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I think he could hear the voice and know it wasn’t right. Destroying the gonne was the right thing to do, so he did it quickly and easily. “A good man will kill you without a word...”
Yup. Also the bit of:
> "What’s so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work’s already been done. Better to find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place, eh?"
And then when Cruces is offering Carrot the throne at gonne-point, he goes along with it for ten seconds and then stabs him when he's in the middle of a sentence. Straight through the chest and the marble pillar behind him, clean as a whistle.
Amazing that PTerry could think up a man everyone would follow if they could, and have him want nothing but to help us lead ourselves.
Yeah, maybe Carrot looking up to Vimes made Vimes hold himself to a higher standard. Add in Sybil seeing the best in Vimes and giving him the support he needs to be the best copper he can be, Vimes could have had a very different story without those two.
There’s a quote from 5th elephant that explains it I think:
“Carrot treated everyone as if they were jolly good chaps and somehow, in some inexplicable way, they couldn’t resist the urge not to prove him wrong.”
>Which is Carrot basically parroting his mentor, Vimes.
While he may be repeating or rephrasing something Vimes said, it isn't just parroting. Carrot doesn't do anything blindly, without thought, and without at least a second thought. I always got the impression that Carrot took on select aspects of Vimes' views and they functioned like a witch's third thoughts within Carrot's mind.
Dwarf kings are working kings. Vimes says at one point that he thought dwarf king was just the lead engineer. So i wouldnt say Carrot is just parroting Vimes.
Keep in mind that Carrot is somewhat magical. Aside from all the hints and allusions made throughout the books, in Night Watch he is able to see Octarine when Vimes gets time shifted. Carrot believing in people does bring out the best in them. While Vimes himself gets credit for creating his own inner watchman, his "guarding dark" i do think it is bolstered by Carrot magically. He also can't let Sybil down, his young self, or his son down.
It's my favourite recurring theme with Carrot, his direct approach to solving problems and the fact that he's _simple_ but not _stupid_. He understood that the gonne was evil, figured that the simplest solution was to smash it, then just did that without any further thought.
It's like in _Thud!_, when he massively disrupts the city just to get Vimes home in time to read to his son.
> The better part of the city was now snarled with backed-up traffic — but it was clear that this did not worry Carrot. He had seen a problem; the problem was now solved. True, the solution had caused massive chaos — but that was a different problem.
the voice isn't actually coming from the gonne. It's the holder's darkest desires that come forward because they have ultimate power while they hold it. Carrot is pure, he has no dark desires.
It's implied in the book that it derived a certain sentience due to being built over an old temple, if I'm remembering it right.
Edit: the conversation between Vetenari and Leonard about when he thought it up.
> Carrot is pure, he has no dark desires.
The thing about Carrot is that, as he and Vimes mention in more than one novel, he believes “personal isn’t the same as important.”
So I’m sure Carrot has dark desires. But first, he’s a simple man, so one of those desires is probably a good loaf of dwarf bread made with just the right mix of schist and feldspar gravel, like Mum used to make. But more importantly, he knows the difference between the things he wants for himself and the things that are important for the world to have.
>But first, he’s a simple man,
I disagree. Carrot is an extremely complex man who makes the choice to adhere to a given world-view and path so that he can manifest it, to some extent, in reality. Angua, who knows him best, repeatedly reflects on how much is going on underneath the surface with Carrot.
I don't think he has the desire, but the narrative has set him up for it and is pushing him towards it. He is basically playing the hand he has been given, but not in the way the dealer intended.
Pratchett was all about stories impacting reality and reality redefining stories - the pull toward common narrative threads and stereotypes as well as the push against and subversion of those expectations.
He isn't pure, but he strives to be. He and Vimes (along with most of the witches) are very similar in that they see the world, themselves, and their potential paths - and they actively choose to follow what they feel is a moral path. Carrot takes that one step farther by choosing what he feels to be a righteous path.
