second stories

maa32 · 24 Dec 2002, 17:56 · from urth-v0212.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: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: (urth) second stories
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 10:56:56 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0212-2534 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0212/2534.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

I was looking through the second round of stories told In Green's Jungles. =
 I=20
was hit by several possible allegorical interpretations - I don't know how=20
many of you buy Wolfe's stories as metonymies for the larger narrative.  I=20
believe it - as I believe that the story of the suitors looking for the gol=
den=20
ring in Citadel of the Autarch allegorizes Severian, Baldanders, and the=20
androgyne and their attempts to be the candidates for the New Sun.  Here go=
es:

The first story concerns a storm strega (Chapter 7).  She gets a man to cle=
an=20
out her chimney, then she gets mad and sends a storm, stuffing a woman up=20
another man's chimney.  Here we have two chimneys - one being cleaned out b=
y a=20
slave, the other being stuffed by a vengeful witch.  To clean out the secon=
d=20
chimney, they drop tinderwood down it.  In the Short Sun books, we have the=20
story of the Mother, a powerful Strega, on a flooded world.  Later, the=20
neighbor Windcloud talks of humanity as a bunch of birds temporarily stayin=
g=20
on his chimney.  The planet blue is his chimney.  Replacing these terms, we=20
can see the Strega as the Mother, trying to procure a slave who is enamored=
 of=20
her (as Horn is enamored of Seawrack) in order to put him to work to do=20
something of planetary importance.  Has she flooded the planet to make a ho=
me=20
for herself?  She is the "divinity" of winds and storms, isn't she?

The allegorical interpretation I place on the second story is important to =
me.
 Listen to the intro: "Once very long ago, there were two little girls whos=
e=20
houses were only a few steps apart, but were far from any other houses at=20
all."  One little girl was good, the other was a liar and a cheat. The girl=
s=20
played together, grew larger, and got closer.  Then "a little settlement th=
at=20
was nowehere near them grew to a town and broke out in politics".  Then war=20
threatens.  Look at the description of blue and green in the front of the=20
book: one is "better", one is "worse".  They are close together. And the ot=
her=20
planets are farther out.  A "town" has recently broken out in politics -=20
namely, the long sun whorl.  Now notice the inversion at the end of the sto=
ry=20
- the bad girl is revealed to be MORA, not Fava, even though that is what w=
e=20
expect from the story.  I believe this represents the switch that Wolfe has=20
pulled - we expect Blue to be Urth (if we buy into that) because all the=20
details fit from the story - but the revelation of which world is the "bad=20
one" is surprising (if we believe Urth is Green).

Also, I believe that the drama enacted by Horn on Green to clean the sewer =
is=20
a passion play past down to tell the story of Severian, a cultural and worl=
d=20
myth. Notice that it is told in the third person.

Just some comments about those stories - I'm sure they are important, wheth=
er=20
you buy my interpretations or not.

Marc Aramini

--=20

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