(urth) Silk or Horn?

Lee Berman severiansola at hotmail.com
Tue Sep 3 05:53:15 PDT 2013


>Marc Aramini: Of course there is a fragment, but OBW is Horn's 1st 
>person account of the past.  He leaves, and then Silk begins his 1st 
>person PRESENT tense narrative, the story of Horn on green told in 3rd 
>person.

Marc, as previously stated, I don't discount any of the evidence you present.
Perhaps our only real disagreement is on the size of the "fragment".

For me, it seems your model does not account for why Silkhorn appears more
like Horn in dream travel. And it forces the reader to feel bashed over the
head with the depth of Silk's self-delusion. That bashing doesn't seem like 
Wolfe, to me. 

We spent a book and a half thinking Silk is self-delusional about 
being Horn, so why do we need extra emphasis on that at the end of RttW? For me it
is Wolfe telling the reader that there is more Horn in this character than he
previously had led us to believe. 

Jahlee's death also serves this purpose. Would Silk really brutally kill her like 
that just to pretend he is Horn? The emotions there seem real to me, not pretense. 
And only Horn could have felt strongly enough about Nettle to brutally kill his 
"daughter" like that.

In regard to Babbie, I get the impression you are viewing spirit as something
finite in volume. So if Babbie has acquired a portion of Horn's spirit, then
Silkhorn must have less of it.

But my impression is that Wolfe is presenting spirit as something with infinite
potential volume. Like a flame it can be passed on without being diminished. I 
think we see this among the "evil" characters also. Like the essence of Scylla,
pieces of which can be found (I think) in Chenille, in a giant fish in Lake Limna, 
in Oreb, in Cilinia and in Great Scylla on Urth. 		 	   		  


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