green man

maa32 · 20 Jul 2003, 05:00 · from urth-v0307.mbox · original

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From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: (urth) green man
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 22:00:20 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0307-3705 at digest.urth.net>
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Well, I have always favored the idea that Silkhorn is the proto-green man,=20
eaten (but spit out) by a tree and reconstituted with chloroplasts in his=20
blood so that he never has to eat, but gets really sick in winter when the=20
lighting isn't so good. (Through reverse endosymbiosis: tree eats man)  BUT=20
... Silk isn't green.  Maybe it's like freckles - you need a few generation=
s=20
of good healthy chloroplasts to have them so prominent that people become=20
green.  So I don't know.

Someone did make a fascinating claim: that Silk's power to change stories l=
ike=20
he did with Fava could indeed have affected Severian's narrative: Silk didn=
't=20
want to be in it so he changed it up, or Silk wound up in it somehow even=20
though that's not how it really went.  What a neat power to have to solve a=
ll=20
contradictions and paradoxes!  "Silk wanted it written that way=20
subconsciously"  Talk about metanarrative abilities.  And he was "told" the=20
story of Severian by his passion play in the chapter of In Green's Jungles=20
where Silk tells his story of "the man on green" : a man with a wicked swor=
d=20
and a light, embued with power from an extraordinary, previous world-cycle=20
source, clears out the trash of humanity and brings a big flood, and in tha=
t=20
flood loses his light just as Severian lost the claw in Lake Diuturna.  So =
the=20
passion play would tell him all about Severian through the odd mutable myth=20
technique, which he could then mutate beyond all recognition at a whim or=20
write himself into.

Marc Aramini

--=20

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