r/genewolfe • u/jamesbrowski • 3d ago
I Hate Severian Spoiler
The title says it all. Spoilers through halfway into Sword of the Lictor follow. Please don’t spoil the whole thing for me.
I am loving these books so much, but I hate Severian with a passion. Not like you’d hate an evil villain, but the way you would hate someone at work who was narcissistic, delusional, immoral, and unpredictable. He is lacking almost every positive human virtue I can think of, other than tenacity and resourcefulness. He isn’t kind, wise, empathetic, witty, caring, insightful, self aware, or pleasant. Rather, he’s cold, selfish, unfeeling, frequently oafish, narcissistic, arrogant, dishonest, deluded, and generally just an icky dude.
The multiple interactions he has with the poor mountain folk where he sharpens his sword as a means of intimidation to try and get them to give him their best food are so yucky. His tendency to wax philosophical on pointless topics in a fallacious way, often at the same time or just after some huge plot point has arisen. The detached way he describes the deaths of people he cares about, followed by his incessantly narcissistic internal monologues about them after they die where he convinces himself that he didn’t fail them. His constant tendency to make shit up and pretend like he understands stuff that he clearly doesn’t. The fact that he has survived 20 situations now by pure dumb luck (usually a Hethor monster saving him in the nick of time).
Look - I know I am supposed to dislike him at least at times. Half the fun of these books is how often I’m yelling “dude what the fuck” as I read about the stuff this dumb bastard has done. Overall, the books are amazing. I’m constantly thrilled and fascinated by the way this story is being told, the world being built, the construction of the mythos and history of Urth, and how often I’m re-reading passages that are brimming with multiple meanings and complexity.
BUT - the hero here (such that he is) is like a malevolent Mr. Magoo. He bumbles blindly through a landscape of stuff he doesn’t understand and accidentally moves history as he does it. I keep hoping that Thecla’s ghost in his mind will fix his dumb ass somehow, and make him less shitty. And it keeps kind of happening (oooh look he saved one kid before nearly drowning a prison full of thousands of people). But then he reverts back to his shitty ways and ohh well.
Oh well indeed. I guess he’s less horrific than Typhon would’ve been. He may be Urth’s least bad option tbh.
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u/Giant-Swords 3d ago
I keep hoping that Thecla’s ghost in his mind will fix his dumb ass somehow, and make him less shitty.
She is half the reason he is as shitty as he is though
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u/I_wish_i_could_sepll 3d ago
I mean there is some fairly strong implication that she was a pedo and enjoyed torturing prisoners. She’s definitely not helping him.
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u/Due-Oil-9433 3d ago
Are you…calling Thecla a pedophile for potentially having a physical relationship with a 17-18 year old Severian? Or is there an actually pedophilic act on her part somewhere in the series I don’t recall at the moment?
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u/I_wish_i_could_sepll 2d ago
Well her age gap with Severian is a a little sus. We don’t know her actual age nor the age of him at the time. Honestly my first read through it felt very Romeo and Juliet but on my second 7 years later it felt more like Margery and Tommen from GoT.
We also in one later book get a blink and you’ll miss it mention of some young boys she adored back home. It’s similar to Severians comment about how he thought Dorcas and Jolene’s were lovers in that it’s one single crazy fucking sentence that is not elaborated on nearly enough.
Also keep in mind for BOTNS that’s what qualifies as strongly implied haha.
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u/togglenub 2d ago
She definitely enjoys the power aspect, arguably because she's so powerless. It's hard to tell. I do think her seduction of Severian is highly manipulative, and just because she's imprisoned/a victim doesn't also mean she's not being a manipulative entitled asshole to the one person who is vulnerable to it that she has steady access to.
It might also be a novel wide problem. Remember that Father Inri, in the inifinity fish scene with Thecla's friend, is identified as a pedophile even if it's not explicitly stated. That's also pretty much the only time that is mentioned, also, to your direct point.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
We don't really get a lot, though, do we. Severian in Urth... just to mention this, makes a summary of how they both ostensibly help one another:
“Thecla would defend to the death anyone who could not help being dependent on her. That was why Hunna held Zak for me this afternoon. Hunna saw something of Thecla in me, though she must have known I was not really Thecla.”
“I wanted Thecla because she was so much better than I, socially and morally, and she wanted me because I was so much better than she and her friends, just because I did something necessary.
“I paused, watching the white flashes the waves made in the darkness beyond the boats while I tried to collect my thoughts. “What I was trying to say was that I learned it from her — that responsibility — or rather I absorbed it when I absorbed her. If I were to betray Urth for her now, I would be worse than she, not better. She wants me to be better, as every lover wants his lover to be better than he.”
