Subject: (whorl) Silk's mission

From: Bruce Anderson <bruceanderson at dlcwest.com>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 21:33:22 +0000

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

I'm new to this list, and haven't finished reading the archives yet, so
please forgive me if this has already been dealt with before.  I just
started rereading the series for the first time (although from what I've
read in the archives every time is something like the first time it seems).  

I was struck by the conversation between Silk and his students immediately
after the ball game, and the lesson that Silk draws from it.  He says that
the point of the game is not winning or losing, but enduring to the end
(Nightside P. 12, paperback).  Is this perhaps a clue to the purpose of
Silk's adventures?  Since so much of what he has striven for seems
irrelevant by the end of "Exodus", perhaps his enlightenment and the
following events were more for the sake of his own salvation than for that
of the Whorl.  I.E. to bring him to an understanding of the Outsider as the
true God.

Bruce Anderson

http://www.xoom.com/sacvis       --       Religion and Speculative Fiction
http://come.to/windows.to.the.east   --   Eastern Christian Churches of
Saskatoon

"When I get a little money I buy books, if any is left I buy food and
clothing"
      --Erasmus