The Shadow of the Torturer: Chapters XXIX through XXXV

Well, my beloved long suffering readers of this belated discussion of the finale of this first novel within the Book of the New Sun series, your wait has ended.

These final six chapters are very straightforward and simple from the perspective of plot.

Agia and Agilus, her brother, are responsible for the troubles ailing Severian up until the moment he died and also resurrected, though none really understand that bit of things. Severian is brought to be healed by Dorcas and then Severian works as executioner for Agilus, who he goes to visit in the prison. This is where he learns all that has happened and what the twins’ scheme was. From there, he spends a night considering his life and listening to other condemned. Then he kills Agilus, ensures no one eats his corpse—more on this later—and from there he runs into Dr Talos and Baldanders to perform his part in the play. Now reunited with them, he spends the night and has a dream that he feels worth sharing. As they go to leave Nessus, there’s a bit of a commotion on the way out and the narrative ends.

From one gate to another.

Here I pause, having carried you, reader, from gate to gate—from locked and fog-shrouded gate of our necropolis to this gate with its curling wisps of smoke, this gate which is perhaps the largest in existence, perhaps the largest ever to exist. It was by entering that first hate that I set my feet upon the road that brought me to this second gate. And surely when I entered this second gate, I began again to walk a new road. From that great gate forward, for a long time, it was to be outside the City Imperishable and among the forests and grasslands, mountains and jungles of the north.

Severian the narrator is constructing this narrative and it’s interesting that he often finds these points of symmetry. Just as he chose to begin with Vodalus and then go back to what brought him to that moment, so here he ends the first part of his narrative with a structure in mind.

Of course, when we zoom back out and consider Gene Wolfe, the author, we can also understand that this Book of the New Sun was written as a single book that was split up by the publisher. And so the novel ending where it does was more for commercial than artistic reasons, but he masks this cleverly, I think, with Severian’s own purposeful description of why he’s ending it when he’s ending it.

But let’s go back. Because if this series was just me describing the plot of the book, it would be rather dull, not to mention borderline pointless. I do think there are parts of the novel coming up that do require a bit of handholding, but, for the most part, what happens is simply what happens.

After executing Agilus, Severian considers the logistics of death a bit. Including how he, the executioner, must carry away the head, and how the body must be kept safe from corpse eaters.

This is something we’ve heard before. In fact, the novel begins with Vodalus stealing a corpse to eat and with people prowling the necropolis to protect the corpses of their loved ones from those wishing to eat them.

We have seen nothing about starvation or privation in the novel. And Vodalus is a noble, so clearly not one starving. They were looking for a specific corpse.

The question is why.

And the answer is not here. At least not yet.

Severian considers his love for Dorcas, here, And I think we ought to remember what he’s said about love and the relationship between men and women. To Severian, women are to be dominated. And they want to be dominated.

Dorcas is young, pretty, and pliable. And so she seems willing to be dominated. Not even only willing, but she may require it. She’s like a newborn in the world, with no memory of her life before she and Severian dragged one another from the water where she very likely was a corpse for an indeterminant amount of time. Possibly decades, if what we learned about the corpse pool was correct.

Severian is surprised by how much he’s paid for execution and considers paying his way to Thrax by practicing his trade, but Dorcas would prefer he not do it.

Dorcas seemed to draw the brown mantle closer about her. “I was hoping you wouldn’t have to practice it again at all. At least, not for a long time. You were so ill afterward, and I don’t blame you.”

“It was only nerves—I was afraid that something would go wrong.”

“You pitied him. I know you did.”

“I suppose so. He was Agia’s brother, and like her, I think, in everything except sex.”

“You miss Agia, don’t you? Did you like her so much?”

“I only knew her for a day—much less time than I have known you already. If she had had her way, I’d be dead now. One of those two averns would have been the end of me.”

“But the leaf didn’t kill you.”

I still recall the tone she used when she told me that; indeed, if I close my eyes now, I can hear her voice again and renew the shock I felt as I realized that ever since I had sat up to see Agilus still grasping his plant, I had been avoiding the thought. The lead had not killed me, but I had turned my mind from my from my survival just as a man suffering from a deadly sickness manages by a thousand tricks never to look death squarely; or rather, as a woman alone in a large house refrains from looking into mirrors, and instead busies herself with trivial errands, so that she may catch no glimpse of the thing whose feet she hears at times on the stairs.

Interestingly, Severian immediately drives his own thoughts away from this question.

His comment on the duration of knowing them is interesting to me. He knew Agia for less than a day and has now known Dorcas several days longer.

But who do you feel that you know better, dear reader?

And what does that tell us about Severian?

He then discovers the Claw of the Conciliator in his possession and realizes that Agia must’ve stolen it from the temple they smashed up and hid it with Severian’s possessions because she knew she would be searched and not trusted.

The Claw of the Conciliator!

But what is this?

Again, we know nothing of this but we can deduce that it’s important enough to have a religion hold it sacred. It seems possible that it has some supernatural powers and may be the reason Severian survived the avern. More than that, it may be the reason Dorcas has returned to the living.

Or perhaps it’s only a beautiful stone.

Severian and Dorcas then see a city floating above the city that is both real and substantial but gone so quickly that it feels like a dream. Like a hallucination.

And here again we must understand this book as being influenced by and an ode to the science fiction and fantasy that Wolfe loves. We have the massive Cthulu-esque monsters of the deep ocean and floating castles/cities and inversions of tropes and loving embraces of tropes.

I think Le Guin describes Wolfe as SF’s Herman Melville in part because of this playfulness and the narrative slipperiness and tricks, but also because Melville was a writer very much in conversation with the writing of his time, though one not appreciated until after he was dead and buried. But Melville wrote his novels as a conversation with other writers of his time, most especially Nathaniel Hawthorne.

