This is interesting. Being new to the list, I haven't read those discussions. <div><br></div><div>I'd find it a little surprising that anyone would think Severian was not freely making the decisions which lead him on his path. For example, the compassionate decisions which lead to his exile, or decisions every step of the way that could have made his story completely different. He could have sold the claw immediately for a profit for example.<div>
<br></div><div>Nor is there anything in the story that would lead us to believe that his choices were all optimal in what forces outside him had chosen him for. </div><div><br></div><div>It seems Severian's identity consists in the choices he makes. His being chosen also consists in the choices he makes in the sense that his being chosen was conditioned by those choices rather then the other way around.</div>
<div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 3:49 AM, Daniel Petersen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:danielottojackpetersen@gmail.com" target="_blank">danielottojackpetersen@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Your observation on Commitments that Shape human life contributes fruitfully to a discussion of Wolfe's rendering of 'predestination and freewill' (a major thematic thread of his whole Solar Cycle).<div>
<br></div>
<div>-DOJP<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Bill Burgess <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:whburth@gmail.com" target="_blank">whburth@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div class="h5">
<b style="font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;font-weight:normal"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">In response to the previous thread inquiring into the meaning of the thorn in the claw and what all other symbols, fangs, talons, etc., this might possibly allude to, I thought I’d start a new thread in order to solicit general thoughts, as well as to give my own, as to what symbols mean for Wolfe.</span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">I don’t mean this thread to be about any particular symbol(s), but an inquiry into what symbology itself is. Of course we’ll have to use individual symbols as examples, but that will be only to elucidate how Wolfe uses symbols in general rather than to inquire into what a specific symbol means. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Forgive me if all I say is well known stuff from this list. I’m brand new to this mailing list and have not read through the archives at all, nor have I read any scholarly works on Wolfe; I’ve only read the five books comprising the Book of the New Sun. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">With that, here are some of my own observations with support from the text of TBotNS</span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">1. Symbols REPRESENT human life.</span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></b><div><b style="font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;font-weight:normal"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">That is to say, that the story of an individual human beings’ life, a particular group of human beings lives, or human life in general, can all be represented, in various ways, by various symbols. This means that a symbol can no more be exhaustively defined then a human being or humanity can be. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">In the text, in the very first paragraph, Severian remembers the wisps of river fog threading the spikes in the locked gate like mountain paths and this image is for him a SYMBOL of his exile. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Then after four books, at the very end of TCotA, he tells us that he has carried us, his readers, from </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">“gate to gate -- from the locked and fog shrouded gate of the necropolis, to the cloud racked gate we call the sky, the gate that shall lead me, as I hope, beyond the nearer stars”. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">So, from the locked gate of the graveyard to the gate of Hope -- which is as wide open as the sky. Thus Wolfe expresses his Christianity, but I digress; this isn’t really my point in citing these passages. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">We know that the locked graveyard gate symbolizes Severian’s exile from the guild, but we also know, by the way this is expressed, that Severian sees that exile as a symbol of an even larger Exile, the one that will end on the other side of the sky gate. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The story of his life is Exile. But we could go on forever about what this means without ever exhausting its meaning and could probably find something in every chapter/episode of all four of these books which would add to what Exile means. And whatever we’d find, it is all contained in this one symbol: a locked graveyard gate with fog wisping in it. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">So it is with all symbols.</span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">2. Symbols represent COMMITMENTS that SHAPE human life. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">In the first chapter of TSotT, Severian says that symbols invent us rather than we inventing them.</span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Using the example of the soldier who takes an oath and is given a coin to symbolize that oath, he says they are soldiers at that moment, even though they know nothing of the management of arms. The implication being that they spend the rest of their lives learning the meaning of their commitment. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Over and over this happens to Severian. He commits himself to something that moves him, some image or event becomes a symbol for him, and only later does he learn more about why he was moved, and what his commitments mean for his life. He never stops learning as long as the story of his life continues and this story is the unfolding of what his commitments, and the symbols that caused them, mean.</span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">3. The story of a human life is itself a symbol.</span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">In the passage below, Severian says that Thecla is a symbol of undeserved love (Grace) for him, and says that the force of her life as a symbol did not disappear when she died anymore then what his own life story symbolizes will disappear when he closes the book he is writing. So the lives of people are symbols of something that continues to exist even after they are gone. The great question he ponders, is what these symbols mean in and of themselves, apart from their expression in the lives of human beings </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">“If Thecla had symbolized love of which I felt myself undeserving, as I know now that she did, then did her symbolic force disappear when I locked the door of her cell behind me? That would be like saying that the writing of this book, over which I have labored for so many watches, will vanish in a blur of vermillion when I close it for the last time and dispatch it to the eternal library maintained by the old Ultan. </span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The great question then, that I pondered as I watched the floating island with longing eyes and chafed at my bonds and cursed the hetman in my heart, is that of determining what these symbols mean in and of themselves. We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.” </span></b>
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