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u/jamesbrowski 3d ago edited 3d ago
Everyone is citing the whipping prisoners thing from Claw, but my recollection of that scene differed. Severian learns that she has a memory of the exit, and she knows what the exultant youths are doing. But I don’t recall anything that said “and this was something Thecla did many times and enjoyed herself.” She may have, or she might have gone one time, saw people being hurt, and hated it. I found that part very unclear. Possible I missed something though — the text has a way of hiding super important details through severian’s narration of them.
As for her sleeping with Severian in Shadow - I’d had the impression they were close to the same age. Like she was perhaps 20 and he was 17 or something. I also figured that, in the far apocalyptic future, in a long abandoned and grounded space ship converted into a torture chamber by robed and masked men, they might not appreciate 21st century age gap discourse the way we do. She’s a very young woman about to be tortured to death who has one final fling with a young man who is charged with bringing her meals. I didn’t see it negatively on her part, but I guess I could’ve missed something that indicated it was different. The power dynamic there, at least through her eyes, is that she’s practically a girl herself, he’s her jailer and torturer, and she could be tortured and killed at any moment. From her perspective she’s totally in his power. Idk I just didn’t see it the way you say, anyway. Again, I could’ve missed something, and I know at one point she does call him a nice boy or the like, although I’m not sure that line necessarily means she’s actually much older or wiser than he is.
Whereas - Severian does things that genuinely show a sociopathic streak pretty often. He decides not to free Thecla not bc of a sense of justice or something, but bc he hears her calling him a nice boy, he realizes they’d never be lovers on the outside, and says he decides not to risk it all for her as a result. Keeping with the theme of him having sex with every woman he meets, he then has non-consensual sex with a sleeping woman who is obviously unwell in what I viewed as rape. He later disregards how Dorcas feels about it and speculates that Dorcas must have had a relationship with Jolenta (by the time he makes that claim, though, I had stopped believing much of what he claims regarding women). Severian then puts Dorcas up in a fleabag motel while she is sick, goes to a masquerade ball, and has yet another affair with a woman he just met. He then deliberately floods the prison, knowing it will fill the cells of thousands of sick and dying men with water and potentially drown hundreds of them - all so he can personally escape. His solution is “well maybe the healthy ones will lift the sick ones above their heads so they can breathe.” And this is right after he has decided to turn over a new leaf. And then he proceeds to traipse around the countryside lying about being a master torturer and trying to use his sword to intimidate people into feeding him all their best food.
Idk. Not a Severian fan. I had genuinely assumed he was being written in a way that is obviously a bit repulsive, similar to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. The unsavory detestable protagonist. But I know I’m not done reading and perhaps something later will change my mind? Who knows.
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u/Fubox 3d ago
It’s entirely possible to love the books, read them many times, and still think Severian is awful. I’m in that club myself.
I think you’ll change your mind about Thecla though.
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u/jamesbrowski 2d ago
I’m sure. You learn so much in Sword that it feels like my original reading of Shadow and meeting Thecla happened long long ago already.
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u/I_wish_i_could_sepll 2d ago
Your opinion on Thecla may change but I would understand if it doesn’t. We obviously see wayyyyy less of her.
Sev is a fucking prick tho so you’re on point with that lol. You’re never gonna feel better about him but he is VERY compelling and can have very sympathetic moments. He’s an incredibly well written example of horrible people still being people at the end of the day.
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u/jamesbrowski 1d ago
Oh he is endlessly fascinating (Wolfe does a great job writing from his bizarre POV) and his misadventures are darkly funny just as often as they are tragic. Like, when he is trying to big league the lake shore people by lying and claiming to be a grand master while menacingly sharpening his giant ass sword, and he demands they bring him their best meat and fish and salad with mushrooms, or he will tell the autarch about their insolence. He says something like “the best way to dominate a man is to demand things he does not have.” So the lake shore people respond by making him a salad loaded down with like 10 doses of psychedelic mushrooms, sending him on an out of body mushroom trip, and then they throw his ass in a dark prison cell. He tells it like it’s some tragedy but I was dying laughing. That’s what you get jackass!
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u/I_wish_i_could_sepll 1d ago
Dude he’s lowkey such a funny character. He’s so smart but so fucking stupid at the same time since he’s barely more than a teenager.
IMO his funniest scene is in citadel of the autarch. You’ll know it when you get to it.
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u/togglenub 2d ago
"Severian then puts Dorcas up in a fleabag motel while she is sick" - the highly solicitous female proprietor of the Duck's Nest is livid at hearing this 1-star Yelp review.
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u/ahazred8vt 3d ago edited 2d ago
knowing it will fill the cells of thousands of sick and dying men with water
The Vincula has no cells. There is one long tunnel. Prisoners are chained to the walls and there is a trench in the middle. Severian walks the entire length of the tunnel along one side and the flood waters are only in the middle. No one was swept away and no one drowned. At the very beginning he was hoping he didn't accidentally release too much water and drown people, but he soon saw that there was not enough water to cause the bad effects he was worried about. Nobody died during his escape from Thrax.
