Free will in BOtNS

David Wells · 29 Jan 1998, 18:33 · from urth-v0006.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: David Wells <adw at ovum.com>
Subject: (urth) Free will in BOtNS
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 18:33:00 +0000
Message-ID: <urth-v0006-0460 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0006/0460.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other work=
s]

(apologies for the length of this - I'm rarely able to post here)

Recent discussions have raised this fascinating subject (Free Will in  =20
BOtNS), which has always intrigued me. The (apparently radical)  =20
manipulation of Severian's life by outside forces seems to me (an atheist  =20
determinist) a brilliant metaphor for the hardest test which life throws  =20
at us - the realization that some or all of our "Free Will" may be  =20
entirely illusory. But it sits uneasily with the view I would expect  =20
given knowledge of Wolfe's spiritual orientation. Especially as  =20
Severian's actions are Judged for the salvation of all mankind(*) - this  =20
seems a bit of a cheat since arguably the judge was pulling the strings  =20
all along (I am trivializing the argument, but I'm sure you see what I  =20
mean).

In similar vein, I have often toyed with the idea of analyzing Severian's  =20
"deaths" through the series. There seem to be at least four types of  =20
(near-)demise:
 1) Severian _really_ dies in the timeline we are reading about, and  =20
neither supernatural intervention nor the Claw/New Sun can save him. (But  =20
the only time this happens(?) he is resurrected as an aquastor (eilodon?  =20
I can never recall the difference) so that he can save mankind after his  =20
own death...)
 2) Severian "really dies" in the timeline, but is supernaturally saved  =20
by the Claw/New Sun. (e.g. shot by the Big Gun in the Citadel, the avern  =20
duel)
 3) Severian nearly dies in the timeline, but is saved by the natural  =20
intervention of a supernaturally-well-informed being (e.g. saved by the  =20
Undine in Ch 1).
 4) Severian nearly dies in the timeline, but is saved by natural good  =20
luck/skill/heroism, etc. There are surprisingly few examples of this -  =20
given that such hero-escapes-from-peril stuff is the very basis of most  =20
"fantasy" fiction - but Severian's besting of Typhon is a spectacular  =20
example (also his escape from the notules and from death in battle, I  =20
guess). But I imagine that if Severian had failed to heroically survive  =20
these, they would have been "converted" to a type 3)...

But what really puzzles me is how the "Apu Punchau experience" fits into  =20
this...

newt

(*) I was initially completely wowed by the idea that Severian wasn't  =20
actually going to be "tested", but simply called to account for the  =20
actions of his life. What a fascinating concept. It took me an amazingly  =20
long time to figure out where this idea came from (yes, OK, stop laughing  =20
out there - but I simply don't think about religious ideas on a day to  =20
day basis).

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net