Pike/Oreb

António Pedro Marques · 03 Nov 2011, 22:13 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:13:01 +0000
Subject: (urth) Pike/Oreb
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Jerry Friedman wrote (03-11-2011 21:44):
>> From: James Wynn<crushtv at gmail.com>
>> On 11/1/2011 5:47 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>> For instance, is it connected with Severian's mistaking the astral Silk
>> for Master Malrubius?  We can take Severian to be a son or clone of Patera P.,
>> but such a relationship with Master M. is a bit much for me.
>>
>> For me, it is difficult to get around the explanation that Silk and Pike are
>> brother clones.
>> The clincher for me is Silk's two-page struggle with why he called Blood
>> "son" even though THAT WAS WHAT HE WAS TRAINED TO DO.
>
> I read that passage quite differently from you.  What's your evidence for a
> "struggle"?
>
> I'd think it more accurate to say that he thing that Silk tries to explain to
> himself is why he said "sir", not why he said "my son".  In fact, he seems to
> have been trained or to have worked out ways to address older or higher-status
> men more respectfully than "my son".  The reason he comes up with for his
> switch makes sense.  If we think he's hiding another reason from himself, one
> possibility is that he switched from "sir" to "my son" after he went from begging
> to doing an augur's job of explaining something about the Outsider to a layperson.
> He might hide this from himself because it might feel like sinful pride to him.  I
> don't see any hint that he unconsciously sees Blood as something like his son
> in a physical sense or that Wolfe is inventing this to give us such a clue.

You're quite right, but I feel there's more to it than that. Though I don't 
know what.

> And what about Severian's mistaking Silk's astral appearance for Master
> Malrubius's ghost?  There's no doubt about that, I take it.  I'd think that gets
> priority as something needing explanation, and that the explanation for it
> might shed some light on Silk's mistaking his future astral self for Patera
> Pike.
>
> Incidentally, there's a possible discrepancy in the theory that Pike's ghost is
> Silk's future astral self.  The only description of Oreb's astral appearance I
> could find is as a fat bird up to Silkhorn's belt (RttW, Ch. 17).  The young Silk
> would hardly call that "Oreb" without further comment.  I suppose one could
> say that Oreb was big to contain the version of Scylla, and that after she was
> removed from him, he would have looked like his normal self.  However, Hoof
> goes along on that expedition, when Cilinia is separate from Oreb, and doesn't
> comment on any change in Silk, unless I'm missing something.

You're missing the part where - iirc - Silk/Horn explains that Oreb's spirit 
is similar to a human being's, so 'astral Oreb' has quite a lot of 
anthropomorphic features, which missing part strenghtens your point.

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