"The life and times of Alden Dennis Weer, as re-experienced by his ghost": so might we attempt at gunpoint to summarize Gene Wolfe's powerfully evocative third novel, Peace. But while admirable efforts have been made to establish a chronology for the novel (peacetimeline), or to work out some of the book's intricate genealogical and other puzzles (see Damien Broderick's "Thoughts on Gene Wolfe's Peace," in The New York Review of Science Fiction no. 91, March 1996), much of the discussion in my opinion has seemed to take on a trees-for-the-forest approach, ignoring what Peace is truly about--that is to say, the quest by several, modern, would-be alchemists to achieve the transformation of base materials into gold, if at a cost most dire, the loss of their souls. In short, as I intend to argue, Peace may well be Gene Wolfe's take on the Faust legend, with yet one essential difference--it's narrated by the Devil, or at least Wolfe's version thereof, Alden Dennis Weer. And while to some extent another lupine's earlier work will provide a secondary text by which to examine plotpoints (the model here being Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), it is one of Wolfe's own novels that provides an even better comparison, being in many respects both prequel and shadowy sister text.

The Brimstone Trail

Further hellish tangents: Den, as we're told by his Aunt Olivia, "lays fires for me all the time," while the smell of burning sulphur, like Proust's cake, takes him back in time to his childhood and experiments with his chemistry set, causing him to sometimes wonder "if I have not poisoned myself with its fumes, and now, when I think myself to have lived, if I do not in actuality lie sprawled beside my candle and tiny smoking dish." At the Lorns, when he and Margie are looking for the missing Resurrection egg, Den professes indifference when it's suggested the hen-housed religious object might hatch into "something little and squirmy, with a hundred little teeth as sharp as needles." And look who actually finds the missing egg: it's Den, even as he and Margie are discussing how to circumvent the possible attack of a nearby goat--which Den pronounces as imaginary, but which he also obviously embodies. Crucially as well there's the second embedded tale in Peace, the story, related by Hannah, of the banshee, where Jack--Den's typological counterpart--refuses to name anyone, for the banshee will then kill that person. Compare Den's similar reticence with Bobby Black, who "if he can make me speak his battle is won." But when Jack (who again represents Den) asks the banshee a question, "Who's to be born?" she replies, "'Tis the Antichrist, an' you be the father of it." Den as the father of the Antichrist; fortunately, as we shall see, daughters don't count.

Then there's Weer's extended family, with its widespread infernal associations. As we learn during a Christmas visit, his widowed maternal grandfather has been consorting with his housekeeper, a woman named Mab. Mab, however, as we remember from Shakespeare and Keats, is the name of a fairy. The Fair Folk, in turn, have a number of connections with the Prince of Lies. According to The Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, "Faithful but suspicious Christians have accused solitary fairies of being in league with the devil," while another tradition has it that "Fairies embody the spirits of the dead." But even more significantly look at how Grandfather Elliot describes to young Den the just missed "visit" of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve: "Well, I guess you're late. Old Nick, he's already been here." Old Nick, of course, is a fairly well known name of the devil (hence Adam Sandler's movie, "Little Nicky").

Similarly, but drawing upon classical mythology, Evadne--the dead grandmother replaced by Mab--is named after the Greek wife of Capaneus who committed suttee, throwing herself on her husband's funeral pyre. (Capaneus himself has been electrocuted, struck down by Zeus's lightning.)

But more than anyone else it's Weer's beloved paternal aunt, Olivia, who most embodies the fire-and-brimstone connection. She is for starters an admirer of anything Chinese, but in a politically-incorrect age where Asians in general were often referred to as "yellow devils"--a phrase not only utilized by the ordinary man-on-the-street, but also by writers as prominent as Rudyard Kipling and Ambrose Bierce. Adept at painting on pottery, her favorite image (modeled after the labels on Chinese fireworks) is the dragon--a frequent Christian symbol of the Devil. (Later too we will read how, when Den produces his "secret sword" of a Boy Scout knife for Lois Arbuthnot, he tells the librarian, "I'm afraid it hasn't killed many dragons.") By selective breeding of her Pekinese, "Vi," as she's known to her friends, hopes to bring back the guardian lion-dogs of the T'ang dynasty--statues of which have always featured a horned head to distinguish them from the lions with which, at least since the Heian Period (794-1185), they are usually paired. Weer's aunt also smokes, which most ladies did not do at the time, and utilizes a "tooth-of-the-devil" cigarette holder. And finally when she dies, run over by Professor Peacock (as Broderick correctly speculates), this makes sense on more than a spurned suitor level, since peacocks, in the western tradition, are held to be slayers of snakes.

