Urth Net
silverglass
Hrmm - my argument that the editors had no real insight into the character of the ambiguous protagonist has been turned against me.
Let me rephrase it - the editors are working with two things: the Silk-Horn that they knew and his account, and the tale of events reconstructed from witnesses. However, since they are on Blue and the witnesses are on the whorl, there is very little of that. Instead, they have the words of Silk-Horn. But this is not the Horn that left to find Silk, nor the Silk that lived on the whorl with Hyacinth - this is someone in between. They can place the character as they understand him to be into the events that occurred on the whorl without understanding the precise instant when he became the character they know. (And the text they have puts them in the same boat as us as far as the narrator's identity goes). But they have to use the character they have come to know in their narrative. It is ultimately indeterminable at which point he became that character from their perspective, because Silk isn't verbally talking about it too much - and when he is, he is usually denying it.
The Short Sun books really do create an interpretive problem - everyone has a "feeling", but the very construction makes it hard to prove anything one way or the other. Just as there are clues that "He is Silk", there seem to be clues, including the denials coming from his own mouth, that "he is not Silk". I can quote a hundred times when the narrator denies being Silk - but we all know it isn't true. Bizarre, isn't it? Why does it work that way? At the end of the book, I feel 100% confident saying - "there is Silk", as do most of us.
Marc