Tzadkiel/Melek Taus

John Watkins · 09 Jul 2010, 15:18 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 11:18:40 -0400
Subject: (urth) Tzadkiel/Melek Taus
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2010/7/9 Ant?nio Pedro Marques entonio at gmail.com

> If Tzadkiel is a liar, then I don't see what does he gain by destroying the
> world. Sure, he could do it out of sheer evilness, but I don't find it
> convincing that he would take all that trouble just to have a 5 minute
> massacre sport. We tend to associate evil with selfishness, and to
> annihilate your potential servants makes little sense selfishly. And if the
> intent is to take pleasure in killing them, then a global drowning is
> possibly one of the least interesting methods - quick and clean. If otoh he
> wishes to wipe out Humanity for whatever reason, giving a renewed planet to
> a reduced population seems to run counter to the objective.
>
> This is actually pretty clear in the text, IMHO.  The Hierogrammates are
trying to breed a new race of Hieros.  Severian's task as epitome of Urth is
to persuade Tzadkiel that the humans of Urth have the genetic materials
needed for potential future Hieros.  The destruction of Urth is followed by
partial repopulation by humans hand-picked by the Hierodules, presumably for
their genetic materials.

This actually makes some sense of the family tree and incest preoccupations
of the text, and of the monkey preoccupation--we know from the man-apes that
there are degraded, semi-ape humans (as well as humans who have probably
interbred with aliens of some kind, and humans who do really screwy things
to their biology, like Baldanders.)  In short, the purification of Urth by
massive slaughter makes perfect sense--Tzadkiel is wiping the bad crap out
of a petri dish he's decided to keep using.



> Moreover, if Tzadkiel could send the new sun to destroy the world, why not
> just do it without all the hocus pocus? And if he didn't have that power all
> by himself, then whoever did have the power is calling the shots, not
> Tzakdiel.
>
> I think this is a trickier question.




>
> Does Severian not asking for an evacuation imply that he is evil as well? I
> suppose your idea is that he is so embroiled in Tzadkiel's way of presenting
> things that such a question doesn't even cross his mind.
>
>

This seems to fit, doesn't it?  Severian is part of a cult-like order that
trained him to obey authority, in particular when that authority instructs
him to torture or kill.


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