).
In this sense, the old major speaks for everyone who has placed faith in a political
solution, only to find themselves at the wrong end of some boatload or other
of new improved rifle barrels.The melodramatic, hyperbolic, poetic tying up of loose ends in Mitchell's story reaches its ludicrous climax in this image, with the old major reiterating his monomaniacal cry (somehow preserved for Mitchell through the sound of the bombardment), and falling, one pictures, onto a neatly arranged pile of corpses.
Beneath the cry of "traitor," however, are shades of a darker meaning,
relating to the metaphor wherein Sotillo's search for the silver stands for
the essense of all politics (see my note ).
In this sense, the old major speaks for everyone who has placed faith in a political
solution, only to find themselves at the wrong end of some boatload or other
of new improved rifle barrels.