Gene Wolfe's New Sun stuff

Thomas Duffey · 05 Oct 1992, 16:06 · from sf-lovers.1992.mbox

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From: duffey at uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Thomas Duffey)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe's New Sun stuff
Date: 5 Oct 92 16:06:25 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v17-521-10 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V17 #521
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-17b

>>...Dorcas is Severian's GRANDmother, not his mother.  He thinks that the
>>waiter is her son (and hence Severian's father) and that the old man is
>>her husband (and Severian's grandfather).  His question was: who is
>>Severian's mother?  His answer is that it was the Autarch.
>
>Nothing reading the book wouldn't cure.  Dorcas is Severian's grandmother.
>She died about forty years earlier, giving birth to Ouen, the waiter.
>Ouen never married, but did have several lovers.  One of those, Catherine,
>who was given to the torturers, was Severian's mother.  The Autarch was a
>eunuch.  Most of the details are brought out near the end of "Citadel of
>the Autarch".

But this still leaves the question; where is Severian's mother in the
BotNS?  Almost certainly she appears somewhere.  I wonder if she might not
have been the woman who played Holy Katharine in the torturers' initiation
rite.  Perhaps she was spared death in exchange for playing this role?

   On another note, in Sword of the Lictor, it's implied that Severian may
well have a sister (in the section where he meets the pioneering family).
Does SHE appear in the book anywhere?  Likely candidates, I'd say, are
Merryn the Cumaean's apprentice, the apprentice witch Severian met on a
childhood errand to the witches' tower, and possibly the Pelerine postulant
(Ava?) he converses with at the lazaret.

Tom Duffey
mebsunll.me.uiuc.edu

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