Plentimaws and Floating Gardeners

   When reading about the Plentimaws tangling up the stories in the Ocean of Story Streams and their relationship to the floating gardener, Mali, I was reminded of society as a whole creating wastes, and the recycling system organizing that waste.  I don't, however, think that the word waste is appropriate for this analogy, because, the stories that are in the Ocean of Story Streams are not waste.  The stories do, however, get used by the creatures of Gup in ways that they need them, in order to understand their world, and to communicate with others.  Then when the stories become used and are not useful to the citizens of Gup anymore they are digested by the Plentimaws and turned into new stories.  This is just how we get rid of things that are no longer useful to us, and send them to the recycling plant.  The recycling system sorts the garbage and decides how to use it, as Mali, the floating gardener, untangles the stories and decides how to organize them.  The Plentimaws are like the general population, while Mali is like the recycling system used to organize the mess that society makes.