Plot Summary
One day in the royal palace, Handrake the Archmage accidentally creates a "Chimaera" out of rubbish and scraps. While the experiment started out as a joke, the Chimaera turns out to be both very powerful and highly intelligent, and claims that it is the most perfect being. The Chimaera threatens Handrake and his apprentice Soloture to create its mate, so the Chimaera may reproduce and fill the world with beings as perfect as the Chimaera. The request leads into a question of whether it is a male or a female, and Handrake and Soloture start arguing whether it is a male or a female. Princess Herthruyen, who accidentally drops by the magicians' lab, comments that Chimaera would be a male because only males are arrogant enough to expect their offspring to be just like them.
Finally, being convinced that he's a male and thinking that he was created to destroy the world of females and build a new world filled only with males, the Chimaera asks the mages to wage the war against females. When Handrake and Soloture refuse, the Chimaera tries to kill them. At that moment, Princess Herthruyne shows up again and comments to Chimaera that the Chimaera evidently is a female. When it hears this, the Chimaera kills itself by disintegrating. The princess comments to two mages that "what else could it be, a thing that wants to rule everything around himself, a thing believing there is some ultimate purpose for his being, a thing that would rather kill itself than be called as a female, than a man?"
Read more about this topic: Chimera (short Story)
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)