Latitudes

Tony Ellis · 24 Aug 1999, 14:48 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: "Tony Ellis" <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: (urth) Latitudes
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 14:48:15
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0077 at digest.urth.net>
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SBear wrote:

> Ah.
>
> Still, I can still say that he gets lost as often as not,
> and suggest that he just can't tell left from right, rather
> than having them consistently backwards.
>
Again with this "Severian gets lost" thing! :-) People have been
raising this one for years, and I've never really understood why.

Severian gets lost because getting lost is a great plot device, and
a time-honoured one. If heroes always kept to the path like they
were told an awful lot of stories out there would be (a) shorter,
and (b) duller. Do Jeff Goldblum and his buddy stay on the path in
American Werewolf in London? Do Bilbo and the dwarves stay on the
path in The Hobbit? And look at the complete hash Jason and Odysseus
made of a simple piece of marine navigation.

Not only does Severian manage to follow directions plenty of times,
as Roy has shown, but when he does lose his way there always seem to
be mitigating circumstances, such as delirium on the way to the
lazaret, or Idas's duplicity on board the Ship. Why saddle Sev with
some sort of rare direction-losing brain disorder on top of all his
other peculiarities?

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