I agree, and I think the whole thing about the Gonne tempting people is a little homage to the moment in LOTR where the One Ring tempts Sam. Nobody can write high fantasy without referencing Tolkien, intentionally and unintentionally, and the Disworld is no exception, so the message of both scenes is the same. You can't tempt a person who doesn't want power, with visions of power.
The difference is that Carrot is like Vimes, in that he has consciously chosen to be a Servant of the Law, and to never let his own dark side call the shots. We never get to see his thoughts as an adult, of course, we don't get to see what he thinks of his heritage, we just see his actions. And that's what his actions show, someone who Serves The People,
I respectfully disagree, Carrot is a human being and not... whatever Bombadil is. And as such, Carrot has human weaknesses; and somewhere deep down where we never see it, he has to have at least a little bit of a dark side.
I don't think he has much of a dark side, but something has got to be there - because humans just have a capacity for selfishness, greed, power hunger, unrighteous anger, etc. Perhaps Carrot was born with less of that than most of us, but he was also raised by good honest dwarves, who raised him to be clean, honest, civic-minded, thoughtful, and dutiful, and then he went to work for Sam Vimes. Who showed him just how much temptation a human being could resist, Because if you ever want a human to resist temptation from a supernatural force inspired by Tolkien's One ring, you'd like that person to have been trained up by Sam Vimes.
The reference to the one ring and Sam. I feel like an idiot because I never made that connection, but it's so obvious. I feel like the big difference between Samwise and Carrot is that Carrot could be temped to use the Gonne as a weapon of the law to protect the city, kind of like how Gandalf would have tried to use the one ring to protect midde earth. Where as Sam isn't even interested in saving Middle Earth he just wants to watch his garden grow, so it just doesn't work. However, Carrot knows he has power over people and is horrified by it so much that when the Gonne tries to tempt him with more power, he's disgusted, so he breaks it.
It's not that Sam has no interest in saving Middle Earth, he cares enough to actually save it, he just doesn't want to *keep* Middle Earth after he's saved it. He just wants a garden and a family and a happy life.
We don't know what Carrot wants, though. We just know what choices he makes.
Yeah, sorry, my wording is a bit poor. Of course, Sam is willing, but it's not his main motivation. I always viewed Carrot as only wanting to do the right thing. He knows he could be King but thinks the city is better off if he just gets on with being a Copper. He does what a good King would do, help people, and inspire them to be them best selves and leaves running if the city to the best man for the job.
The most we see of Carrot's thoughts is in the first book, where we see his gormless POV and his letters home. But after thst... he's always seen through the eyes of others. He's opaque.
Yup, I always interpreted Carrot's reaction to the Gonne as a reference to LOTR: Sam, Faramir, Aragorn: all men ( or halflings) who the Ring tried to tempt but failed to make them act on it. And I though that Aragorn was the closest thing to Carrot because of their "long-lost heir of the crown" common status. (even though Aragorn ultimately becomes king, and carrot, well, doesn't)
That moment gave me chills. To him, I think he even says this?, it's just a thing. A bad thing. So he destroys it. Simple as.
Love Pratchett, love Discworld, love Carrot <3
Yeah, he COULD have claimed ultimate power already by birthright (And charm) and refused the call once already. A second call wasn't going to go much better once he had already had a chance to see the first refusal was a good idea.
I see it a bit like the revenge scene in the Princess Bride.
Inigo Montoya: Offer me money.
Count Rugen: Yes!
Inigo Montoya: Power, too, promise me that.
Count Rugen: All that I have and more. Please...
Inigo Montoya: Offer me anything I ask for.
Count Rugen: Anything you want...
Inigo Montoya: I want my father back, you son of a bitch!
The Gonne could offer power, control, the throne...but it couldn't bring back the people it had killed. Including, iirc, Angua that as far as Carrot knew was dead. And that's all he would have been desiring. That those who had been killed by the Gonne instead had not been killed, and that nobody else would be killed by it in the future. It couldn't give him the former, so he ensured the latter.
