<div>Roy,</div>
<div>I'm glad you've taken up this thread as I didn't feel I was doing it justice.</div>
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<div>> If I may make a suggestion, I think it might be a good idea to shrug off the whole crime-and-punishment, Cain-and-Abel idea when you read TS again. It has colored my view of the story for so long that it's hard to shake, and I'm not sure that it's really valid. After all, such moral/ethical considerations have nothing to do with a dog like London's Buck.
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<div>I think you may be right about reading in the specifics of the Cain/Abel story; however, I'm not sure I agree with the last sentence. Imagine you're Gene Wolfe reading the last two chapters of CotW. What strikes you as significant there?
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<div>> There is another point of correspondence Matthew G. didn't mention, Buck's "dreams".</div>
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<div>Yes, I forgot about those dreams. (They were rather implausible dreams, you have to admit.) And I did mean to mention Buck's forgetfulness.</div>
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<div>> There's another point of correspondence between CotW and TS. Buck and the other dogs dug holes in the snow to keep warm at night. Cutthroat tried that one night and almost froze to death.</div>
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<div>Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't even make the connection.</div>
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<div>> Since Cutthroat is clearly not native to the planet and came to be there by way of the beings on the Sleigh, is he the same type of being as they or is he not?</div>
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<div>I think he is not. I think Cutthroat is a man like us. Remember Master Malrubius's analogy somewhere in TbotNS (I think before they leave Nessus) about Man's relationship to the Increate being of the same nature as Triskele's relationship to Severian? I think this is how we are to understand TS. In terms of CotW, Cutthroat's relationship to the Great Sleigh is analogous to Buck's relationship to John Thornton. I think there may be other Sleigh dogs like Cutthroat, but I think there are also Mushers, or at least a Musher. The Sleigh dogs are men; the Mushers are, in some sense, divine.
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<div>> If he is not -- if he is a dogman, then the same sort of genetic tinkering has been going on elsewhere that produced the local beastmen.</div>
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<div>Does there have to have been tinkering?</div>
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<div>> then where do they get off punishing a dog for acting like a dog and not like a man, particularly if they have been *treating* him like a dog? That is, *if* he was being punished.</div>
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<div>Perhaps not. He may simply be a lost dog like Buck. He may also be being tested and perfected like Abraham. Cutthroat's story seems too similar to Latro's for us to leave out some discussion of Soldier....</div>
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<div>...which I will happily leave to someone else.</div>
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<div>Matt G.</div>