I. Overview:  Field of Blood
When news of what happens to Quilla reaches Huaracha, king of the Chancas, “…a kind of madness took hold of him.  ‘Now let war come; I will not rest or stay,’ he cried” (211).  It is as though this news pushes him over the edge and he is ready to go to war that very instant.  He also learns of Kari’s true identity as the rightful heir to the Incan throne, and that there are a number of loyal soldiers who are willing to help on the side of the Chancas in the war to come.  Huaracha and Kari make a deal of sorts, where in turn for helping Kari to overthrow Urco, Kari promises that when he is Inca, The Chanca people will have their independence.  Though he makes no promises in regards to returning Quilla, because it would bring curses on his nation to remove a virgin of the Sun, Huaracha agrees to this deal and they proceed to battle.  Word has spread in the city of Cuzco that Kari lives and would seek revenge on Urco his brother, and the Incan armies are prepared waiting in camps in the valley where lies the city of Cuzco.  The battle begins.   The Chancas are less in number; however, because of Hubert’s superb training they “…stood like rocks and slew and slew and slew till the dead could be counted by the thousand” (218).  Then at a point when fate seems as though I may change, Kari hold up a banner with the symbol of a great sun on it.  At the sight of this, thousands of Incan soldiers stop fighting for Urco and begin fighting on the side of the Chancas.  This bloody battle continues leaving thousands dead and generals of either side seriously wounded.  Hubert is carried away into the city of Cuzco as a “prisoner”, yet the Incan people treat him as a god.  After he rests, he meets with the Inca Upanqui.  The Inca requests that he bring his servant, thought to be Kari, to him so that he may know if his firstborn son truly lives or not.  Hubert asks for Quilla’s release in return, something that even the Inca says he cannot offer.  They agree to finish this conversation later.

Analysis: The Comic Vision
  In The Virgin of the Sun, Haggard follows Frye’s general plan of Twenty Questions or the Great Chain of Being.  According to this plan, chapter 14, The Field of Blood, has the central pattern of comic vision.  In the human world Hubert, as Frye says the hero should, “…represents the wish-fulfillment of the reader” (650).  Through him the reader is able to have a noble character (represented by the way he helps Kari in London), fall in love and have love returned to him (through Blanche and Quilla), and even embark on a great adventurous journey across the world.  According to Frye, the comic vision is also represented in the unformed world.  “In the comic vision the unformed world is a river” (651).  Haggard sets the city of Cuzco, “…standing in a valley through which a river ran” (213).  The last representation of the comic vision in this chapter is found in the mineral world.  Frye states that this can be though, “a glowing precious stone” such as gold or silver (651).  In Haggard’s The Virgin of the Sun, Hubert describes such “precious materials”.  “I noted a marvelous thing, namely:  that all the plants therein were fashioned of solid gold with silver flowers, or sometimes of silver with golden flowers.  Also there were trees on which were perched birds of gold and silver” (222).

Question 1:  Is Hubert’s sword, Wave-Flame a symbol of comic or tragic vision? Explain.

Question 2:  Do the images used in a drama determine what type of genre it is?  Explain.