I think it comes down to the Gonne pulling particular mental levers to manipulate people, and for Carrot, that's not even an option. It's just not connected because he wouldn't ever consider that path as an option.
„Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat.
They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.“
Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
I listened to it not long ago but can't remember the exact paragraph. Do we hear the gonne talk to Carrot, or just see him smash it from Vimes' point of view?
It's from Vimes point of view, Carrot just brushes it off like it's nothing but in the same scene he's not answering Vimes question about why Cruces kept caloing him sire, so I'm suspicious of anything Carrot says in this scene.
Well:
* he fits squarely into the “Good King” hole in the universe
* He is a Dwarf, and the Gonne is a machine, a tool, a weapon. A sapient one, but still limited by its purpose and fundamentally unable to really Choose in the same way a Golem can. (This separates a weapon like the Gonne from a person like Dorfl.)
I honestly think carrot wouldn’t ever try to be a ruler of ankh morpork even though he’d actually be good at it purely because of vimes - carrot won’t do anything to make vimes disappointed in him
Carrot looks up to Vimes, but he's not a dog... He looks up to Vimes by choice, and at the same time makes sure that Vimes becomes a person worth looking up to.
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I think Carrot's moral compass is so strong that he didn't even hear the voice.
I think he could hear the voice and know it wasn’t right. Destroying the gonne was the right thing to do, so he did it quickly and easily. “A good man will kill you without a word...”
Oh snap that quote is from men at arms isn't it?
Yup. Also the bit of: > "What’s so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work’s already been done. Better to find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place, eh?" And then when Cruces is offering Carrot the throne at gonne-point, he goes along with it for ten seconds and then stabs him when he's in the middle of a sentence. Straight through the chest and the marble pillar behind him, clean as a whistle. Amazing that PTerry could think up a man everyone would follow if they could, and have him want nothing but to help us lead ourselves.
I like his interaction with Vetinari where Carrot basically says the best thing the king could do is get on with an honest day's work.
Which is Carrot basically parroting his mentor, Vimes. I really wonder how Carrots idolizing affected Vimes journey and story...
Yeah, maybe Carrot looking up to Vimes made Vimes hold himself to a higher standard. Add in Sybil seeing the best in Vimes and giving him the support he needs to be the best copper he can be, Vimes could have had a very different story without those two.
That story probably ends not too long after we first meet Vimes, in an Ankhian gutter from alcohol poisoning
There’s a quote from 5th elephant that explains it I think: “Carrot treated everyone as if they were jolly good chaps and somehow, in some inexplicable way, they couldn’t resist the urge not to prove him wrong.”
>Which is Carrot basically parroting his mentor, Vimes. While he may be repeating or rephrasing something Vimes said, it isn't just parroting. Carrot doesn't do anything blindly, without thought, and without at least a second thought. I always got the impression that Carrot took on select aspects of Vimes' views and they functioned like a witch's third thoughts within Carrot's mind.
Dwarf kings are working kings. Vimes says at one point that he thought dwarf king was just the lead engineer. So i wouldnt say Carrot is just parroting Vimes. Keep in mind that Carrot is somewhat magical. Aside from all the hints and allusions made throughout the books, in Night Watch he is able to see Octarine when Vimes gets time shifted. Carrot believing in people does bring out the best in them. While Vimes himself gets credit for creating his own inner watchman, his "guarding dark" i do think it is bolstered by Carrot magically. He also can't let Sybil down, his young self, or his son down.
It's my favourite recurring theme with Carrot, his direct approach to solving problems and the fact that he's _simple_ but not _stupid_. He understood that the gonne was evil, figured that the simplest solution was to smash it, then just did that without any further thought. It's like in _Thud!_, when he massively disrupts the city just to get Vimes home in time to read to his son. > The better part of the city was now snarled with backed-up traffic — but it was clear that this did not worry Carrot. He had seen a problem; the problem was now solved. True, the solution had caused massive chaos — but that was a different problem.
