Welcome to this week's session of the Urth Book Club! Today's topic of discussion wil center around chapters 6-10 of Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer, chapters 6-10.
Please be sure to not spoil the book (everyone did a great job of it last week)
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Man, Severian has the weirdest fucking dreams.
Reposting from the chat to highlight Wolfe's use of floriography. This use is best exemplified in the flowers Dorcas will wear in her hair as the series progresses. But you might already find that the nenuphars of Gyoll (i.e. Egyptian blue lotuses) are symbolically linked to the Sun. From Wiki:
>At Heliopolis, the origin of the world was taught to have been when the sun god Ra emerged from a lotus flower growing in "primordial waters".
If it's your first read-through, I wouldn't recommend that you spend too much time hunting these meanings down — hopefully, your enjoyment of the book comes only from the book itself. But if you're interested, here is a link to one text I use quite often:
gutenberg.org
that wasn't even the weirdest one desu
What are the exultants? It's fairly clear that the towers are spacecraft and Master Gurloes can use their communications. I can come up with wild theories like aliens or transhumans but Severian understands less about what is going on than a hypothetical narrator from our time or some of the other characters, so I doubt any of this will ever be unambiguous.
They're normal humans that get really tall through a secret method that is left for the reader to speculate on.
Im only a few chapters ahead, but I was referring to the one about Severian flying on a pterodactyl (I think thats what it was?) while he was sleeping in the giant's bed
It's a social class, nobility. Characterized by height. Not so far out of range that I'd assume more than good genetics and nutrition, though.
Feel free to doubt this, as I can't remember where I heard this idea, but I thought that the exultants benefit from some genetic advantage brought about by alien technology. Of course, the simpler explanation is that the book is set on a dying world, which means that there have been countless generations to "improve" human physiology through sexual selection. Since they're a noble class, they likely only breed with one another, thus reinforcing their unique genetic traits.
not manlets.
>Then he and Master Palaemon expounded to me that secret which lies at the heart of the guild and is the more sacred because no liturgy celebrates it, and it lies naked in the lap of the Pancreator.
What did he mean by this? Serious question.
Sev ends up disbanding the guild in the end, so it's strange to see him referring to it as sacred.
he doesn't really though. in Urth he says he's technically a master of the Torturer's guild while autarch
They are a group of humans genetically modified so as to present a unique, identifying appearence in order to mark them as a hereditary leader class. This is cognate with things like infant skull deformation as a means to differentiate classes.
pretty sure in the sword of the lictorhe starts referring himself as a master rather than apprentice
that was abdiesus
He first refers to himself as such when he comes down from the mountain and introduces himself to the hetman.
well yeah that's just lying to get his way. No good reason for him to lie about being a master of a guild he supposedly destroyed. He implies that he's going to lock up the torturers and let them worry about their fates before reforming the guild.
yeah that's probably the weirdest. that one makes almost complete sense later actually. Some dreams are more confusing and don't get explained.
nice I am going to take part in this. Been meaning to reread them. Are we going through short and long sun books as well?
Here's my modest contribution to these threads, I'll try to post new ones for the weeks to come
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Dayum, user got skills
This one especially has an appropriately Mervyn Peake air
Eh, why spell it out like this? I like my Wolfeian astronaut references obscure and ambiguous so retards like me have something to argue about on the internet all day.
This is pretty cool. Thanks user.
Not him, but there's not much way to do the same obscurity that Wolfe creates. Could add some more specific references to, say, Renaissance painters or the hall of paintings in general, to make it look more at odds with the setting. Gets more ambitious than a sketch pretty quickly, though.
Should have skipped it, then. Draw Ultan with that same gay cane Borges always has or something.
So the House Azure's Thecla isn't Thecla herself, but is a clone given over to the autarch and works as a prefigurement of Severian taking the role. Why did she (and thea's copy) end up there? Was the House Azure intended for the autarch in Nessus, and kept as a tradition?
Bump
Don't bump with spoilers, bump with interesting discussion on chapters 6-10.
To call these amazing would be an understatement. These are breathtaking, phenomenal job user, I look forward to future drawings.
Here's the discord link to the URTH BOOK CLUB:
discord.gg
That chapter was so good. I wonder if HBO or whoever could properly adapt it.
I don't think it's possible to make a good TV/film adaptation of BotNS. Too many plot points would be ruined if you didn't have to rely on Sev's narration to understand what was going on.
Oh damn, I didn't even think of that. You're probably right.
the answer comes in claw of the conciliator
I wanna know why Gurloes thinks letting severian fuck a prostitute will cure his teenage horniness.
They're just reposts dudes
Beware of spoilers in here. Images for the entirety of Shadow of the Torturer:
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And what's the logic in sending him to a brothel that has a prostitute that's dressed up like the girl they're about to torture?
that was probably roche's idea since he didn't know how severian got gurloes to order him to go to a brothel. As for Roche letting him pick her I guess he didn't want to cockblock his bro.