the Loach saga: the joshing frame that preaches
not that much unlike Alyosha and Ivan’s conversations in the good old Brothers K., though probably not nearly as erudite and literary, and nothing from the older brother even approaching the carcinogenic acerbity of Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor scenario.
Context
The saga's own register: a communal "we"-narrator (the E.T.A. locker room's collective voice) that keeps the fable at affectionate, joshing distance even while it's delivering an unironic sermon on human goodness. The tale is told "In outline form," self-deprecating about its own reach ("Who, finally, can say the whys and whences of each man's true vocation?"), and here waves at Dostoevsky only to undercut the comparison — "the good old Brothers K.," "probably not nearly as erudite." The frame is doing exactly what the anthology says the culture demands: it can only preach the earnest moral (touch each other, believe in indwelling goodness) if it keeps rolling its eyes at itself as it does so. The joshing isn't insincerity; it's the permission-structure that lets a room full of adolescents tell a straight-faced parable about compassion without dying of embarrassment. Real stuff gets said, but only if everybody gets to smirk while it's said.