Subject: (urth) free will and piracy

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:44:41 +0000

On an unrelated note, I do think that any discussion
of the moral ambiguity inherent in Father Chris must
confront the older version breaking down in tears when
the young novitiate leaves and falls into the past -
an older version that never once tries to deter the
younger man from the path that will lead to murder,
debauchery, and other piratical pass times.

There is the Christmas homily of Chris that speaks of
gold - the talents given by God and the manner in
which we use them.  It is unclear to me whether the
younger or older versions of Chris are using those
talents, or "gold", in the manner most stereotypically
considered as good, and I think somehow the older
versions refusal to curtail the free will, or the
"pirate freedom" of his younger self is somehow
central to any discussion of the redemptive meaning or
catharsis of Chris' psuedo confession.

Certainly free will and the existence of evil must be
discussed when the text's tangential relationship to
Catholicism is considered.

Good discussions on this repetitive cycle and faux
confession of Fr. Chris so far in the list.

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---

From: paul witcover <gdeonn at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:23:04 +0000

Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:    On an unrelated note, I do think that any discussion

###
   
  The question is, why does Ignacio cry at this point?  My reading was that his tears were not provoked by any sense of empathy for what his younger self is about to experience, but rather the overwhelming emotional release of finally reaching the moment for which he has labored his entire adult life.  He's crying because he is finally going back to Novia.  Chris is nothing to Ignacio beyond a necessary cog in the mechanism that will take him back and allow him to reunite with her.

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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:41:10 +0000

--- paul witcover <gdeonn at yahoo.com> wrote:

>    
>   The question is, why does Ignacio cry at this
> point?  ........

>Chris is nothing to Ignacio beyond a
> necessary cog in the mechanism that will take him
> back and allow him to reunite with her.
> 

In the last decade and a half I have noticed an
increasingly sentimental nature in Wolfe's characters,
an absence of the sinister silences we see in 5HOC and
Peace and New Sun or his shorter work that makes us
say, jeez, this guy is creepy.  Chris might be an
ineffectual apologist for the "environment" of the
brutal past forcing his hand, but if he elides facts
it just doesn't seem overtly sinister, despite his
embraced piracy.

The worst thing Silk ever did was right at the end of
the Sun cycle, when he kicked the inhuma to death. 
Able was at worst a bully and at best a hero.  Ignacio
is one cold dude if he could contribute to his own
worst moments while still doing things like buying
chickens and letting his younger self steal them.

I need to read it again, I guess.  As always.

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---

From: Dave Lebling <dlebling at hyraxes.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:47:14 +0000

Ignacio as an older Chris, laboring diligently to create exactly the Chris
he was as a young man, makes an interesting and creepy contrast to the life
of Severian, molded by the hierodules, possibly more than once, to be a
better man (or perhaps a worse - he is a mass murderer, after all) than the
rough torturer he started out as.

Chris is a child of privilege (in a Mafia family, of course) whose life,
looked at from his own selfish point of view, works out nearly perfectly
until he loses Novia. His older self works for years to recreate his younger
self, so that the younger self will not deviate from the life he previously
led, thereby recreating the older self that creates the younger self.

Contrast this with the narrator of 5HoC, who is trying to recreate himself
in a cloned body, and has been working on this project for generations with
debatable success. Clearly Ignacio/Chris is aware that his project is risky
and easily knocked off course (for example, he worries about the
repercussions that might ensue if he visited himself when Chris still lived
in "Jersey").

The perfectly choreographed life Chris leads from the time he enters the
monastery is not "pirate freedom," it is a prison he puts himself into and
can only break out of if his plan succeeds (or as Paul Witcover wrote, a
machine in which Chris is just a cog). So, "pirate freedom" isn't freedom at
all. Maybe that's why Ignacio is crying: after all that work, he thinks he
is finally going to be free. Of course, there may be another still older
Chris/Ignacio tugging the puppet strings.

-- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha

  _____  

From: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On
Behalf Of paul witcover
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 8:23 AM
To: The Urth Mailing List
Subject: Re: (urth) free will and piracy

Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote: 

###

The question is, why does Ignacio cry at this point?  My reading was that
his tears were not provoked by any sense of empathy for what his younger
self is about to experience, but rather the overwhelming emotional release
of finally reaching the moment for which he has labored his entire adult
life.  He's crying because he is finally going back to Novia.  Chris is
nothing to Ignacio beyond a necessary cog in the mechanism that will take
him back and allow him to reunite with her.

  _____  

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<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51733/*http:/mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8H
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