrow planned Rudyard Churchill’s career after their marriage without consulting her prospective groom.

  This role is replicated in greater Deecee society as well, for although Deecee is nominally ruled by the King and Queen of Deecee, the Sunhero and the High Priestess, these appear to be largely ceremonial roles insofar as actual governance goes. The true ruler of Deecee, that is the person who actually runs things on a day-to-day basis, is the Speaker of the House. The Speaker is appointed by the High Priestess and is analogous to the Prime Minister. However, even the role of the Speaker of the House has a religious significance; the Speaker must subsume his own identity into an iconic cultic figure. There are two Speakers mentioned in Flesh: John Barleycorn (who died as a result of indulging too much in his namesake) and his successor Tom Tobacco. Because the Priestesses prefer a behind the scenes role the Speakers are the public face of the Deecee’s government. Deecee’s Speaker is the liaison between the people of Deecee and their goddess Columbia, so in a literal sense he speaks for the Goddess.

  As stated earlier, Robin Whitrow had unilaterally decided her future husband’s career. Instead of becoming the Captain of a sailing vessel, Churchill was to become a pig farmer. Res Whitrow explained that his sailing holdings were going to his sons, which would seem to indicate that despite Deecee being a matriarchy, inheritance could still pass down through the male lineage.

  Although we only get a glimpse of the gender roles in Deecee society, they appear to be similar to the roles that were current when Flesh was written, that is, the man worked outside of the home and that the woman stayed at home to have children and took care of the house.

  It does seem odd that in a matriarchal society gender roles remained fairly consistent with those of a male dominated society. One wonders if Farmer truly wished to make a point about Washington, D.C., by depicting Deecee society as fundamentally unchanged despite sustaining an apocalypse. Or were the gender stereotypes so firmly entrenched in American society of that era, even to a writer of his imagination, that this seemed like the only plausible depiction of women in a modern society?

  If Farmer had written Flesh a few years later, after the women’s liberation movement, would women have been depicted with more of a diverse role in Deecee society?

  The plotline dealing with Nephi Sarvant demonstrates the religious traditions and structure of the theocracy as seen through its common adherents. Nephi Sarvant is a member of a sect called the Church of the Last Stand. This church seems based on a combination of fundamentalist Christianity and Mormonism. Although Farmer does not specifically state that the Last Standers were an offshoot of Mormonism, there are some pretty telling clues. Sarvant’s first name of Nephi is a name strongly associated with Mormonism. The Prophet Mormon used plates written by three men named Nephi to write his book, which was later transcribed by Joseph Smith. Mormon lore also has that the Three Nephites were disciples of Jesus Christ who were granted immortality so that they could carry out missionary work until the end of the world. The Last Standers were centered in Fourth of July, Arizona. The Fourth of July oration is a famous speech in Mormon history. Also, Sarvant mentioned that he would try to get back home but Arizona, Utah, and even the Great Salt Lake seemed uninhabited. A lesser but pertinent clue is that Sarvant refers to his scripture as the Book, or the book of my faith, rather than the Good Book, so he is doubtless referring to the Book of Mormon rather than the Bible.

  Farmer had a brief fascination with Mormonism, to the point of planning a novel set on a world in which the Book of Mormon was literally and historically true. Eventually, however, he abandoned the Mormon element of the novel, which evolved into Two Hawks from Earth. It is interesting that of all the religious beliefs that he examined in his Riverworld series, which also has a strong religious element, Mormonism was given rather scant attention. This may have been because the faith of the Ethicals seems to have been a combination of Mormonism and Scientology. One of the tenets of the Mormon Church is that in the afterlife, the faithful will become Gods of worlds of their own. In the last Riverworld novel, Gods of Riverworld, the protagonists reached the Dark Tower, the seat of power of the Riverworld, and had the power to repopulate the Riverworld, but spent most of the novel using the technology of the Ethicals to create mini worlds of their own.

  The Whitrow family offered to guest Nephi Sarvant, but he was repulsed by their behavior. He decided that he had been placed in this time and place to bring the word of God to the benighted pagans. Since he was under a deadline to become a functioning member of Deecee society, he looked around for employment. He was told about a job as a sweeper at the Temple of Gotew. He thought that this would be a great place to observe the religion of Deecee and also where he could begin his proselytizing efforts.

  En route to the Temple of Gotew, he encountered a young woman wearing a hooded robe. He discovered that she too was going to the Temple of Gotew. She was shocked that Sarvant, who was considered to be a diradah, that is, part of the aristocracy, because of his association with the Sunhero, would seek to take a job as janitor, but she led him to the Temple.

