Ouen and Dorcas and ??

Lee Berman · 06 Dec 2010, 18:05 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 13:05:04 -0500
Subject: (urth) Ouen and Dorcas and ??
Message-ID: <SNT123-W52995AA103315C68160B9ECF2B0 at phx.gbl>

>Antonio Pedro Marques- Well, that would explain his not letting go of Dorcas's body.

Ouen makes the statement in regard to a locket and perhaps some other items, maybe a
hairbrush and mirror (sorry I have not got the text with me). I guess a corpse could be
construed as a material object. But not so much if there was a plan for it to be resurrected.

I urge you to be skeptical regarding the words of the Boatman. He says he has been searching
unsuccessfully for his wife's body for decades. Yet, of all the thousands of bodies Severian might
have resurrected he manages to resurrect Cas. I suspect he knows exactly where her body lies. As
does the undine in the water who steers it to Severian and also hands him his sword back.

>No one ever discussed the similarity between the names Dorcas and Casdoe? 
>(Not to mention that the boatman only talks about Cas, is it Cas- or -cas?)

Well, he couldn't very well call her "Dorcas". That would ruin the surprise at the end of the story.
Even calling her "Dor" would have given away too much. "Cas" is a nice disguise for Dorcas in English
where stress is usually on the first syllable. 

Borski has a a rather in depth discussion about a naming connection between Dorcas and Casdoe. I think
he related it to the trend of birthing twins in a family. I think he added in the name called out on the
Sanguinary Fields also, "Cadroe of the 17 stones", tossing the 17 Megatherians and their black bean
origins into the mix.

An interesting discussion but it didn't inspire any gestalt pattern recognition for me, in the manner of
Catherine/Holy Katharine, Typhon/Alexander and Inire/Pan-Dionysus.

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