Melmoth trains the flock to resist fear and being driven

Melmoth trains the flock to resist fear and being driven by replacing passive escape with attention and self-command. Faced with Gabriel’s threat, the sheep learn to watch closely, direct themselves, and hold their ground; the training is demanding and imperfect, but it changes how they understand both danger and their own capacity to respond.

Danger and the Turn from Escape

The training grows out of an immediate crisis. After George Glenn’s death, the flock is left without its shepherd, and Melmoth’s return reunites him with Othello. Othello tells him what Zora has discovered about Gabriel and proposes that Melmoth lead the flock to safety. Melmoth considers the number of sheep gathered before him and refuses the plan: a large group cannot simply be taken away. He judges escape from Gabriel, or from death itself, not worth the effort. Instead, the sheep must learn how to make Gabriel afraid and how to drive him away.

The threat is not abstract. Gabriel is caring for sheep whose fate is slaughter, and he has begun cutting grass with George Glenn’s scythe. The flock watches the blade pass through the meadow, leaving flattened grass behind, and sees a human grazing without wanting the grass. To the sheep, the work looks like senseless destruction. This scene gives force to Melmoth’s insistence that they must prepare themselves rather than wait for an outside protector. Earlier, their shepherd’s body had been found in the grass beside the hay barn, while the flock held its meeting near the cliff; now, with Gabriel acting in the pasture, the question is how the sheep can act for themselves.

Attention as a Discipline

Melmoth begins by challenging the flock’s account of its enemies. The sheep name the butcher, Gabriel, the master hunter, and the wolf; Zora identifies the abyss. Melmoth redirects the answer inward, telling them that their own complacency, fear, and thoughtlessness make them their worst enemy. His lesson is not that external dangers are imaginary, but that helplessness makes those dangers harder to meet.

He introduces disbelief as the beginning of understanding: the sheep should not accept what they do not understand, and should seek to understand what they believe. Othello helps demonstrate the distinction. At first he grazes as an ordinary sheep might, apparently absorbed in finding grass. At Melmoth’s signal, he changes his manner: he becomes tense and alert, sensing what is around him while he grazes. The lesson is that attention lets a sheep see without being seen. Melmoth argues that Othello’s survival depends on that difference, and that the flock must take responsibility for maintaining its own attention rather than expecting anyone else to do it for them.

This lesson also changes the meaning of grazing. It can be an unthinking routine, or an activity carried out with all the senses alert to the surroundings. When Miss Maple objects that there is no difference, Melmoth first falters, then grants that she is right to challenge him, before explaining why the distinction matters. Attention, he says, can help the sheep follow human intentions despite human noise and deception. It is presented not as a gift bestowed by a shepherd, but as a skill the sheep can practise and use.

Exercises in the Open

Melmoth makes the flock practise rather than merely listen. He sends them along the cliff tops, where they must attend to each step, and later sets them the task of stealing Gabriel’s wet shepherd’s hat from the steps of George’s shepherd’s caravan. Gabriel has left it there while seeking shelter from a cloudburst. The sheep learn faster than they understand: sustained observation leaves them little time to dwell on fear.

The training has comic as well as painful failures. During one mock attack, Mopple the Whale concentrates so intensely that he forgets to move aside and is knocked down. Heather, absorbed in watching while she grazes, chokes after swallowing the wrong way. These mishaps show that attention is not an effortless transformation. The flock is practising a new use of its bodies and senses, and concentration can itself become clumsy before it becomes effective.

Melmoth also gives individual exercises suited to different fears. Sara, Cloud, and Maude are assigned to stand beneath the crows’ tree and listen to the birds’ night thoughts. Rameses, Lane, and Cordelia must listen at a hole beneath a pine tree to the sea below the cliffs. Zora is to look at the sky while imagining it as an abyss, and Heather is to remain alone in the hay barn and attend to the scent of silence. The exercises make the flock approach feared places and sensations deliberately, rather than being surprised and scattered by them.

Learning Not to Be Driven

Melmoth’s most direct lesson concerns herding. Lane objects that being driven simply happens, as though running away were built into the sheep’s legs. Melmoth answers that it happens because the sheep allow it: they cannot effectively direct others while they cannot direct themselves. His instruction is to forget, for the exercise, both the flock and the dogs, and to herd themselves.

The flock practises until twilight. Melmoth takes the role of a sheepdog, galloping around them with frantic bleats, mock attacks, feints, and sudden withdrawals. The sheep’s task is not to run but to stand still. Some still flee instinctively; others manage to hold their ground. By the end they are exhausted, but the exercise has given them a concrete alternative to automatic flight. Resistance begins with the ability to choose not to move when another creature tries to make them move.

Fear, Perception, and the Limits of the Lesson

Melmoth treats fear as something the sheep must face outside themselves. He acknowledges Gabriel, the butcher, and the world of meat-eaters as real threats, then assigns the flock exercises to drive fear away by using attention. Maple, Othello, and Mopple are sent into the village to watch the butcher until they are no longer afraid of him. Through a rain-streaked window, they see the butcher sitting at a table with God, with a bottle and two glasses between them. The assignment turns an imposing danger into an object of close observation: the sheep must look, remain present, and learn from what they see.

The training does not establish that fear disappears or that the flock becomes invulnerable. Mopple’s collision and Heather’s choking make its risks plain, while the exercise at the cliff edge and the confrontation with the butcher keep the stakes tangible. Its change is instead practical and communal: Melmoth refuses to cast the sheep as passengers waiting to be rescued, and teaches them to observe, regulate their movement, and act together without simply obeying the pressure to scatter. The pasture remains dangerous, but the flock is no longer asked only to endure danger; it is being taught how to meet it.