Use of Weapons

Using my knowledge from repeated re-readings of this book, I think I've worked out my favourite scenes to use. This will probably seem like gibberish to anyone who hasn't read it, so I'll put a brief piece of text from the novel up to explain a bit more (plus my own explanations)

Zakalwe being saved by the Culture
Zakalwe arriving on the GSV (Very big spaceship)
The battle of the Staberinde
The big twist ending

My first idea is of the scene where the story's protagonist Zakalwe is saved from freezing to death by an agent from a super advanced civilization known as the Culture. The Culture is a peaceful, utopian civilisation that directly opposes war and cruelty in all forms and from all other civilisations. It uses it's incredible powers and technology to interfere with lower civilisations, with the idea of preserving life. The Culture obviously produces poor warriors to help with this cause, so they hire mercenaries doomed to die in lower civilisations to use in their plans. The agent sent to recruit Zakalwe is a kind agent, even by culture standards, who believes she is saving a simple soldier betrayed by his own side. The computerised 'Minds' of the Culture, who make these plans and discover these mercenaries, know far more than her about him. Zakalwe is a tortured soul, a man who was never truly accepted within his family who has commited many horrific war crimes in the past and who will never let himself forget this (To him, forgetting would equal forgiveness) The agent, called Sma or Diziet, is not saving him from death - she is offering him the chance to continue killing and being tortured by his own memories. At the moment he was saved, Zakalwe was fully accepting of his death - even feeling that he deserved it.

My idea is mainly showing a representation of Sma (or Diziet) half as an angel of life, half as death herself - or maybe more like "She, life in death" from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner - She drags behind her evidence of Zakalwe's crimes, which he will have to continue to carry for his long life. Behind her, the battleship he commanded to destroy his own home city (The Staberinde) silhouettes against her, an inescapable fact of his past. Sma is displayed nude to display her naivete regarding Zakalwe, who she becomes a close friend with throughout the novel (but not a lover)

And thats my first idea! More tomorrow probably!