9/23/08 Book Post

"One of the Patrician's greatest contributions to the reliable operation of Ankh-Morpork had been, very early in his administration, the legalizing of the ancient Guild of Thieves. Crime was always with us, he reasoned, and therefore if you were going to have crime, it at least should be organized crime." (Guards! pg 44)

I believe that this passage is important to both the development of theme and characterization, although more so to theme than characterization. So, I'll start with characterization. It firstly introduces a new character, the Patrician, who is the leader of the city of Ankh-Morpork. He apparently performed some sort of great act that brought him to power, but what it was has not yet been divulged. It shows that he likes to keep things organized by nature, as evidenced by his organizing one of the least organizable things on the planet, crime.
This also leads into the development of the theme of the story, which I believe at this point to be the changing of ideas and traditions held for decades, centuries, or even millenia. The leader of this city has taken one of the oldest surviving guilds, the Guild of Thieves, and has basically turned it into just another arm of the government. This is also a bit ironic because it has always been the job of the government and its associates to stop crime, but they are now keeping it organized and rationalizing it's existence.

Questions:
1) What did the Patrician do to gain control over Ankh-Morpork?
2) How exactly did the Patrician manage to gain control over crime and organize it?