Subject: (urth) The Green Man's restitution

From: Lisa Schaffer-Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 01:25:26 +0000

All of this talk about Silk (the man who doesn't eat) put me back on 
the track of a question that's been nagging me.  How does the Green Man 
repay Severian for setting him free?  The rescue from the Ascians 
doesn't count (the Green Man's own words) and he claims that he will 
aid him again.  Then, nothing.  No more Green Man.  In my mind there 
are three explanations for this.  Wolfe forgot about the Green Man's 
promise, or decided not to bother with it (not a viable option for me), 
Severian decided to omit any more mention of the Green Man for his own 
reasons (too close to the first, basically a cop-out), or the Green 
Man, being a master of the corridors of time has already aided Severian 
in his past (though it would be the Green Man's personal future).  
"When" in the text could this have happened, and what action could it 
be?

Don

--

---

From: StoneOx17 <stoneox17 at aol.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 20:52:54 +0000

> "When" in the text could this have happened, and what action could it

This question has been bugging me for some time as well.  
The Green Man promises to set Severian free when he is
imprisoned, so we only need to look at times when he is
imprisoned (although there are a lot of those).  I am also
convinced that the Green Man's restitution happens before
Severian frees him, thus creating yet another time loop.
When Severian is imprisoned in the antechamber, one of the 
other prisoners there sees a green face, which I am convinced
is the Green Man looking for opportunities to set Severian
free.  I think this shows that Wolfe hasn't just dropped 
this thread.  However, this can't be the time that the Green
Man redeems his promise, since Severian gets out of the 
antechamber by himself (remembering Thecla's use of the
hidden door's word of power).  

Any takers on this one?

-- 
Stone Ox (Peter S.)

--

---

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 21:26:12 +0000

>hidden door's word of power).

Wasn't someone mentioning fairly recently that we don't know what happened
during Severian's Year as an Ascian Slave?

One of the few things we know about that period of Severian's Reign is that
he did not have the Claw (and thus no magical powers to help out when
things got rough).

I guess I'm the only one who figures that the Green Man saved Severian's
bacon at least once during that unmentionable year.

(Then again, I'm the same lunatic who thinks that Severian the Cruel
married Agia . . . )

=mantis=

--

---

From: cilluff1 at optonline.net <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 21:51:55 +0000

Mantis, further to Stone Ox and Don's Green Man musings, writes:

<<Wasn't someone mentioning fairly recently that we don't know what happened
during Severian's Year as an Ascian Slave?

things got rough).>>

Hmmm, it's been a while but I always thought that the Claw itself doesn't
have any magical powers per se, it was always Severian himself that had
them but it seemed on first blush to be the Claw because we do not realize
until later in the series that Sev is the Concilliator.  It was, e.g., Sev,
pre-Claw, who brought his dog back from the dead at the start of the first
book.  I haven't read the passage in a bit and don't have the book to hand,
but I thought that was the point of Severian's 'every grain of sand, every
thorn' (paraphrase) soliloquy upon the beach.

<>

I like the Greem Man as Silkhorn concept just for it's creativity, but I'm
not sure if Wolfe really meant that.  I always think of the Green Man sort
of as Tom Bombadil, a character inserted purely as an interested red
herring unconnected to anything else.   I also think it's not impossible
that Wolfe either forgot this or the second Green Man scene got edited out.
But in support of the "forgetting" theory it always bugged me that the
slave Sev meets asks Severian to mention him to Malrubius and to ask
Malrubius a question and, when Sev later meets up with Malrubius again the
matter, as far as the reader knows, never comes up again....

- Shell

--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .

--

---

From: Lisa Schaffer-Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 01:52:05 +0000

On Monday, July 21, 2003, at 02:51 PM, cilluff1 at optonline.net wrote:

>    I also think it's not impossible

Don (referring to himself, as pleases him, in the third person) replies,

I think you mean Palaemon rather than Malrubius.  I don't think Wolfe 
forgot to have Severian mention the slave to Palaemon.  I always took 
it that Severian took it upon himself to answer for his master and that 
was the end of it.  Of course I also think Severian and Palaemon are 
essentially the same person so take my opinion for what it's worth to 
you.

--