(urth) Abaia and the undines
James Wynn
crushtv at gmail.com
Fri Dec 5 19:47:28 PST 2008
> Does anyone thing a Believer in Christ would write a story this full of
> Christian
> symbolism just to yank the rug out from under you and say "sucker, you're
> faith is all a lie"?
I'd be curious to read a point-by-point detailing of all this supposedly
explicit Christian symbolism in "The Book of the New Sun". I'm usually
pretty good at this sort of thing. But I don't find it especially
overwhelming.
I seem to recall that in an interview with James Jordan, Wolfe balked giving
any place to Severian a stand-in for Christ. He explicitly corrected Jordan
by stating he was a "Christ-figure". Well, Christ-figures are a
dime-a-dozen. Raymond Shaw in "The Manchurian Candidate" is a Christ-figure.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Christ-figure.
Yes, there's the who Mediator thing, but that always struck me as more of
the Gnostic symbolism rather than Christian (don't get mad Gnostics, you
know what people mean by "Christian"). If I were going to designate
Severian/Conciliator as something Biblical, it would probably be Elijah or
John the Baptist (who was also Elijah in a sense, so Jesus said) or, better,
*Adam*.
I meant to ask Wolfe in Chicago--but I completely didn't get around to it,
but I did mention it to Nigel--what he would say to someone who stated that
his entire Sun cycle of stories is to Gnosticism as The Chronicles of Naria
are to Orthodox Christianity.
J.
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