Finally, on the modern side of the Weer family tree, there's Doris, who's almost certainly the daughter of Sherry Gold and Den Weer. (Just as we understand that merchant James Macafee is meant to represent the suitor from the sea in the tale of "The Princess and Her Three Suitors," the first three letters in Doris mean "of gold.") Doris's tale, as related by Charlie Turner the Dog Boy (another wolf/devil avatar), reprises, with its carnival versions of abusive stepmother and evil stepsisters, the story of Little Cinder--that is to say, Cinderella--whose prince, alas, does not come in time to prevent her from being electrocuted. Like the princess in the aforementioned tale, but in a different context from her great-aunt Olivia (who marries alchemist Julius Smart), she too--like Evadne, like Capaneus--has been "won by fire," symbolizing not only her death, but also perhaps her homecoming. ("There's no way of really knowing what was meant by 'fire' in the rhyme," Den has told us earlier.)

Small wonder the Weer family bible is, as Den describes it, "old, falling apart," and "unreadable."

But if by now all this talk of an infernal family hasn't reminded you of anything, let me attempt to further jog your memories. The boy with the strange almost incestuous pattern to his heritage (Alden Dennis, son of Adelina, grandson of Evadne), whose secret name might also be Wolfe; the absentee parents (fled to Europe after the death of Bobby Black); the beloved aunt with her scientific proclivities; the guardian dog. Doesn't, in fact, much of this connote the world of Wolfe's 666 Saltimbanque clan in The Fifth Head of Cerberus? I've always thought so, and in my original notes to Peace, I've scrawled in the margin, "Aunt Vi = v + i, the sixth head of Cerberus." Moreover, far from this being either a superficial or facile resemblance, I believe that Fifth Head informs a good deal of Peace, and is crucial to an understanding of the latter's thematic crux, as well as its ending. Let us keep that in mind as we work our way through, if in roundabout fashion, other aspects of this most ingenious novel.

Cold Heaven

Note: this hot-cold polarity may intentionally invert Goethe's more traditional imagery, where light represents the Divine (Faust is replete with solar imagery) and darkness its opposite; hence the malign undertones of Faust's cell, Auerbach's cellar, the Walpurgisnacht festivities, etc., etc.--plus Mephistopheles first approaches Faust at sunset, just as the episode of the Chinese egg takes place at dusk. Another inversion that's important: Margaret remains uncorrupted in Wolfe's version, unlike her namesake in Goethe.

A Little Knowledge

A Little Knowledge II

Foolish Gold

The Three Suitors

Apples and Oranges

Mandelbrot Hell

And yet even more than the onomastic tie-in, and apart from the punishment angle, with its Sisyphean entrapment cycles, might there be quite another reason Peace ends the way it does? I believe there is and that it relates to the book's hidden schema--one wherein the master alchemist is neither Johannes Faust nor Julius Smart, but Gene Wolfe himself.

The Book of Gold

This then became my first attempt at looking at Peace's overall organizational structure, with each character met in Van Ness's waiting room corresponding to a chapter in the book, along with a representational color. And then something else occurred to me: isn't a certain progression of colors or tinctures, as the material in the flasks goes through its various transformations, seen in the ideal alchemical reaction? Traditionally, there are a number of such schemes, with a four constituent cycle being most frequent: nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, rubedo. To fit Peace into such a scheme, we need only to introduce a single color from the alchemical secondary palette into the middle: viridis. This then makes Wolfe's organizational schema look like this:

Black White Green Gold Red

Novel Sections and Their Alchemical Associations 1: "Alden Dennis Weer" 2: "Olivia" 3: "The Alchemist" 4: "Gold" 5: "President" Patient A. D. Weer Margaret Lorn Abel Green Sherry Gold Ted Singer Color Black White Green Gold Red Animal Dragon Unicorn (ML); Winged Dragon (OW) Green Lion Phoenix Pelican nourishing its young with its own blood (TS); Dragon/Ouroboros (ADW) Process Putrefaction (death) Conception (birth) Generation (growth) Quintessence (final transmutation) Death/Rebirth Sacramental Component n.a. White host Bread as Eucharist Ciborium/transubstantiated host Wine Notes n.a. Chinese "yellow devil" egg merges heaven and hell symbolism, and we will later see a union/neutralization of these same polarities in Red. Farmer Green is Julius Smart's proxy, the simplest form of alchemist, who wrests from base dirt the prima materia (potatoes) which will later be turned into gold. The process implies an end stage, death, then rebirth. And remember that daughter Doris--the phoenix reborn--is electrocuted. The pelican has a rich history associating it with Christ, mainly due to the medieval belief that it fed its young with its own blood; while another symbol of this process is the appearance of the so-called Red King in the alchemist's flask. If Ted is therefore a Christ analogue, he (or more likely his father) may be the one killed in the Coldhouse Prank, which allows for resurrection of dragon A. D. Weer--starting the entire cycle anew.

About the Author

"Cave Canem" includes a concordance and many essays. http://webpages.charter.net/rborski/index.html