Subject: (whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v001.n057

From: Kieran Mullen <kieran at phyast.nhn.ou.edu>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 18:58:43 +0000

[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

    How did Silk know Hyacinth's name when they first met?  (Silk is hiding
in her bedroom, guards come in looking for intruder, and Silk plays role of
a "client".  He tells Hyacinth to go back to sleep, calling her by name.  She
remarks later that he got her name right.)  The text is quite suggestive -
Silk feels as if something in him reaches out to Hyacinth w/o touching
her.

    Here are (IMO)  a few other big hidden questions:

    - Since Silk seems to come from a frozen embryo, does he have a 
       superhuman talent?

    - Why does the monitor send them to Blue, over their instructions?

    - What was the ghost of Patera Pike that Silk saw?

I also have a bunch of "minor" questions.  

    - Is Silk scanned at Mainframe?  (Note this fits into Silk's Christic
       image:  he is tempted to cast himself down from a high place, and
       then tempted to become a ruler of all the world.  Severian's
       temptation "in the desert" by Typhon is even more explicit.  They
       both are pretty clearly related to the three temptations of Christ.)

    - What is Oreb?  (I think that Oreb reflects a line of C.S. Lewis, that
       we are gods to animals, enobling them and drawing them to higher 
       levels of reflection, and that a proper relationship with them
       would reflect this.   Oreb refers to Silk as his god.)

   I confess I see most things in this novel with a theological
perspective, and that Wolfe's work is interesting to me as a piece of
theological science fiction.  (There are a few others in the genre.)
One "major" question I omitted from above list is whether or not Silk's
revelations were real.  I think Wolfe allows the reader to assume what
s/he wishes on this score.  I like that.

Questions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com

---

From: revjack at radix.net <revjack at radix.net>
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 02:11:20 +0000

On Mon, 10 Mar 1997 18:58:43 -0600, Kieran Mullen wrote:

:     How did Silk know Hyacinth's name when they first met?  (Silk is hiding
: in her bedroom, guards come in looking for intruder, and Silk plays role of
: a "client".  He tells Hyacinth to go back to sleep, calling her by name.  She
: remarks later that he got her name right.)  The text is quite suggestive -
: Silk feels as if something in him reaches out to Hyacinth w/o touching
: her.

When he was in the dressing room, he found a needler decorated with
hyacinths, deduced that it was hers, and took a *big* chance when the
guards broke in. 

:     Here are (IMO)  a few other big hidden questions:
: 
:     - Since Silk seems to come from a frozen embryo, does he have a 
:        superhuman talent?

He certainly seems to heal quickly.

:     - Why does the monitor send them to Blue, over their instructions?

I'm still puzzling over this one, and the others.

Patera Jack
_________________
revjack at radix.net

---

From: Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit at gradient.cis.upenn.edu>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 23:35:38 +0000

>     How did Silk know Hyacinth's name when they first met?  (Silk is hiding

He made a lucky guess based on the Hyacinth designs embossed on her needler.

>     Here are (IMO)  a few other big hidden questions:

You can find a lot of discussion of these questions -- but
not necessarily answers! -- in the archives, on the web at

	http://moonmilk.volcano.org/whorl/

That's not to say that your questions aren't worth
discussing further.

Good point about the Temptations of Silk: to cast himself
from a high place; to rule the whorl.  Who or what was
tempting him in the first instance?  And what is the other
of the three temptations?  He always seems to be starving,
but he didn't turn down Auk's invitation to dinner...

I noticed a lot of very vivid descriptions of food in the
Long Sun books.  Somehow Severian's story never made me
hungry.

	r.