_Dhalgren_: Scathing Towards Women? and a few ?'s about Sev

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 23 Oct 2006, 16:44 · from 2006-October.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:44:35 -0700
Subject: (urth) _Dhalgren_: Scathing Towards Women? and a few ?'s about
	Sev
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Jack having written...

> On an unrelated note, let me throw out a question that
> has always intrigued me. Sometimes Severian was able
> to heal with the Claw, sometimes not. Did we ever figure
> out what criteria determined his success or failure?

There are theories. I incline to the theory that he could
not heal anyone whose nature was "mixed," like Jonas
(cyborg), probably because that would make them unclean
in the OT sense.

> Toward the close of _Citadel_, in one of
> Wolfe's fuzziest Hallmark moments,
> Sev realizes that the claw is just a common thorn,
> and that "the power was inside me all along!
> I healed Triskele!"

I think this is unfair to one of GW's most powerful
moments. "I took off my boots and threw them into
the water, so as not to walk shod upon sacred ground."
He clearly is not having some revalation about _himself_.


> Was the power specific to Sev as the Conciliator,
> or just general divine (or Hierogrammatic, if you
> want to be SFnal) power accessible to any old
> body?

Have you read _Urth of the New Sun_? It defines rather
clearly where the power actually came from.

> Either way, you'd think that afterwards he would heal
> people by simply laying his hands on them or
> something. Why didn't he ever do this?

Don't know.

> I seem to remember an idea that Sev
> dying for the first time in _Shadow Of The Torturer_,
> drowning in the Gyoll. Is this theory strongly supported
> by the text or is it just wild conjecture? If it's a good
> theory, it means Sev was an aquastor throughout. Did "the
> Claw's" healing power come from the fact that Sev was an
> aquastor? Is that the SFnal justification?

Nooooooo......

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open
sewer and die.
  - Mel Brooks

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