From: "James Wynn" 
Subject: RE: (urth) Jonas <> Pinocchio 
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 13:43:03 -0500

Regarding Alga's background on the Tin Woodman:

Ok. Now I have brand new interest in the sequels to "The Wizard of Oz", but
I still don't see more than a superficial connection to Jonas. Jolenta was
"in love" with a man who was *entirely* synthetic...ah! Perhaps you're
saying she was in love with Baldanders "right-arm man"! Nice flag, that
links Jolenta to Nimmie Amee. But still, she was rejected by him. And she
never loved his artificiality. If Baldanders or Jonas would or could have
maintained her beauty products she would have loved either of them as much.

But the big thing is that ...Jonas *becomes* human, right? He doesn't repair
the robot parts. He repairs the human prosthetics to the point of growing a
whole body. He becomes the human Miles. This surely was his intent when
going to be "repaired". Is it not generally agreed that Jonas left Severian
and became Miles? I searched the list on this and didn't find anything to
the contrary.

The Tin Woodman may have been an *inspiration* to Wolfe's images of
synthetic people, but can the connection be drawn any more tightly?

-- Crush





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