So, okay: Severian eats Thecla's cooked corpse with the gland of the alzabo, which allows him access to her memories, and this is what basically makes him HER, in a metaphysical/supernatural sense, in a way that other people can detect throughout the rest of the story.
But Vodalis, and that other chick, and everyone else in the secret dinner ate from Thecla and took the alzabo's gland too, and from our glimpses of them going forward they don't seem to have been affected by it in nearly the same way Severian was. Is this just because Severian was destined to be the Autarch, and so there is something about him that particularly lets others live again in his spirit? Is this what the Hierodules are getting at in their focus on him?
Noah Bennett
I don't think that anything is explicitly stated about this but it's implied that most of Vodalus' goons have performed the ritual at some point but from what we see of them none are affected as Severian is. The closest we see to this outside of the Autarch is the Alzabo, which seems to, at least to some small and deliberately self-deluding degree, sincerely think that it's acting in the interests of those it has already eaten.
We don't see enough of Vodalus and Thea to really say decisively that they aren't strongly affected by their consumption of Thecla but it does seem likely that all they got were memories, and if any personality got through it was only a shadow of who Thecla was, whereas Severian literally becomes her. Severian's miraculous powers resurrecting her spirit after her body was destroyed does seem plausible considering what else he can do but the behaviour of the Alzabo and the old Autarch suggest otherwise.
Jaxson Watson
Severian has perfect memory. Whenever someone else eats the flesh of the dead, they can access their memories just like we might. Or maybe worse. So when Vodalus captures Severian and the Autarch, Vodalus doesn't recognize who the Autarch is. Even though he should be able to, because Thecla does. Severian remembers everything, he's the computer, in his own memory and the memories of those he absorbs. Including the memories of himself from other timelines. The reason why he is the New Sun, according to the Heirodoles, is his perfect memory. When he becomes Autarch, he can access all the memories of his predecessors, exactly, but still to summon those memories requires time. That's why he doesn't go to Yesod till after his reign and writing The Book of the New Sun.
Brayden Thompson
>Severian has perfect memory
I thought the unreliable narrator meme meant that he didn't have perfect memory, he just sort of acts like he does.
Jason Stewart
So was Jonas a cyborg or a machine that stole human flesh? he does but he may choose to lie or misdirect
Jayden Sanders
Right. Thanks.
Carter Diaz
Listen, it only works for severian. He thinks the claw does it, for everyone else it is temporary and incomplete, but this fool can raise the dead (wihout the claw- see his first meeting with triskele, "the smallest of those dead." No one else there can do that.) He resurrects thecla inside him
Austin Ramirez
His unreliability is in his passive misunderstanding of events.
Jose Campbell
Triskele never died and resurrecting Thecla is a big stretch
Levi Jackson
Okay, so does is he intentionally deceptive about his recollections? Or is is it all 'passive misunderstanding' as you put it? Or both?
I want to understand how accountable I should hold Severian for his mischaracterization of events.
Jacob Thomas
You're wrong son.
Ryan Cruz
Sev even outright says thecla stayed with him because she came to life inside him - it is a metaphorical resurrection but the text is clear he experiences it different than others there
Jonathan Sullivan
When he resurrects dorcas, he doesnt know he has the claw. Later, the claw is just a thorn. It was only special because it encountered his blood in the past (in urth of the new sun) As first seemed the case, it was he and not the claw, and a power he always had. What does this sentence mean? He was the smallest of those dead. Who is dead in that sentence?
Adrian Morgan
His "lying" is vastly overatated by people who have nothing better to talk about. Mostly he doesnt understand what is working and affecting wvents around him, but he does report things a bit circuitously.
Luis Hughes
Thanks user. This was actually my original sense of things. The lying meme really messed with my sense of the book.
Samuel Hill
This. He doesn't strictly lie very often so much as he's just kind of stupid, or at least ignorant, and doesn't get what's happening a lot of the time. He describes things accurately, but you're missing the context and understanding that would make certain things make sense.
He only strictly lies a few times about a few things, like him having sex with Thecla.
John Evans
you really must read the damn essays written by Gene Wolfe to understand intricacies like this.
Jackson White
Of course Triskele was dead. Severian finds him in a big pile of dead dogs.
Why even include it in the story, if it isn't an early intimation of Severian's powers?
Robert White
>Including the memories of himself from other timelines.
Luis Morris
Editors made him add a cute doggo for the inevitable Disney movie, "Castle of the Otter".
Isaac Fisher
The ones about engineering?
Evan Gray
Urth of the New Sun bb
Severians crawling all over dat starship
Julian Morgan
He thinks he does. It's also not the same one writing all parts of the books.
Kayden Martinez
I think one of severian's lies is that there are multiple severians and timelines - that he just doesn't get how else he could be Apu Punchau and the conciliator at the conclusion of Citadel so he makes up these other alternative versions, and that each of these eidolons is still Severian because the soul is the permanent and immortal center of being and not the physical body that dies. ... However, maybe those eidolons started when he "nearly" drowned in the Gyoll at the start, thus explaining the skull he finds at the end of Urth. But a copy in this case is still the same being, as the soul is beyond the laws of the physical.
Lincoln Bennett
>that time Serverian fucked Joletna on a rowboat and made Dorcas cry what a slayer
Jeremiah Phillips
Dorcas did it first.
Gabriel Gutierrez
why do he can raise the dead, anyway? that always gets me i imagine dorcas sobbing in the river while everyone else eats eggs for some reason
Brayden Carter
I got a raging hard-on from that part. Like, she's just laying there, so fat and ripe and fertile, and he just fucking pumps her. Doesn't the book itself actually use the word "pump," or something equally evocative? It was arousing.
Dylan Gutierrez
I think the it was something like "unloading my manhood into her again and again" Big Gene knows his shit
Xavier Russell
>Dr. Talks was simultaneously outraged and delighted What did he mean by this?
Parker Stewart
Between her legs was a freshly hatched chick. Barf.
Jeremiah Moore
He reveled in her creamy amplitude, actually. So just get your mind out of the gutter, you cabbage looping Philistine.
Landon Wright
>I had poured out my manhood again and again with Jolenta in the nenuphar boat. really makes me think
Samuel Gutierrez
>That time when Serverian fucked a young version of his grandmother slayer indeed
Austin Wright
I'd fuck Jolenta even if I knew she was my future grandmother
Alexander Moore
Dorcas is his grandmother
Levi Edwards
Yeah her too
Joshua Rivera
>THIS is what they took from a story about the cosmic rejuvenation of humanity kill yourselves faggots
Grayson Howard
not my fault severian spends half the bloody thing talking about how he wants to fuck all the women around him