  Upon his arrival at the Temple of Gotew Nephi Sarvant got the first knock against his preconceived notions about Deecee’s pagan society. He had expected the person in charge of the temple to be a woman; however, Bishop Andi, a man, ran things. After taking the job, Sarvant was surprised to see the aristocratic woman, Arva Linkon, open her robe to a man and go with him into a curtained booth. He learned that the Goddess of Gotew was
the goddess of infertile women. The afflicted women came to the temple in the hopes that some man could quicken her womb. To Sarvant’s eyes this was a form of temple prostitution. His first thought was to quit, but after reflection he believed that this was a good way to start his crusade.

  However, as often happens, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Sarvant never really began his mission because he became infatuated and then obsessed with Arva Linkon. His religious fervor and passion for Arva Linkon became intertwined. Her assignations with any male who could enter the Temple literally drove Sarvant insane.

  One day when she was on her way home, he tried to convert her to Christianity. Sarvant was upset when she rebuked him for being a pagan and a foul blasphemer. He was even more shocked when Bishop Andi told him that if he persisted in his false beliefs, his month could be drastically shortened. Arva Linkon had told the Bishop about Sarvant’s attempt to convert her because she was a truly devout woman.

  When Sarvant could no longer take seeing Arva Linkon with everyone but him, he took the fertility test that would allow him to worship at the Temple of Gotew. When he took Arva Linkon to her booth, she was ecstatic because she believed that her body was the instrument that had converted the unbeliever to the true faith. When Sarvant told her that he wanted to be with her because he loved her, not because he believed in the Goddess, Arva tried to leave, calling him a pagan. Sarvant’s mind snapped and he assaulted Arva. When Arva let it be known what he had done, a mob dragged him to the gallows and hanged him.

  As he was being carried to the gallows, Nephi Sarvant had an epiphany that the faith of the people of Deecee was too strong for him to have overcome. They believed with an intensity that was insurmountable. He believed that had he come eight hundred years later, he might have had succeeded in getting converts when the faith had waned. Yet even in dying, Nephi Sarvant did not even consider that the reason he had failed was because their faith was stronger than his own. Or that the Deecee followed a strict moral code. Arva Linkon was a married woman forced to come to the Temple because she was barren; she did not have sex with men besides her husband simply for the sake of gratification. When Sarvant made it plain that their coupling was not to be a sacred act, she rejected him.

  Sarvant’s main disappointment was that he was dying a failure; he had not made one convert and he was not dying as a martyr, as he had often wished, but because he had committed rape. His last thoughts were not how he had disappointed God, but rather how he had failed himself, and so he revealed that his mission was more a measure of personal worth rather than one of absolute faith.

  Peter Stagg’s story in Flesh is as the physical incarnation of one of Deecee’s religious icons, the Sunhero and Stag King, both the son and husband of the Great Mother. The Sunhero’s role is to physically travel along the Great Route from Deecee to Albany, from South to North, and to impregnate as many women as he can along the way. This journey symbolically represents the sun’s journey from Summer to Winter and cycle of life from birth to death.

  Stagg’s journey is also the road of trials that heroes must undertake. Stagg’s first trial was the implantation of artificial organs that resemble transparent stag horns on his head. The horns pumped hormones and drugs into his system that increased his strength, stamina, and virility, and filled him with deep uncontrollable passions for food, violence, and sex. As he travels towards Albany, he becomes less and less able to resist their influence. His second trial was the certain knowledge that he was journeying towards his death and that there was little he could do to escape this fate. Even if he could break through his armed guards and elude them, the horns would compel him to return. His third trial was his love for Mary Casey, a captive woman who was also to be sacrificed at Albany with Stagg. Mary found Peter the man to be noble, kind, and someone she could love, but found Stagg the Sunhero to be everything she detested about the Deecee.

  Fate intervened in the form of a Pants-Elf raiding party who slew Stagg’s guards and took Mary and Peter captive. Peter and Mary were freed from imminent death, but had to undergo a new set of perils. This break from the Great Route effectively stopped Stagg’s role as the Sunhero but set him on the path to become the novel’s version of the epic hero. As the epic hero, he had to undergo another set of perils before achieving his quest.

  During the course of the next few weeks, they endured a brutal captivity by the Pants-Elf until they fought free of their clutches. As they made their way to Caseyland, they encountered a bear which Stagg fought and killed, although it cost him one of his antlers. However, even with his desire cut in half, Stagg was overwhelmed by his need for Mary Casey and she hid from him. As Stagg looked for her, he encountered some Caseylanders, among them Mary’s cousin, who wanted to hang him. To forgo his hanging, Stagg challenged them to a game of One against Five instead. His antler-enhanced speed, strength, and agility allowed Stagg to defeat the five Caseylanders. Mary arrived in time to save her cousin from being killed by Stagg. She warned them that she had heard the sounds of Alba’s death-hogs. The Deecee had discovered Stagg’s whereabouts and were determined that he perish by the hands of Alba. In the battle that followed, Stagg proved triumphant against Alba. Yet even after her followers had fled, one rider came at him. At the last moment he recognized the rider as the very pregnant Virginia.

