Sev as anti-hero

Alex David Groce · 06 Apr 1999, 10:28 · from urth-v0025.mbox · original

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From: "Alex David Groce" <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Sev as anti-hero
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 10:28:19
Message-ID: <urth-v0025-0009 at digest.urth.net>
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On Apr 6, 12:08am, Roy C. Lackey wrote:
>     Oh, I agree he makes moral progress. I said much the same thing in an
> off-list e-mail to someone here. But I still do not like Sev and have
> trouble seeing him as Everyman--even a dark Everyman. Silk, Weer, and the
> other figures you mention are much more sympathetic figures, whatever the=
ir
> flaws, because they come closer to Everyman than Sev. They do not wield t=
he
> powers, temporal or supernatural, that Sev does. They do not have his
> capacity for doing harm. mantis used the term "anti-hero" and I have to
> agree with it. I could never identify with Sev, as I could with Weer or
> Green or Silk or Free's boarders.

	I won't argue that Severian is easy to identify with; as to Silk, I
would place him in another category of Wolfe's protagonists.  Green is
somewhere in the middle--not as dark as Severian (or even Weer), but not an
almost saintly (and likable--which is hard to portray) fellow like Silk.  I=
'm
just not sure anti-hero is the right term for Severian.  It seems to me tha=
t in
the end he stumbles to glory, at any rate, and that's not just an accident-=
-the
Hierodules choose him because he does, in the end, get the job done.  Of
course, this depends on your interpretation of the last pages of Urth.
--=20
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

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