Subject: (urth) Ships and Jonas

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 16:32:00 +0000

Dan,

Re: signing up on ships/the Ship.  Pressgangs are possible; and don't
forget that slaves are one of the chief exports of Urth, so there's
another case not too different from a pressgang (although they don't
get to be sailors).  My relatively unexamined sense is that generally
sailors just sign on in the same way as for a sea-going vessel.  Then
they get the whole "time/space" lecture, which goes in one primitive
ear and out the other ("yeah, yeah, you can't go home again, sure"),
so that they end up being just about as confused on their first trip
as Severian was on his trip.

In the text we hear (from a middle-aged Gunnie) that Burgundofara
signed on as a young woman, she met a sailor named Severian who
taught her everything.  This Gunnie convinces Burgundofara to get off
the Ship, presumably to avoid making the life-choices that Gunnie made .
. . which (might/probably will) result in Gunnie either imploding like
Master Ash (as her past is altered) or optimizing ala Sev1/Sev2.

Severian and Burgundofara get off at Urth, and the rest is history!

But Severian seems to hypothesize that the young Burgundofara who
betrayed him and settled down to a life on Urth, later in life became
dissatisfied (again) and signed up on the Ship (again).  Which would
mean that "old Gunnie" didn't go poof or optimize at all--but
"merely" acted as her own signpost--and the "mistakes" in her life
were maybe not so much on the Ship but acting as the "necessary evil"
role of Judas to the Conciliator.

Re: Jonas as Pinocchio.  Good point--especially since the goal of
becoming flesh is there.  I think there's also some "Little Tin
Soldier" in there as well, since in that fairy tale the tin soldier
falls in love with a paper ballerina and they are only united in
death.

All of which is =much= easier to see than anything related to the
name "Jonas"!  The easiest solution I can come up with is: "Jonas" is
the new name given to the broken android after the crash, bestowed by
the crewmembers who held him personally responsible for the crash.
Talk about an albatross (around the neck of our ancient wandering
Jewish mariner)!

=mantis=

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