More than all that, though, there’s a strong postmodern streak in Wolfe and especially this novel. We see that in the framing, the metanarrative of it all, but also in these allusions and references to other works of the past and present.

And we see this even more in the following chapter, The Play, which begins with almost biblical exegesis for what they witnessed, but he uses the brown book of myths to make his points.

“That’s what I mean, something like that. The brown book is a collection of myths of the past, and it has a section listing all the keys of the universe—all the things people have said were The Secret after they had talked to mystagogues on far worlds or studied the popul vuh of the magicians, or fasted in the trunks of holy trees. Thecla and I used to read them and talk about them, and one of them was that everything, whatever happens, has three meanings. The first is its practical meaning, what the book calls, ‘the thing the plowman sees.’ The cow has taken a mouthful of grass, and it is real grass, and a real cow—that meaning is as important and true as either of the others. The second is the reflection of the world about it. Every object is in contact with all others, and thus the wise can learn of the others by observing the first. That might be called the soothsayers’ meaning, because it is the one such people use when they prophesy a fortunate meeting from the tracks of serpents or confirm the outcome of a love affair by putting the elector of one suit atop the patroness of another.”

“And the third meaning?” Dorcas asked.

“The third is the transubstantial meaning. Since all objects have their ultimate origin in the Pancreator, and all were set in motion by him, so all must express his will—which is the higher reality.”

“You’re saying that what we saw was a sign.”

I shook my head. “The book is saying that everything is a sign.”

Perhaps none of you have ever considered the bible much but there are those who consider different ways of reading and interpreting the bible. History, prophecy, and so on. As in, there is the reading of this is the thing that happened. Then there is the reading that this is a prophecy of what’s to come. And there are other interpretative lenses as well.

Since this isn’t a series about the bible, I’ll leave it at that, but Wolfe, a Catholic, included this, I feel, for those of us who have spent any time with these questions of the bible or had to sit through any biblical studies lessons. And he just tosses the whole thing in here, which is interesting for metanarrative reasons as well.

Is Severian not writing his own story?

He is a fan of signs and symbols, even beginning his story with one, and ending this first part of the narrative with a symbolic symmetry. And so we have Severian telling us, his audience, that perhaps he’s doing something similar, which is to write something with different registers and audiences in mind.

For he is making his own myth and the myth is his life, which he alleges to remember perfectly, yet he withholds information from us for dramatic purposes.

For example, these discussions with Thecla don’t enter the narrative until now.

We have learned much about his time with Thecla only after. Like the story of Father Inire’s mirrors, we are given stories of his relationship with Thecla only after she’s dead.

And I think this is a point of interest when we consider who Severian loves.

There are three: Thecla, Agia, and Dorcas.

Dorcas, though his longtime companion, barely makes a dent on the narrative. Thecla and Agia stand much larger in the narrative, though Dorcas is his greatest love.

Perhaps this is because of the way they challenged him. The way they were so much themselves, separate from him. Strong in their own right and not needing him.

Dorcas accepts his dominion and so she becomes nearly invisible. Yet this is the greater love.

There’s a lesson here, at least if our goal is to understand Severian.

One thing I love about the way this narrative works is that it often seems bumbling and haphazard and random. This philosophical discussion is interrupted by them running into Dr Talos’ play, which they are also to act in without any preparation or even conversation. Dr Talos sees them while they’re in the middle of a performance and tells his audience that the rest of the players have arrived: Death and Innocence.

And so Severian and Dorcas join the performance!

I also just found it hilarious that Dr Talos pauses the play at various points to demand more money, saying the play will not finish without more money.

It just seems so hilarious but also accurate and true. He heightens the drama, pulls the audience in, then, at the point of highest impact and interest, he holds out his money to demand more.

And what happens after they pay up?

Baldanders terrifies the audience, charging after them.

It’s a brilliant sort of comedy. A coercive bit of fun.

We also meet Jolenta whose body defies reason. She is, in essence, the physical embodiment of teenage male desire. Every movement she makes is sexualized and her physique and proportions seem to threaten the stability of her spine.

Pornographic in appearance, even when fully clothed, and she’s barely clothed for the play.

After the performance ends, the troupe sleeps beneath the stars and Severian dreams of Triskele and Master Malrubius and a philosophical dialogue about authority. Devotion to an abstraction, Severian’s Malrubius says, is the highest.

And as I sit here on my couch in the twilight of my own nation’s zenith, while abstractions rule the day, as we all sit in the parable of the cave, arguing about the substance of shadows on our screens, I feel this line like I never have before.

In the morning, there’s a bit of conversation and a bit of burgeoning rivalry between Jolenta and Dorcas, encouraged by Dr Talos, who threatens Jolenta’s position with Dorcas now part of the company.

Jolenta seems to know Severian or at least says they’ve met before, though Severian takes little notice of this. Or at least he doesn’t respond to it.

Though Severian has no intention of joining the troupe, he allows them, once more, to believe he and Dorcas are joining them. Even taking some of the money from the performance. Together, they all walk towards the gate to leave Nessus.

Here, right before we leave Nessus, we meet Jonas, a storyteller of sorts, telling of the ancient past and the founding of the Citadel and the city, of the role of authority and government in this land.

And as we leave the city in chaos and fear, Severian kills another man, hoping to impress Dorcas. Who is certainly the last person to be impressed by violence.

But again, what does this tell us about Severian?

And there ends the story for now.

We will be marching directly into the next novel, Claw of the Conciliator, but next week we’ll discuss the Appendix first.

If your copy of the novel doesn’t have the appendix here, at the end of Shadow of the Torturer, feel free to skip ahead to the very end of whatever version of the series you have. The Appendix is the same in all volumes (I think) but your specific edition may just have it at the very end of the whole book rather than after each individual volume.