{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3898",
    "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": 3898,
    "subject": "Severian and final violence",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-03-14T14:10:17+00:00",
    "last": "2003-03-14T14:10:17+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0303-3081@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2003-03-14T14:10:17+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Severian and final violence",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Recently, the part in Urth of the New Sun where Severian kills the female \ntorturer has been brought up as evidence that Severian is still far from being \nChrist, or even the perfect Christian.\n\nThat's a fine and correct statement, but I think there is a more important \nthematic reason for it.  If you look at the mythology invoked in The Book of \nthe New Sun, from \"Eschatology and Genesis\" with the evil Jalee to the Uappes \ntribe of Brazil in the Botanical Gardens, you see that the evil deities are \noverwhemlmingly female.  Over and over, you see scheming females, whose only \nredemptive quality is their ability to birth children (thus the importance of \nDorcas being Severian's grandmother and being one of the few positive female \nfigures).  Severian overcomes these females, and even the threat of \nemasculation by reasserting a manly rule - it's not a distinctly Christian \nfigure, but a powerful male figure who eliminated the unnecessarily cruel \nfemale element of the torturers.  We all know that Ymar will abolish women \nfrom the guild, probably because of his treatment at the hands of the woman \nthat Severian killed.  That act in the past liberates Ymar to rid the guild of \nwomen, and frees Severian in the future from having to deal with them in his \nsafe tower of masculine \"might makes right but follow the pecking order\" \nguild.  Note that there really isn't that much duplicitousness of scheming in \nthe tower at the time of Severian - they just follow orders. I see that strike \nas a final assertion of the masculine future that Severian wants to be raised \nin.  And I think he only saves Agia because of his presentiments - he knows \nthat she will save him from Vodalus and certain death in Citadel of the \nAutarch, because he's gone through the cycle before, so everything seems \nfamiliar to him.\n\nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}