(urth) Sev's family tree

[Son of Witz]

On Jan 26, 2011, at 8:54 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
>> Mr Thalassocrat: I think it’s possible that Wolfe scattered red herrings around as fake clues
>> to Severian’s family tree, with the intention of driving overly-attentivereaders insane.
> 
> 

Lee Berman:
> 
> My current thinking is that many of these clues should be considered as pink herrings. They are meant 
> to steer our thinking in a certain direction but not provide a conclusive, universally acceptable answer.
> 

Yes, I think there are a lot of pink herrings. That's a good coinage. 
 I think that is his M.O. It gets your imagination working.

> 
>> I posit that Sev has Magic Genes which somehow or other can draw or resonate with or whatever the New Sun.
> 
> This would seem to parallel Borski's theory that the adjective "golden" is a marker for Severian's family.
> 

Pft!
I think the reason Dorcas has "golden" attached to her at several points is that it is an alchemical metaphor.  She is Gold, weighed down by Lead. Severian revives her, and she casts out the lead.  At that point she seems to come out of a confusion that found her following Severian as a lover and she goes on a search for her true lover. 


> 
>> I also want to tie in Casdoe’s family.
> 
> 
> 
> My own theory cuts through some of the complexity of your scenario by guessing that Severian gets the gender of 
> Casdoe's "father" wrong (doesn't he show general confusion by switching his assessment of parenthood from Casdoe
> to Becan?). Two pink herring sorts of evidence for this: 
> 
> 1. Nobody in Casdoe's family ever mentions the old person. The neglect was always a clue sign for me. It avoids 
> the use of gender-revealing pronouns.
> 
> 2. The old person speaks so admiringly and longingly of Fechin you might think there was a homosexual attraction- 
> unless it was hetero-
> 
> This option allows Fechin to be ancestor to Casdoe's family directly without intervening Nessus members. (Casdoe's 
> mother is the cryptically mentioned Herena from Thrax, iirc). And Fechin was a travelling artist.
> 
> (and Cyriaca's uncle was a travelling rare book aficionado. Could magic genes also draw Severian and Cyriaca together?
> FWIW, I think Agia's misericorde weapon ties her to Cyriaca)                         
> 

I think you are putting way too much into these imagined gender confusions and homosexual guesses.  If they meant anything, they would reverberate through the subtext. I'm sorry, but I do not detect a homsexual subtext, or any reason to think Severian is confused about gender.  The Agia-Assassin confusion is nigh-impossible.

Dunnoh, but I think while you are sniffing for clues, you might be missing the extremely potent symbolism on display in regards to Casdoe's house, which I'll try to highlight.

I do think there is reason to see Casdoe's family as a symbolic family to Severian.
When he meets them, Severian has put Torture behind him, and is about to go through the various battles in SWORD, which, as I've described eleswhere, seem to be based on a vertical heirachy of Foes of the Increate that result in him truly becoming the Conciliator.  He has just DECENDED across an enormous swath of geologic time when he scales the cliff and arrives at a symbol of the most basic form of human existence.  

This line is the kicker: "It seemed to me the archetype of those caves into which, as scholars teach, humanity has crept again at the lowest point of each cycle of civilization" and he goes on to say that it is the most romantic place he ever was, in retrospect.

So, at the "lowest point" syncs up well with his climb and the symbolism of going back past all the grand ages of ruined civilizations symbolized by the wall.  So what does he find there?  Why, a boy named Severian! 

Why does this matter?  Considering that Severian brings the deluge and sets humanity back to the caves of civilazation's low point, it is very relevant.  THIS is the example of the humanity he wants to save, of a life he might like to have lead. The presence of a boy with his name makes him identify with it.  So when Typhon zaps the life out of Little Severian, it is a huge indicator to Sev as to what Typhon has to offer. Sev knows which side he is on; that of the humble human.  This is another reason that it is symbolically problematic to suggest Severian is part alien. He saves the world for humanity, and he sets things back to the simplicity of Casdoe's lifestyle.

~witz