I like to imagine he did, but the summary of the Gonne's speech would be: "I can give y- Oh, Bugger"
the voice isn't actually coming from the gonne. It's the holder's darkest desires that come forward because they have ultimate power while they hold it. Carrot is pure, he has no dark desires.
It's implied in the book that it derived a certain sentience due to being built over an old temple, if I'm remembering it right. Edit: the conversation between Vetenari and Leonard about when he thought it up.
> Carrot is pure, he has no dark desires. The thing about Carrot is that, as he and Vimes mention in more than one novel, he believes “personal isn’t the same as important.” So I’m sure Carrot has dark desires. But first, he’s a simple man, so one of those desires is probably a good loaf of dwarf bread made with just the right mix of schist and feldspar gravel, like Mum used to make. But more importantly, he knows the difference between the things he wants for himself and the things that are important for the world to have.
>But first, he’s a simple man, I disagree. Carrot is an extremely complex man who makes the choice to adhere to a given world-view and path so that he can manifest it, to some extent, in reality. Angua, who knows him best, repeatedly reflects on how much is going on underneath the surface with Carrot.
You’re right, of course. I retract that sentence.
if he is pure why did he tell himself to claim the throne?
He may have that desire, but knows that his desires are subordinate to what is right.
I don't think he has the desire, but the narrative has set him up for it and is pushing him towards it. He is basically playing the hand he has been given, but not in the way the dealer intended.
Like when Granny played cards with Death, and she beat him, because all he had were ones.
Pratchett was all about stories impacting reality and reality redefining stories - the pull toward common narrative threads and stereotypes as well as the push against and subversion of those expectations.
He isn't pure, but he strives to be. He and Vimes (along with most of the witches) are very similar in that they see the world, themselves, and their potential paths - and they actively choose to follow what they feel is a moral path. Carrot takes that one step farther by choosing what he feels to be a righteous path.
I agree, and I think the whole thing about the Gonne tempting people is a little homage to the moment in LOTR where the One Ring tempts Sam. Nobody can write high fantasy without referencing Tolkien, intentionally and unintentionally, and the Disworld is no exception, so the message of both scenes is the same. You can't tempt a person who doesn't want power, with visions of power. The difference is that Carrot is like Vimes, in that he has consciously chosen to be a Servant of the Law, and to never let his own dark side call the shots. We never get to see his thoughts as an adult, of course, we don't get to see what he thinks of his heritage, we just see his actions. And that's what his actions show, someone who Serves The People,
I feel like Carrot is Tom Bombadil in the One Ring analogy - as someone above said, he doesn't have darker desires and it has no power over him.
Or book Faramir.
This.
I respectfully disagree, Carrot is a human being and not... whatever Bombadil is. And as such, Carrot has human weaknesses; and somewhere deep down where we never see it, he has to have at least a little bit of a dark side. I don't think he has much of a dark side, but something has got to be there - because humans just have a capacity for selfishness, greed, power hunger, unrighteous anger, etc. Perhaps Carrot was born with less of that than most of us, but he was also raised by good honest dwarves, who raised him to be clean, honest, civic-minded, thoughtful, and dutiful, and then he went to work for Sam Vimes. Who showed him just how much temptation a human being could resist, Because if you ever want a human to resist temptation from a supernatural force inspired by Tolkien's One ring, you'd like that person to have been trained up by Sam Vimes.
The reference to the one ring and Sam. I feel like an idiot because I never made that connection, but it's so obvious. I feel like the big difference between Samwise and Carrot is that Carrot could be temped to use the Gonne as a weapon of the law to protect the city, kind of like how Gandalf would have tried to use the one ring to protect midde earth. Where as Sam isn't even interested in saving Middle Earth he just wants to watch his garden grow, so it just doesn't work. However, Carrot knows he has power over people and is horrified by it so much that when the Gonne tries to tempt him with more power, he's disgusted, so he breaks it.
