Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

Nathan C. Tresch · 22 May 2011, 16:32 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: nathanctresch at gmail.com (Nathan C. Tresch)
Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 09:32:50 -0700
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?
In-Reply-To: <4DD90215.4060000 at irit.fr>
References: <BANLkTikznBkQtjA5X7xkfGhngS0yON+9sQ at mail.gmail.com>
	<4DD90215.4060000 at irit.fr>
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=E8ODcn8gwzRq5_5-mgO7McEW6jw at mail.gmail.com>

A question arising from Jerry's post...

Later in the series the Hierodules inform Severian that the claw is actually
just a gem with no special powers, so from that I inferred that Severian was
already connected to the coming of the new sun and the power he had was not
connected to the claw at all.  Does this seem like a valid inference?

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 5:31 AM, Sergei SOLOVIEV <soloviev at irit.fr> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Per Aspera, Ad Astra
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