Silk or Horn?

Lee Berman · 01 Sep 2013, 15:11 · from 2013-September.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 2013 11:11:23 -0400
Subject: (urth) Silk or Horn?
Message-ID: <BLU175-W25ECD2B17E58BEB266D3D0CF370 at phx.gbl>

>Marc Aramini: but the first book of long sun ends with Horn imitating 
>Silk, and the last book of short sun ends where Silk finally stops 
>imitating and pretending to be Horn.

Marc, I get the feeling this has been debated before, so I apologize for
any rehash.

I wouldn't discount any of the evidence you present but its just that I 
see counter-evidence (or perhaps doubled evidence). I already mentioned
that there are scenes in (old) Viron where Silkhorn acknowledges that he
looks like Silk but declares, in deeply heartfelt fashion, that he is 
really Horn. I find it hard to believe that this is Wolfe beating us over
the head with what we already (think) we know about Horn being Silk. I
see it as a redirection for the reader.

There is, as you mention, the scene where he kicks Jahlee to death after she feeds on Nettle. You find this to be an emotionally shocking act for Silk. 
But I find it more parimonious to interpret this as a quite understandable 
action from Horn. 

Moreover, when they dream travel, Silkhorn ends up looking more like Horn than Silk. Since the inhumi who dream travel end up looking and being entirely human
when they dream travel, how should we interpret Silkhorn's appearance?

Perhaps your interpretation is that the inhumi pretend to be human so Silk
appearing like Horn in dream travel is evidence that the narrator is really
Silk pretending to be Horn?

I take a different interpretation. I get the sense that Wolfe is saying that
when inhumi partake of the blood of a human, they absorb some of the essence
and become truly part-human. Thus I see SilkHorn truly as partly Silk
and partly Horn.

I have previously mentioned also that I get a sense of "card shuffling and
redealing" between Long and Short Sun. Gods and other characters get mixed
up and reformed into new combinations.

I see all this as allegory for the passing of family traits from father to 
son via "blood" sharing. And perhaps also allegory for the eucharist, where 
one gains some of the essence of Christ through ingesting his blood.

Does a son only pretend to be partially like his father?  Is the absorbtion 
of Christ-essence by a Catholic only a pretending?

I get the impression Wolfe does a double-cross on us. We are first slowly led
to understand that the narrator is really Silk, but by the end of RttW, I feel
he wants us to understand there is a truly new blending or combination of Silk
with Horn.  Father-figure blending with Son-figure via spirit.

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