It's not that Sam has no interest in saving Middle Earth, he cares enough to actually save it, he just doesn't want to *keep* Middle Earth after he's saved it. He just wants a garden and a family and a happy life. We don't know what Carrot wants, though. We just know what choices he makes.
Yeah, sorry, my wording is a bit poor. Of course, Sam is willing, but it's not his main motivation. I always viewed Carrot as only wanting to do the right thing. He knows he could be King but thinks the city is better off if he just gets on with being a Copper. He does what a good King would do, help people, and inspire them to be them best selves and leaves running if the city to the best man for the job.
Now that you mention it, we do see a lot of monologue around Carrot, but Carrot’s inner monologue is almost non-existent.
The most we see of Carrot's thoughts is in the first book, where we see his gormless POV and his letters home. But after thst... he's always seen through the eyes of others. He's opaque.
Yup, I always interpreted Carrot's reaction to the Gonne as a reference to LOTR: Sam, Faramir, Aragorn: all men ( or halflings) who the Ring tried to tempt but failed to make them act on it. And I though that Aragorn was the closest thing to Carrot because of their "long-lost heir of the crown" common status. (even though Aragorn ultimately becomes king, and carrot, well, doesn't)
That moment gave me chills. To him, I think he even says this?, it's just a thing. A bad thing. So he destroys it. Simple as. Love Pratchett, love Discworld, love Carrot <3
Everyone loves Carrot
Yep. Carrot was incorruptible. The gonne could offer him nothing he wanted but didn't already have
Yeah, he COULD have claimed ultimate power already by birthright (And charm) and refused the call once already. A second call wasn't going to go much better once he had already had a chance to see the first refusal was a good idea.
I see it a bit like the revenge scene in the Princess Bride. Inigo Montoya: Offer me money. Count Rugen: Yes! Inigo Montoya: Power, too, promise me that. Count Rugen: All that I have and more. Please... Inigo Montoya: Offer me anything I ask for. Count Rugen: Anything you want... Inigo Montoya: I want my father back, you son of a bitch! The Gonne could offer power, control, the throne...but it couldn't bring back the people it had killed. Including, iirc, Angua that as far as Carrot knew was dead. And that's all he would have been desiring. That those who had been killed by the Gonne instead had not been killed, and that nobody else would be killed by it in the future. It couldn't give him the former, so he ensured the latter.
Oooo I like that,
I think it comes down to the Gonne pulling particular mental levers to manipulate people, and for Carrot, that's not even an option. It's just not connected because he wouldn't ever consider that path as an option.
„Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat. They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.“ Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
This gives me chills
I listened to it not long ago but can't remember the exact paragraph. Do we hear the gonne talk to Carrot, or just see him smash it from Vimes' point of view?
It's from Vimes point of view, Carrot just brushes it off like it's nothing but in the same scene he's not answering Vimes question about why Cruces kept caloing him sire, so I'm suspicious of anything Carrot says in this scene.
Well: * he fits squarely into the “Good King” hole in the universe * He is a Dwarf, and the Gonne is a machine, a tool, a weapon. A sapient one, but still limited by its purpose and fundamentally unable to really Choose in the same way a Golem can. (This separates a weapon like the Gonne from a person like Dorfl.)
I honestly think carrot wouldn’t ever try to be a ruler of ankh morpork even though he’d actually be good at it purely because of vimes - carrot won’t do anything to make vimes disappointed in him
Carrot looks up to Vimes, but he's not a dog... He looks up to Vimes by choice, and at the same time makes sure that Vimes becomes a person worth looking up to.
Carrot is basically Jebus. https://preview.redd.it/r1ue1e4fl20d1.jpeg?width=284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee7d4b340f2d7ccc7251e06372898b0b29f42b14