(urth) Short Sun notes: Inhumi and their sources

Lee Berman severiansola at hotmail.com
Wed Jul 10 07:23:06 PDT 2013


>Andrew Mason: I suspect that for each featured inhumu/a we are meant to be able to work
>out who their source is.

I find the blended identities found within inhumi to be very confusing. Likewise for the
merged identities within other characters like Babbie, Oreb, Pig, Kypris/Hyacynth, etc. I 
appreciate and admire your fortitude in trying to map these out.

I've been lazy, and content to take a broad-based interpretation of all that. For the inhumi 
I find them to be Wolfean allegory on the presence of blood-sucking parasites among us; the 
liars and criminals and drug addicts who only take from society without contributing.

The conflation of inhumi with Horn's children and surrogate children seems a bit like the
Shakespearean lament: "how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child".
Since I think only Number 5 and Severian rival Horn as a Gene Wolfe literary avatar, I 
suspect there is masked autobiography going on here as well as a general statement on 
humanity and the difficulties of parenthood. 		 	   		  


More information about the Urth mailing list