# Catherine *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 04 Dec 2010* > 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. --- ### Andrew Mason *04 Dec 2010, 18:26* > Son of Witz wrote: > I'm of the opinion that if these puzzles don't yield real symbolic meat they aren't worth pursuing. That being said, the idea that the Katherine he symbolically beheads is is mother is Roast fucking Beef. ?Severian has to destroy Mother Urth. He says this memory is the start of his reminiscing. Brilliant idea; it explains, what has always puzzled me, why Severian's mother is called Catherine. But I'm not sure it solves the problem of who is who at the mundane level. Does it mean that the woman who plays the part, the maid, actually is his mother? (If 'maid' is understood in its traditional sense, of course, she can't be.) Or does it just mean that the woman he is symbolically killing, Holy Katharine, is somehow identified with his mother? --- ### Son of Witz *06 Dec 2010, 18:09 · in reply to Andrew Mason* > On Dec 4, 2010, at 10:26 AM, Andrew Mason wrote: > Son of Witz wrote: >> I'm of the opinion that if these puzzles don't yield real symbolic meat they aren't worth pursuing. That being said, the idea that the Katherine he symbolically beheads is is mother is Roast fucking Beef. Severian has to destroy Mother Urth. He says this memory is the start of his reminiscing. > Brilliant idea; it explains, what has always puzzled me, why > Severian's mother is called Catherine. But I'm not sure it solves the > problem of who is who at the mundane level. Does it mean that the > woman who plays the part, the maid, actually is his mother? (If 'maid' > is understood in its traditional sense, of course, she can't be.) Or > does it just mean that the woman he is symbolically killing, Holy > Katharine, is somehow identified with his mother? > _______________________________________________ ---