RTTW - spoilers
The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 08 Feb 2001
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1109

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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.

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Spectacled Bear — 08 Feb 2001, 12:51
  follows, by subject match 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 :-)

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