  Stagg, however, had regained enough of his humanity that he could not strike down a pregnant woman. Virginia had no such qualms and cut off his remaining antler. As a result of this injury, Stagg died, and in doing so fulfilled the Goddess’ plan.

  To further the mythic quality of Stagg’s hero quest, shortly after his death, Stagg was resurrected and in a sense reborn.

  Rudyard Churchill and several of his shipmates, in conjunction with some Karelian pirates, had overcome the soldiers guarding the armory in Deecee where Columbia had decreed that the spacemen’s weapons would be stored. Armed with automatic weapons they had retaken their ship. They kidnapped several women and children, intending to leave Earth and colonize a planet. While searching for Stagg, they encountered Virginia and she told them that he was dead. Since she was carrying Stagg’s child, Churchill sedated her and put her into deep freeze.

  After discovering Stagg’s whereabouts, they dug him up and placed him in a lazarus device, which revived him and regenerated his damaged organs. However, when Stagg regained consciousness, his entire memory of the events since landing on Earth had been lost. He was, in a sense, reborn to the man he had been before becoming the Sunhero. Prior to having become the Sunhero, Peter Stagg drank a potion that was purportedly from the River Styx. In doing so, Captain Peter Stagg of the starship Terra symbolically died and was reborn as Stagg the Sunhero. Having fulfilled his duty to the Goddess, she once again blessed him by letting him drink from one of her rivers, the River Lethe, which washed away all of his memory of having been Her servant.

  Just as Flesh begins by letting us vicariously experience the Planting Rites of Deecee, it ends by taking us behind the scenes of the theocracy of the Great Goddess and lets the reader in on a rather shocking revelation. In a tavern between Casey and Deecee, three women meet. They are incarnations of the Triple Goddess in her aspects of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. The crone is the new Alba, replacing the one killed by Stagg. The Maiden is the sister of Virginia, who has taken her place as the Virgin of Deecee. Most shockingly is that the Mother is an abbess from a great sisterhood in Caseyland. She gives lip service to worshiping St. Columbus, the Son, and the Mother but really worships Columbia, the Great White Mother. She has given birth, we are told, despite having been sworn to chastity.

  The three women are pleased because, despite having deviated from the Great Route, Stagg did travel from South to North, met Alba, and died. To prove that he was a worthy Sunhero, he was reborn as an innocent and he carried Mother Earth to the stars. In a sense this was literally true since the spaceship was named Terra. Perhaps the most telling phrase of this conversation is, “It will not matter if he rejects Virginia an
d chooses Mary. He is ours.”

  While specifically about Peter Stagg, this statement could also be taken in a broader context regarding the religion of Deecee. The presence of the abbess from Caseyland as one of the ruling hierarchy of Deecee indicates that Deecee has made greater strides in spreading its religion through its neighboring states than we were originally led to believe. Like the early Christian Church, the Church of Columbia appears willing to incorporate the symbols of existing faiths in order to eventually convert the adherents of the other faith into the true religion. Just as Christianity had replaced the pagan religions, it appears that in the world of Flesh, a pagan religion is poised to replace Christianity or the remnant of it. Ultimately it does not matter whether the Columbia is known as the Virgin Virginia or the Virgin Mary, so long as people worship her.

  This revelation demonstrates that Nephi Sarvant was probably wrong when he predicted that the faith in Columbia would eventually wane, since the Priestesses were slowly and carefully expanding their faith, and so their influence, over the region. It also demonstrates that unless forced, the Priestesses did not like to show their hands but rather preferred to work behind the scenes. There is a telling anomaly in Flesh which may indicate just how powerful and influential the Priestesses truly were.

  This anomaly is in the science that the Priestesses possess. Deecee was a civilization barely above the Iron Age. The Priestesses were fundamentally anti-technology and regarded the men from the stars as both a curse and blessing. No doubt the Priestesses were interested in the genetic diversity they could bring to the relatively small population of Deecee, but also felt that their knowledge was dangerous. This is undoubtedly why they separated Stagg from his crew and then set the crew to fare for themselves, knowing it would most likely fail to become part of Deecee society in a month.

  We know through the experiences of Churchill and Sarvant that the Priestesses only allow certain professions to attain any sort of literacy. By controlling literacy they also control how knowledge and information are disseminated. Also by making science heretical they restrict technology and so maintain their power.