# RTTW - spoilers *The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 08 Feb 2001* > 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. --- ### Peter Westlake *08 Feb 2001, 12:44* I've just finished it, and I was getting really worried as the end approached without Silk turning up. All along I did wonder if he ever would, or whether Horn would realize that the answer to Viron's problems lay at home and turn back, leaving Silk to become a mythical hero-figure. Not that he isn't that as well, of course. Who would have thought old Patera Remora would have the answer! Wow. Also, a moment or two after I put the book down, I realized (as many others here have noted) the answer to the question of why Horn doesn't realize he is Silk. In retrospect, the very question is a contradiction! It is, of course Silk - "a man whose soul has died" - who doesn't want to admit that that's who he is. That phrase troubled me, because it suggested that Silk's spirit really had gone for ever. In reality it was a metaphor for heartbreak, extreme grief, and wanting to die. I'll have to read the whole thing all over again now. There was one loose end: why did the Mother create a siren? Horn says that it's very important to know whether her intentions were hostile or not. And what is the connection between her and the Urthly Scylla, and between that Scylla and Cilinia? They clearly aren't the same person. Okay, that's more than one loose end. Why does Nettle go off in the Whorl at the end, too? Spectacled Bear. P.S. I told you Patera Pike's ghost was just Patera Pike's ghost :-) *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Spectacled Bear *08 Feb 2001, 12:51 · follows Peter Westlake* I've just finished it, and I was getting really worried as the end approached without Silk turning up. All along I did wonder if he ever would, or whether Horn would realize that the answer to Viron's problems lay at home and turn back, leaving Silk to become a mythical hero-figure. Not that he isn't that as well, of course. Who would have thought old Patera Remora would have the answer! Wow. Also, a moment or two after I put the book down, I realized (as many others here have noted) the answer to the question of why Horn doesn't realize he is Silk. In retrospect, the very question is a contradiction! It is, of course Silk - "a man whose soul has died" - who doesn't want to admit that that's who he is. That phrase troubled me, because it suggested that Silk's spirit really had gone for ever. In reality it was a metaphor for heartbreak, extreme grief, and wanting to die. I'll have to read the whole thing all over again now. There was one loose end: why did the Mother create a siren? Horn says that it's very important to know whether her intentions were hostile or not. And what is the connection between her and the Urthly Scylla, and between that Scylla and Cilinia? They clearly aren't the same person. Okay, that's more than one loose end. Why does Nettle go off in the Whorl at the end, too? Spectacled Bear. P.S. I told you Patera Pike's ghost was just Patera Pike's ghost :-) ---