Talk:The Immortal (short story)

I am currently working on improving this article. --Survivalism (talk) 01:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Where did you get the name Rufus from? Alexhard (talk) 02:43, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

In the story, the main character refers to himself as Marcus Flaminius Rufus, military tribune. Should I refer to him as Marcus Flaminius instead?--Survivalism (talk) 15:47, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

What is UP with this weird plot summary? It just kind of peters off and I don't recall Marcus Flaminius seeing *any* human being *in* the city; he just leaves and tries to forget about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.86.92.4 (talk) 22:21, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the summary here is pretty woeful. What happens is that the narrator leaves the city and finds, outside the city, the troglodyte who had followed him. After that, there are three more chapters (the troglodyte reveals himself to be Homer, we learn that the stream at the foot of the troglodyte tribe's city is the same river that gives immortal life, Rufus skims over the rest of his life, comments on the bits of Homeric text that have been woven in the text, and the postscript speculating on the authenticity of the document) that are never mentioned. The analysis seems a bit flaky to me as well. For as long as this article carries a notability tag though, I'm not going to be inclined to spend time fixing either section, since it seems there's a chance the article might be deleted or merged eventually anyways. Dindon (talk) 00:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

EA Video Game

Wasn't there a video game by EA Games that has the same title? Sierraoffline444 (talk) 06:20, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Cartaphilus as the Wandering Jew

I know the character of the Wandering Jew is pretty controversial these days (it is pretty antisemitic) but I'm pretty positive that the main immortal character Joseph Cartaphilus is implied to be the mythological Wandering Jew, or at least uses symbolism of that figure. Two of the earliest attested names for the Wandering Jew are "Joseph" and "Cartaphilus", as the page from this very wiki points out, and both are immortal figures which generally seem to resent their immortality, both of which I doubt are coincidences. Additionally said Wikipedia page actually mentions that the main character in this story is named after the Wandering Jew legend. Surely this is enough to mention the inspiration from the Wandering Jew somewhere on the page, or at least link the first instance of the name "Joseph Cartaphilus" to the page on the Wandering Jew? The story elements of immortality causing separate people and identities to blur together (rather like with mythological characters) over vast expanses of time seems to tie into this thematically, at least, even if he isn't the actual Wandering Jew of legend himself (as being a soldier under Diocletian places him a few hundred years after Christ, unless identity switching/merging trickery is at work). Zombiecrab (talk) 10:29, 20 November 2022 (UTC)