foolishness and folly

For now, however, the world exhibits a certain stability. The first disturbance to the stasis does not seem threatening; it is a phony crisis of little consequence. But in fact it exposes the seeds of danger. It reveals a society easily destabilized. It shows that beneath the jovial and trivial surface resides some dangerously tender egos. It introduces men whose need for honor can make them provoke the king into setting in motion the inexorable machinery of the empire. It shows us people who try to impose their will on others and who identify strength with rigidity, who fear that flexibility proves weakness and who regard obduracy as the essence of the law. Rigidity of this sort will place severe barriers before the book's heroes, who will be forced to work around them in a way that Vashti could not and would not.

-Michael V. Fox