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--- maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu> wrote:
I was just going to clarify a previous post, and I will stick to the New Sun books for this. I was positing that The Green Man and his continued existence represents "saved humanity"; In other words, since his sustenance is received primarily from the sun, he partakes of the symbolic substance of Severian for noursihment. This overturns the diabolical eucharist by which Severian ascended the throne to temporal power. His spiritual body (ie- the white hole / new sun) feeds the saved people of the future. Thus, Green Men live through a type of eucharist; The New Sun becomes the bread of life. Those who cannot eat of that substance will certainly not survive as well as the green man, since their food supplies and available land have been depleted by the flood. What do you think of this interpretation of the green man? It is a type of eucharist that is spiritual and does not smack of necrophagia. Marc Aramini
This is one of my favorites of your ideas so far. I'd never made the connection that Severian is feeding the Green Man.
On the other hand--maybe I've missed it, but how do you and other believers in Blue=Ushas explain this passage from RTTW, Chapter 19? Hoof is narrating, speaking of "Father":
"'Soon it will be evening,' he said. 'If we still haven't gone, we'll go up onto the roof of this house. Standing on the tiles I will point and you will peer until at last you see a certain dim red star. It's a long, long way from here. Think of it now, the sky like black velvet strewn with diamonds in the bottom of a grave, and among the diamonds a minute drop of blood.
"There is a whorl circling that star, an ancient whorl. On that whorl, Juganu, there is an old city you have seen, and through it a river. Its waters are turbid and foul, and seem scarcely to move. You know that river; you have sailed on it...."
Is Silkhorn simply mistaken when he uses the present tense and says the Red Sun is visible at night as a dim red star?
Jerry Friedman