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Sword of the Lictor, chapters 17 to 20
Severian goes back to find the woman, old man, and child, not wanting to have given them a death sentence. He saves the child, little Severian. He tries to explain some things, and tells him a story. The two are captured by some sort of sorcerers, with magic that Severian speculates is to avert the coming of the New Sun.
Comments
Again I liked the geographic sweep of this section. However, this part even more than the previous made me think that his coverage of ground is infeasibly fast! I don't think he has the experience to move with the indicated speed, especially with little Severian at his side. It is certainly true that the rate at which different people travel varies widely - I did Hadrian's Wall in 7 days without any real stressing of myself, and the fastest male time recorded is 16.5 hours (fastest female 18.5). But Severian seems to eat up ground in ways that I don't find credible. That said, it's nowhere near so ridiculous as the TV version of Game of Thrones, where travel times were hopelessly presented and increasingly ludicrous as the seasons went on.
And it was a real discipline stopping at the appointed chapter end and not rushing on to find out what happened next...
I kind of felt that Severian showed some sense of moral duty towards the family, although it was something of a case of too little too late.
(I thought chapter 20 was for next week, but it didn't take long to read it anyway.)
Agreed. It's perhaps a sign that Severian is changing more. First he was guided by duty, then self-interest (including thinking with his genitals). Now perhaps he's starting to think about others.
I liked the bit of world-building in here with the zoanthrops being people who've destroyed their consciousness, and the fact that the sun is so faint some stars are visible in the daytime.
Zoanthrops are a chilling thing to have in a world. Not only does it speak to the nihilism of the volunteers, but it's a power that could so easily be abused. (They also reminded me a little of the Different Drummers from The Ballard of Halo Jones, if anyone remembers them.)
I have no clue what Severian thinks he can get by taking this boy. Not his usual sport. But since he's the prophesied golden boy, I'm sure it will all turn to his benefit somehow.
You're right- my mistake. Chapter 19 was a more natural break point. Oh well.
Only chapters 21 to 23 for the next instalment.
More particular comments people have homed in on. There are some chilling implications regarding the zoanthropes. And Severian is showing signs of actual moral development. I think @NeilNjae called it correctly, that it began with duty, then ego (and his genitals), and now some consideration for others. We'll see, but I think this moral development is thematically a big part of what this sequence has to be about - and Severian had to be reprehensible in an ordinary way for this to work. I think the book succeeds admirably in making him ordinarily reprehensible, but can it redeem him? And what about those he's hurt, chiefly Dorcas? And some form of justice for Jolenta?
Re-reading my comment above, I am coming across as very nasty towards Severian, but I do not like and do not trust him, and he generally takes five steps back for every one he takes forward.
To be fair, at every instance so far, Severian has more than justified your distrust and dislike. With every seemingly benevolent act, I can't help wondering what awful thing he's going to do next. It's going to take a lot to rise above that, and maybe he never can.
Perhaps that will be the moral of the story? Not that power corrupts, but that only the corrupt (and depraved) seek and gain power.
The first book of Halo Jones, a miniseries from 2000AD (British SFF comic), was set in an SF consumer/capitalist culture, large wealth disparity, mass youth unemployment, etc. Kind of like the 1980s with arcologies. The "Different Drummers" were a youth movement that rejected that world. Drummers got a surgical implant that played an internal drum beat that drowned out everything else: they moved to the beat of a different drum. Throughout Halo Jones, you'd see groups of a few Drummers in the background, gently headbanging to their own private beats.
Any comments on the story of Frog? I had trouble parsing it, but may re-read it. Definitely evokes Mowgli's story, and a quick search reveals the following from the Kipling Society:
I noticed Frog is called a 'Son of Meschia', and if you'll recall Meschia and Meschiane were referenced in Dr. Talos play - they are the first man and woman. In the Wardrobe series, Lewis often references humans (who are 'other' in the land if Narnia) as 'sons of Adam' or 'daughter's of Eve', so the use of 'son of Meschia seems consistent. A quick google of Meschia and Meschiane turns up a reference - to Psychology of the Unconscious by Carl Jung, who in turn references Sabine Baring-Gould from 1871, from which we find a reference to Middle Persion myths (see below), which in turn leads us to the Avestan version of their names and... How much of this book is based on Zoroastrian myth? Jahi is the daughter of Mashyana.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashya_and_Mashyana
Wikipedia's version:
Baring-Gould's version:
It seems like the start of a story, and not the end. We get a lot of detail about how Frog was brought up, but then he meets his sister and it just ends.
There's something in there setting up the tension between hunters/ranchers and farmers, but it gets cut off too early to explore those.
And thanks for the research on Zoroastrianism! Most interesting.
It's mashup of Mowgli and Romulus and Remus that went nowhere.
> It's mashup of Mowgli and Romulus and Remus that went nowhere.
I'd spotted the Romulus/Remus link... it feels like Severian never quite finished the tale
> According to the creation myth as described in the Bundahishn, Ohrmuzd's (Ahura Mazda) sixth creation is the primeval beast Gayomart (Gayamarətan), who was neither male nor female...
> Meschia and Meschiane lived apart; and after that time they met, and Meschiane bare twins."[6]
There's a strand of rabbinic thought that holds that the first human creature was androgynous, being a fusion of male and female (either side by side or back to back, but either way deliberately not face to face as though to preclude any sexual implications). This androgyne was later divided into man and woman. The rabbinic motive was to try to reconcile the two different creation accounts in Genesis.
It's also intriguing that so many world creation accounts involve twins - I looked up a few of them a while ago when writing Timing, and it's a definite global motif. The specific details vary a lot, but twins are clearly of great fascination and significance to people round the globe
Lexicon
Teratornis: An extinct North American condor.