getting a Fifth Head of Cerberus write up together (primacy of the leaf-bite) ...

Marc Aramini · 20 Mar 2013, 13:36 · from 2013-March.txt.gz

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From: marcaramini at yahoo.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 06:36:32 -0700
Subject: (urth) getting a Fifth Head of Cerberus write up together
	(primacy of the leaf-bite) ...
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Two other quick things - once again external witnesses know more than subjective first person narrators - right away Marsch looks at number five and says, you are a clone.  In the same offhand fashion at the end of the first story number five says to Marsch you are from st. Anne, not earth, your green eyes reveal you are an aborigine.  Similarly, Sandwalker was always fated to "drop down" into the ground - when he is born, when he hunts, his feet are always shown descending to the ground " to someplace lower"  At the end the brother that dies has his feet swept out from under him - I think this is an indication of who dies there as well. (His descent into the pit "the other eye" could equally well serve that imagery.) 

Also, st Anne is the mother of Mary, where the immaculate conception comes in, allowing the human life of Christ (fully human, fully divine) and st croix means the cross, the end of Jesus' human life, such that we have bookends on the fully human, fully divine tenure of Jesus.  I will not speculate on his human nature after the resurrection for the purposes of this symbolic separation (burgeoning life and the promise of innocent generation followed by cruel and sinful crucifixion still following the Divine Will as an agent of salvation) , as it seems to me defeating death is the parameter of the divine. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 20, 2013, at 5:37 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> As many of you know, I was trying to make a chronological effort at analyzing or even just pointing out cool things more or less chronologically in Wolfe's short fiction.  The nice thing about the short fiction is I could read them through four or five times in a row and see patterns emerging.  Fifth Head does not afford me that luxury easily, but there are some things I wanted to mention first to see if anyone has made much of them before.
>  
> Borski did excellent work on the titular novella, but it is the second one, middle one that I fear is in need of explication as excessively cryptic.
>  
> In the first novella, Number Five has succeeded in doubling the chromosomes of frogs and creating an asexual generation from unfertilized sex cells.  Interesting, in that another "asexual" creation seems to come in the second novella when the Old Wise One claims to be created of the Shadow Children and Sandwalker, and there is some confusion over whether there are five or six Shadow Children in the pit "the Other Eye". 
>  
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