Subject: (urth) 5HC

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 02:44:45 +0000

One thing that has always struck me about 5HC is this: I think one of
Wolfe's central ideas in the work is that a man is more than the sum
of his genes and his environment, more than merely nurture or nature.
Most writers, I think, would make this point by showing a clone raised
like the others before him and breaking free of the strangling
pattern, finding a way to set the ship in motion again.  Wolfe,
somehow, I think, manages to do it in an utterly bleak way--Number
Five is no automaton, and his inheritance is not impossible to reject.
This seems to me to be a great example of how _perilous_ the gift of
choice is in Wolfe's work.  It is infinitely desirable, and those
things that lack it clamor for it and demand it, but it's misuse is
terrifying.

--
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

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