Subject: (urth) Sev as anti-hero

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 00:08:26 +0000

On 4-4-99 Alex David Groce wrote:

<snip>
>>However, I don't think he means us to reject these figures--rather, to
see ourselves in them, with veins of dark and light.  A picture of a (to sue
the religious terms that are relevant) sinful but redeemable man.  And I
think
it's clear that there IS moral growth in Severian throughout the BOTNS.  The
final talk with Palaemon, in my opinion, establishes that for the pre-Urth
Severian, at least.<<

    Oh, I agree he makes moral progress. I said much the same thing in an
off-list e-mail to someone here. But I still do not like Sev and have
trouble seeing him as Everyman--even a dark Everyman. Silk, Weer, and the
other figures you mention are much more sympathetic figures, whatever their
flaws, because they come closer to Everyman than Sev. They do not wield the
powers, temporal or supernatural, that Sev does. They do not have his
capacity for doing harm. mantis used the term "anti-hero" and I have to
agree with it. I could never identify with Sev, as I could with Weer or
Green or Silk or Free's boarders.

Roy

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 10:28:19 +0000

> Green or Silk or Free's boarders.

	I won't argue that Severian is easy to identify with; as to Silk, I
would place him in another category of Wolfe's protagonists.  Green is
somewhere in the middle--not as dark as Severian (or even Weer), but not an
almost saintly (and likable--which is hard to portray) fellow like Silk.  I'm
just not sure anti-hero is the right term for Severian.  It seems to me that in
the end he stumbles to glory, at any rate, and that's not just an accident--the
Hierodules choose him because he does, in the end, get the job done.  Of
course, this depends on your interpretation of the last pages of Urth.
-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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From: Kevin J. Maroney <kmaroney at crossover.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 19:36:54 +0000

At 12:08 AM 4/6/99 -0500, Roy wrote:
>But I still do not like Sev and have

Considering the trail of dead bodies Weer leaves behind him, I'm not sure
that I *want* to identify with Weer. Wolfe's protagonists are not admirable
or likable people, for the most part (the "Free" quartet being a very
pleasant exception). 

Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney at crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html

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From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 21:09:17 +0000

On Apr 12,  7:36pm, Kevin J. Maroney wrote:
> Subject: Re: (urth) Sev as anti-hero

	Well, some of us aren't convinced that Weer is reponsible for anyone's
death other than (A) the boy on the stairs, and that's not exactly murder and
(B) maybe (there is someting sinister about it at any rate) the frozen-freezer
guy.  I think the "Weer as mass murder" hypothesis is most likely nonsense.
-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce