Tracking Song and The Call of the Wild

Matthew Groves · 14 Jun 2007, 22:12 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: matthewalangroves at gmail.com (Matthew Groves)
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:12:19 -0500
Subject: (urth) Tracking Song and The Call of the Wild
Message-ID: <39ed084f0706141512x204452b3s4a0f10a6c9ad62f5 at mail.gmail.com>

Roy,
I'm glad you've taken up this thread as I didn't feel I was doing it
justice.

> If I may make a suggestion, I think it might be a good idea to shrug off
the whole crime-and-punishment, Cain-and-Abel idea when you read TS again.
It has colored my view of the story for so long that it's hard to shake, and
I'm not sure that it's really valid. After all, such moral/ethical
considerations have nothing to do with a dog like London's Buck.

I think you may be right about reading in the specifics of the Cain/Abel
story; however, I'm not sure I agree with the last sentence. Imagine you're
Gene Wolfe reading the last two chapters of CotW. What strikes you as
significant there?

> There is another point of correspondence Matthew G. didn't mention, Buck's
"dreams".

Yes, I forgot about those dreams. (They were rather implausible dreams, you
have to admit.) And I did mean to mention Buck's forgetfulness.

> There's another point of correspondence between CotW and TS. Buck and the
other dogs dug holes in the snow to keep warm at night. Cutthroat tried that
one night and almost froze to death.

Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't even make the connection.

> Since Cutthroat is clearly not native to the planet and came to be there
by way of the beings on the Sleigh, is he the same type of being as they or
is he not?

I think he is not. I think Cutthroat is a man like us. Remember Master
Malrubius's analogy somewhere in TbotNS (I think before they leave Nessus)
about Man's relationship to the Increate being of the same nature as
Triskele's relationship to Severian? I think this is how we are to
understand TS. In terms of CotW, Cutthroat's relationship to the Great
Sleigh is analogous to Buck's relationship to John Thornton. I think there
may be other Sleigh dogs like Cutthroat, but I think there are also Mushers,
or at least a Musher. The Sleigh dogs are men; the Mushers are, in some
sense, divine.

> If he is not -- if he is a dogman, then the same sort of genetic tinkering
has been going on elsewhere that produced the local beastmen.

Does there have to have been tinkering?

> then where do they get off punishing a dog for acting like a dog and not
like a man, particularly if they have been *treating* him like a dog? That
is, *if* he was being punished.

Perhaps not. He may simply be a lost dog like Buck. He may also be being
tested and perfected like Abraham. Cutthroat's story seems too similar to
Latro's for us to leave out some discussion of Soldier....

...which I will happily leave to someone else.

Matt G.
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