Lord John Grey makes it to Rose Hall in A Plague of Zombies Section 11. What does he think of Mrs. Abernathy?
It doesn’t take John long to make a judgement on a person. What I do like, though, is that he can also admit when his judgment comes from personal feelings to others, like with Claire. However, he’s spot on with his judgment of Mrs. Abernathy. There is something off about her.
Breaking down A Plague of Zombies Section 11
Lord John Grey gets to Rose Hall, and he is immediately put off by the widow Mrs. Abernathy. She’s supposed to be in mourning, and yet, she isn’t wearing any mourning clothes. That immediately strikes John as odd.
He notices a few things about her, one of those being a rash on her skin. He is able to tell that this is syphilis, which actually helps to explain a lot about Geillis in Voyager. I do remember Claire believing that Geillis had advanced syphilis in the books and she wants to make sure Young Ian gets treatment in case he caught it.
Geillis is more than happy to explain everything about zombies to John. He now decides that it wasn’t a zombie that attacked him in his room. That allows him to focus on an investigation, as it’s clear there is someone out there after the governor.
She then moves on to a discussion of snakes, which has already come up in the book. Geillis wants to know if he’s dreamed of snakes, and she tells him that she’s seen a snake on his shoulder. It’s interesting considering he likes to protect snakes. While to some they are a bad omen, John isn’t too weirded out by snakes. He may be now, though!
Could this chapter be used in a TV series adaptation?
We would definitely need to see this chapter used if there was an adaptation of A Plague of Zombies. We need to see all the lines of inquiry for John, and we need to see him meet Geillis. After all, there is so much in this as we know her as Geillis Duncan. We can all understand why John doesn’t like her immediately.
The chapter also puts snakes back on the mind. They do come up again later in the book, so seeing them mentioned here would be important.
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