Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

Sergei SOLOVIEV · 22 May 2011, 12:31 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: soloviev at irit.fr (Sergei SOLOVIEV)
Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 14:31:17 +0200
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTikznBkQtjA5X7xkfGhngS0yON+9sQ at mail.gmail.com>
References: <BANLkTikznBkQtjA5X7xkfGhngS0yON+9sQ at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4DD90215.4060000 at irit.fr>

I noticed that Cas and Dorcas means the same person at the first reading,
but of course I didn't guess that she is the grandmother of Severian until
the end of the 4-th book.

- Did you realize what Hildegrin is doing at this lake?

- At some point I noticed that the Lake of Birds reminds very much the 
Dante's Inferno
filled by water, there is even a hint that something can penetrate into 
it from the other
side of Urth (the Hell in Dante's poem is connected by a channel to the 
opposite side
of the Earth where the mountain of Purgatory stands). There is also the
cave of the Cumaean. The space-time in Botanic Gardens is twisted (remember
Jungle Garden - there the path is apparently going through time as well).

best

Sergei Soloviev

Jason H wrote:
> Did you know "Cas" was Dorcas right away?
>
> I didn't. When I read these books the first time, I didn't realize 
> that Dorcas had been one of the lake's dead until it was spelled out 
> in the third book, and didn't realize she was the sought-after Cas 
> until the fourth book. I read these books pretty carefully-- I knew 
> the towers were rockets right away, I picked up on little 
> inconsistencies in the narrative... but I missed this connection 
> completely.
>
> In retrospect, it's totally obvious! The chapter in Shadow is called 
> "Dorcas", for heaven's sake, and we're told someone is looking for a 
> "Cas", and then a mysterious Dorcas appears. How can I not have 
> immediately realized who she was? Of course, the first time through, 
> we don't even know he has the Claw on him (let alone what it can do), 
> and it's perhaps unintuitive to mentally pair the old man with the 
> young Dorcas.
>
> So I'm really curious to know whether I was just being dense, or 
> whether Wolfe was being particularly brilliant-- and audacious-- by 
> setting up a connection which he somehow knew people wouldn't make 
> right away, despite its obviousness later on.
>
> I'm therefore curious to know: Was this obvious to you back in Shadow 
> as soon as Dorcas appeared?
>
>
> -Jason
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