The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana XI -- chapter 10: TIME'S TEMPLE, IMMURED

"Ugolino' by Carpeaux

According to Brer Rabbit, everyone needs a laughing place, which, as far as I'm concerned, is really about as crucial to life and existence as water and food and air and whatever else.  Everyone--more especially, or at visibly, kids, but all adults have them as well, just with more variation in form and location--needs a brier patch, a hiding place, a closet or tree-house or attic or, in this case, a wall-up former-chapel now forgotten where treasures can be stored, secret prayers offered, dark rites performed, etcetera; but how many have such a fantastical treasure house--Cave of Wonders--as does Yambo?  Having such a place is as cliche' a fantasy as immurement is a terror, and here in chapter ten, both coexist and balance, almost symbiotically.  I've hopefully check every attic of every house I've lived in, hoping for that escapist's window to the past, and felt the vicarious thrill of reading about it in books or watching it in movies (Harry Potter's Room of Requirement, the attic here, The Bridge to Terabithia, and even corny movies like The Lake House).  This is why I hope someday to build a house with a private library at the top of a tower accessible exclusively by an iron spiral staircase.  This is why I have family members who love old rundown barns or houses.  This is why I keep a flashlight in the car.  I think I speak for everyone: we all want to discover and possess a secret place grander or more romantic than our current, likely inadequate, laughing place.

1. Based on Paola's psychologist's explanation, are Yambo's fears and insecurities regarding his past valid?  Along the same lines, cross-textually, who was/is more affected by the Alice books, Alice Liddell or Lewis Carroll/children or adults?  Is Paula over-simplifying?
2. "This one knows you always bring him chewing gum.  That's all."
3. How is it appropriate that the doorway is walled up and was also once the entrance to the chapel?
4. "...and I often hid there and did God knows what."  (Haha!  Get it!?)
5. This is a circumstantial connection of course, as immurement is among the most primal of fears (and Poe's bread and butter, no less), but this reminds me, at least on the outset, of Count Ugolino from L'Inferno, not to mention all those Poe stories.
6. "At that moment a thunderstorm was gathering."  In just the last chapter, Yambo (if not Eco, but here I think indistinguishable), criticizes Romance-period writers for their manipulation of the elements to echo a book's plot and circumstances.  Isn't that what he's doing right here?