#this is long and written on my phone so sorry for cruddy quality

[peresephoknee]

was thinking out loud in the car about this earlier

so: in hms surprise, Stephen expresses his weariness of Jack always assuming that Stephen can cure anything, including the case of scurvy ripping through his ship:

“He had often tried to eradicate Jack’s simple faith; but Jack had seen him trepan the gunner of the Sophie, saw a hole in his skull and expose the brain; and Stephen, looking at Jack’s knowing smile, his air of civil reserve, knew he had not succeeded this time, either.” (p.112)

blah blah the burden of being a very competent doctor on a ship of malnourished and mistreated people. but there’s also this moment from a chapter later, but this time it’s reversed:

“Stephen’s confidence in Captain Aubrey’s seamanship was as entire, as blind, as Jack’s in the medical omniscience of Dr Maturin;” (p.177)

that latter quote follows a passage of Jack working very hard to triangulate their position so that they’ll arrive in Malabar Hill the next day and they do.

their belief in each other is so utter and complete and that they both kind of fear the possibility of being exposed as fraudulent (I guess the contemporary phrase is imposter syndrome but it’s distinct from that.) they both fear that they will let the other one down. A lot of HMS Surprise is about this tension between the fallible human being that you are vs the god-like solidity that others see you as. see Jack being described as god-like by his crew and Stephen’s medical victories becoming a kind of folklore among the crew. Stephen’s recovery after torture follows this tension too. I can only hope the same courtesy will be extended to Diana when I meet up with her again, considering that Stephen is singing his thoughts about her to the tune of Aperges Me lmao.