S&S vs. SF in BotNS

Lee Berman · 22 Dec 2011, 21:01 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:01:19 -0500
Subject: (urth) S&S vs. SF in BotNS
Message-ID: <SNT123-W36BF2D8C26D3E11F191BAACFAA0 at phx.gbl>

>Jeff Wilson: Severian perceives that he is being zapped by the twin hemispheres of 
>Decuman's brain in a way that illuminates him but also imposes a particular depressive 
>emotion that saps his will to continue in the contest. This is apparently direct brain 
>to brain coersion.

But IIRC, Decuman is humming and chanting the whole time. I think this might be the 
"hypnotism" Wolfe mentions in Jerry's quote. The "twin hemispheres" brain might be
just Severian's self-experiential description of the event, much like the initially 
real-seeming hallucinations he gets later from eating mushrooms. (makes sense for
a torturer to picture another's mind in anatomically correct brain fashion; I'll guess
Little Severian didn't picture it the same way, though they share the emotion of fear)

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