{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3717",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3717,
    "subject": "second stories",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-12-24T17:56:56+00:00",
    "last": "2002-12-24T17:56:56+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0212-2534@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2002-12-24T17:56:56+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) second stories",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I was looking through the second round of stories told In Green's Jungles.  I \nwas hit by several possible allegorical interpretations - I don't know how \nmany of you buy Wolfe's stories as metonymies for the larger narrative.  I \nbelieve it - as I believe that the story of the suitors looking for the golden \nring in Citadel of the Autarch allegorizes Severian, Baldanders, and the \nandrogyne and their attempts to be the candidates for the New Sun.  Here goes:\n\nThe first story concerns a storm strega (Chapter 7).  She gets a man to clean \nout her chimney, then she gets mad and sends a storm, stuffing a woman up \nanother man's chimney.  Here we have two chimneys - one being cleaned out by a \nslave, the other being stuffed by a vengeful witch.  To clean out the second \nchimney, they drop tinderwood down it.  In the Short Sun books, we have the \nstory of the Mother, a powerful Strega, on a flooded world.  Later, the \nneighbor Windcloud talks of humanity as a bunch of birds temporarily staying \non his chimney.  The planet blue is his chimney.  Replacing these terms, we \ncan see the Strega as the Mother, trying to procure a slave who is enamored of \nher (as Horn is enamored of Seawrack) in order to put him to work to do \nsomething of planetary importance.  Has she flooded the planet to make a home \nfor herself?  She is the \"divinity\" of winds and storms, isn't she?\n\nThe allegorical interpretation I place on the second story is important to me.\n Listen to the intro: \"Once very long ago, there were two little girls whose \nhouses were only a few steps apart, but were far from any other houses at \nall.\"  One little girl was good, the other was a liar and a cheat. The girls \nplayed together, grew larger, and got closer.  Then \"a little settlement that \nwas nowehere near them grew to a town and broke out in politics\".  Then war \nthreatens.  Look at the description of blue and green in the front of the \nbook: one is \"better\", one is \"worse\".  They are close together. And the other \nplanets are farther out.  A \"town\" has recently broken out in politics - \nnamely, the long sun whorl.  Now notice the inversion at the end of the story \n- the bad girl is revealed to be MORA, not Fava, even though that is what we \nexpect from the story.  I believe this represents the switch that Wolfe has \npulled - we expect Blue to be Urth (if we buy into that) because all the \ndetails fit from the story - but the revelation of which world is the \"bad \none\" is surprising (if we believe Urth is Green).\n\nAlso, I believe that the drama enacted by Horn on Green to clean the sewer is \na passion play past down to tell the story of Severian, a cultural and world \nmyth. Notice that it is told in the third person.\n\nJust some comments about those stories - I'm sure they are important, whether \nyou buy my interpretations or not.\n\nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}