Nature of The Stories
The two D.C.O. Cargunka stories, written late in Hodgson's brief writing career, represent some of his best and most sophisticated work. They are lively, fast-paced, and filled with dialogue (written in dialect), and make effective use of significant detail. Unlike the Captain Jat stories, which are quite dark, the D.C.O. Cargunka stories are gently humorous. While Captain Gault often makes others the butt of his jokes, he himself doesn't display very many of the character flaws that help to humanize a fictional character. By contrast, Cargunka is himself the butt of several running gags about his obsessions with his personal appearance, poetry, and potatoes. It can't be known, of course, whether Hodgson might one day have written more stories featuring Cargunka. But by taking the most interesting aspects of his earlier recurring character stories and improving on them, while discarding aspects that didn't work well, Hodgson created a character that both succeeded in the two completed stories and had great potential for future work.
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