{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1369",
    "note": "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.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1369,
    "subject": "\"Dangling\" plot threads",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-04-18T16:24:20+00:00",
    "last": "2001-04-18T16:24:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0638@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-04-18T16:24:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) \"Dangling\" plot threads",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've complained in the past about the several plot threads in TBOTSS that\nRttW leaves dangling.  I now think, thought, that I may have missed the\npoint.\n\nIt has been remarked before that Wolfe's books are about the way the story\nis told as much as the story itself.  TBOTSS, I think, is largely about the\nrelationship between the story and the way it's told.  And the key to this\nrelationship is the passage noted by Rostrum: \"On Green I met a man who\ncould not see the inhumi.  They were there, but his mind would not accept\nthem...In just the same way, my own interior sight refuses to focus upon\nmatters I find agonizing.\" (OBW, p. 74)  This does not just apply to \"Horn\"\nunawareness that he is Silk, but is the governing principle of his\nnarration.  Thus he narrates his adventures on Green only in fragments or a\nsummary, and his adventures on the Whorl not at all: the former because they\nwere too horrific to dwell upon, and the latter because that was the scene\nof his \"failure\" (and also perhaps because it was there that he was most\ninsistently reminded that he was Silk).\n\nBut the application is even more general than this.  Though Horn's general\nsense of failure is clear, unlike Weer in PEACE he never itemizes his\nfailures; he just natters on about other things.  If we bear this in mind we\ncan see that some of the plot threads that seem unresolved are in fact\nresolved.  Horn's narrative doesn't make this explicit because they are\nresolved badly from his perspective.\n\nThis is clearest as regards his relationship to Seawrack.  When you think\nabout it, it is resolved in the only way it can be resolved.  Horn will\nalways long for Seawrack, but because he is fundamentally an honorable\nperson, despite his penchant for situational adultery, he will never seek\nher out.  His case is hopeless, and he knows it, though he doesn't say so\nexplicitly.\n\nLikewise with the human-inhumi relationship.  Horn has failed with Jahlee,\nthe inhuma closest to him: he has killed her, after she betrayed his trust.\nAnd his efforts to behave honorably towards the inhumi by not revealing the\nSecret have resulted (he thinks) in bringing the inhumi down upon Nettle.\nIf this is the outcome with Horn, who is the human most sympathetic to\ninhumi of any we see (aside from the renegades or slaves of Pajarocu and\nGreen), then the chances of humanity in general living in peace with the\ninhumi are slim.  And if Horn ever did have any hopes of effecting a general\nreconciliation, he's given them up by the end of his narrative; otherwise,\nhe would not manipulate Juganu as he does. [1]\n\nWith the case of Horn's relationship with Sinew, I'm on more speculative\nground.  This relates to one of the biggest enigmas of Horn's narrative.\nNear the end of IGJ, Horn, Hide and Jahlee make an astral visit to Sinew's\nvillage.  Sinew is out hunting, but there is a female prisoner who knows\nHorn.  At the end of the chapter, Horn asks to speak to this prisoner.  Here\nthe account of the astral visit breaks off without explanation and is never\nresumed.  We never find out what happened, even in summary, though we know\nfrom later remarks of Jahlee that they did talk to the prisoner, who was\nChenille.  My hypothesis is that Sinew did return, and the encounter between\nhim and Horn ended disastrously, so much so that Horn can't even talk about\nit.\n\nThe final words of Horn's manuscript--\"I should have come back.\"--indicate\nhis absolute despair.  From here until the conversation with Remora, he's\nputting his affairs in order in preparation for death.  In this hypothesis,\nthe lack of emotion Kevin Maroney has complained about in RttW is in\nactuality a suppression of emotion.\n\nSo, if I'm correct, TBOTSS takes its place with PEACE as a radical\nexperiment with narrative: in this case, a psychological drama which must be\nlargely inferred from what the narrator leaves out.  I don't think it's as\nsuccessful as PEACE, though.  First, in PEACE the material which Weer\nsubstitutes for what he can't say directly is itself fascinating.  In TBOTSS\nit isn't.  Second, unlike in PEACE, here Wolfe did want to convey directly\nto us some information he didn't want to have Horn narrate, and I don't\nthink he found a fully satisfactory way of doing it.\n\n--Adam\n\n[1]  If you're looking for un-Silk-like behavior on the part of Silkhorn,\nyou could argue that to cold-bloodedly provoke somebody to the sin of murder\nis morally more offensive than to kill, in anger and without intending to,\nsomeone who has just tried to murder your wife.\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}