Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 10:59:22 -0500
From: James Jordan 
Subject: Re: (urth) Two Silk questions

At 09:05 AM 7/14/2002 +0800, you wrote:
>Two questions which bug me about SIlk, and for which I don't see any clear 
>answers or developed theories in the archives:
>
>(1) His "other" parents. At some point Silk has a vision which includes 
>two sets of parents (memory hazy on details). We know who his "host" 
>parents are; what about the others? Is there anything which gives us a hint?

         Silk is dead at the time, buried and not breathing for 30 minutes. 
The other couple are his biological parents. He meets them in the 
afterlife, before being sent back.

>
>(2) In a response to questions a while back, Wolfe says that Silk, in some 
>broad sense, is a member of the guild of torturers (under whatever their 
>official name is). Also, there is some kind of hint to the effect that 
>Silk makes some kind of appearance in the events of the Book of the New 
>Sun. How are these rather gnomic intimations to be interpreted?

         You have not finished reading the Short Sun books, so we won't 
tell you about whether or not Silk appears in the Severian books. The 
precise name of the torturer's guild is the Order of Seekers of Truth and 
Penitence, a name that would fit Silk and the Church as well. Wolfe 
probably means more than that, possibly that as the State tortures 
(executes) criminals themselves, Silk as the Church slaughters animals as 
substitutes for human criminality (and in the Christian eucharist, 
re-presents the slaughter of Christ for human criminality).

Nutria


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