Sev the Murderer

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com · 05 Jun 2008, 12:39 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com (thalassocrat at nym.hush.com)
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:39:46 +1000
Subject: (urth) Sev the Murderer
Message-ID: <20080605123947.A54B211803C at mailserver5.hushmail.com>

On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:03:17 +1000 Dave Tallman 
<davetallman at msn.com> wrote:
>Thlassocrat wrote:
>> The context makes it clear that the blood is the "second 
>> volunteer's", and that Sev has killed him. Only later does Sev 
>come 
>> out and say explicitly that he did so. Perhaps somewhere he 
>> expresses some kind of remorse or shows some empathy, but I 
>don't 
>> recall it.
>>   
>Sev was raised to kill without pity, so this is not surprising. 
>Probably 
>if he had not helped Voldalus that night he would have been 
>mistaken for 
>a grave robber and killed himself, but I agree about the 
>immorality of 
>what he did.

I don't think Sev was in any danger. The volunteers had seen him 
before, at the gate. If he had to intervene, it could have been on 
their side, and he could no doubt have killed Vodalus, given the 
position. 

His training was in judicial punishment and execution, not private 
murder. What he did was certainly criminal, even in this benighted 
society.

>
>> The culminating point of Sev's sham "trial" in Yesod is when he 
>> joins battle on the side of the eidolons against the sailors 
>> fighting to prevent the destruction of Urth. (UOTN XXI) The 
>> eidolons are weak at first, then appear to gain strength as he 
>> focuses on them, and when he joins the battle, they triumph at 
>> once. 
>>
>> There is a resonance here; once again he takes sides against the 

>
>> real defenders in a cause he knows almost nothing about....
>The real defenders? Now you are arguing for a complete moral 
>inversion 
>of the entire series, and I can't agree. The Sun wasn't dying of 
>natural 
>causes; someone put a black hole into it and shortened the life of 

>the 
>entire biosphere by millions of years. Was it worth catastrophic 
>global 
>warming to put the Sun back to normal? The choice of futures was 
>the 
>world of the Green Man or the world of Ragnorak. I believe Sev was 

>on 
>the right side, however foolish his motives. He was a flawed hero, 

>not a 
>villain.

I've argued at length previously for just that inversion. Was it 
worth killing almost everybody on Urth to restore the Sun, just one 
star among many with human-populated worlds? If it was so necessary 
to restore it, could not humanity have been evacuated, as it was in 
Master Ash's timeline? What exactly were the Hiero-dudes seeking to 
accomplish? We really don't know, beyond some vague puffy story 
about repellant cycles of pain and evolution. Why assume that the 
Hieo-dudes and their plans are *good* things? 

Anyway, the ovrwhelming majority of humans present in Yesod were in 
no doubt of what they thought about it. But their vote didn't 
count. They had been tricked - told they were to be spectators, 
dragooned into being matyrs.

Just on the topic of what exactly the Hiero-dudes goals are ... 
because Severian never really questions and examines them, we don't 
really know. To become like the Hieros? But how, and anyway, where 
are those Hieros? 

I take as a hint this comment from Sev to Apheta in UOTNS XX: "You 
Hierarchs are magicians. You're more powerful than those I once 
met, but magicians still." 

Before he meets those magicians, he finds a mutilated cock on the 
path, a charm against the coming of the New Sun. Perhaps Sev 
himself is a mutilated charm against the coming of Christ.

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