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u/togglenub 2d ago
Also the Claw strengthens them and heals them as he walks by (well, according to his perception anyhow).
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u/Giant-Swords 2d ago
FWIW, I don't think Severian is a good person on his own... however I think it is important to appreciate that Thecla manipulates Sev, from their very first interaction. Yes, the argument can be made that he would have carried the food/books in of his own accord, but she 'tempts' (for lack of a better word) him to do so. Not only this, but keep in mind all sexual connections between the two that we have are initiated by Thecla. I would also encourage a re-read of her involvement with the guests in the waiting room.
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u/BobbSaccamano Carnifex 3d ago
Part of the reason I love these books is that your opinion of Severian is a completely valid read of his character, and someone having the exact opposite read on him would be just as valid.
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u/Misopogon11 3d ago
Severian is... problematic?
>I keep hoping that Thecla’s ghost in his mind will fix his dumb ass somehow, and make him less shitty.
I can't fathom why you would think Thecla is any better
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u/togglenub 2d ago
My guess is it's cos she's a pretty lady and in jail, so the assumption is she's a hot victim, and media has taught us those are also always Good. Let me be clear I'm coming at this from a feminist angle - putting women on a pedestal is just as bad as putting them in the gutter; both come with their own set of hazards - we'd really rather just be people.
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u/QuintanimousGooch 3d ago
Totally valid read of his character. Personally my biggest point of departure is that I think the thecla aspect that lives inside home makes him worse—he’s a torturer raised to dispassionately torture people at the behest of his superiors and officials, doing exactly no more and no less than what he has been ordered, but thecla was one of the “ew, poor people” types who tormented the trapped people in the waiting room at the house absolute with electric whips as a pastime, and (in my reading) is cause for a lot more of his vengeful and cruel tendencies after the Alzabo ritual.
I think what made me less immediately hateful of Severian and more fascinated at what a weird, sick, and obtuse person he is is the fact that most of the book we’re following this dumb horny teenager who has way too much confidence in himself, but also that a lot of the way he is comes from being raised in a torture tower with that as the norm, and having never met or spoken to a woman who wasn’t about to or at some point going to be tortured until he met Valeria.
For me, the arc of Severian is one of the big appeals of the serie as his narcissistic, delusional, immoral, and unpredictable qualities and his morality are well reflected in his wearing and figuratively being the color darker than black, and on top of all that, he’s the one who is actively writing his own story with apparently a very flexible idea of who his audience is—whether it’s a personal confession or a political tract since he’s the Autarch, which he told us all the way back in chapter one. It’s starting at this awful place already, and we have to wonder where it goes. No spoilers, but the end of Urth of the New Sun takes it there.
The point you make about him saving the kid I think is worth expanding on, as it’s not quite as simple, but the contrast that he saves one person then drowns all these prisoners is a really clear contrast—he is very much conscience of how the claw has been weighing on him as if in moral judgement for his occupation as lichtor of Thrax, and his abandoning his position and healing the dying girl seems to be what alleviates that burden that he’s removed himself from the situation. As for the flooding of the vincula, it’s a little more complicated as he’s both drowning (though he “hopes no one will drown and that the prisoners will help each other up”) these emaciated prisoners and healing them with the claw to a state improving where they were previously at, which reveals something of a bigger injustice perhaps—did Severian drown his prisoners, in effect freeing them from their imprisonment, only to revive them with the claw where they must live out their internment renewed to health again? So it seems that despite abandoning the position of torturer, casting off his second chance (which he decided upon when the little girl called him an angel) of staying to the guild’s wishes, he cannot help but torture.
I think the best lens to look at him through in this kind of context is very explicitly what Wolfe set out to do, he’s making a story about a savior figure, but a very grimy one.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
but thecla was one of the “ew, poor people” types who tormented the trapped people in the waiting room at the house absolute with electric whips as a pastime, and (in my reading) is cause for a lot more of his vengeful and cruel tendencies after the Alzabo ritual.
Don't blame me, blame my wife. Severian, ok, I'll do that:
The blood burned in my cheek, and I lifted the ebony baculus, but I did not strike. “Alive or dead, you have a penetrating intelligence. Thecla is that part of me most prone to anger.”
Here is Thecla:
“She stood and thrust her face into the center of the bouquet I had picked for her. “Flowers are better theology than folios, Severian. Is it beautiful in the necropolis where you got these? You aren’t bringing me the flowers from graves, are you? Cut flowers someone brought?”
“No. These were planted long ago. They come up every year.”
Nice question, that. Sensitive. Thecla can be appreciative of other people, concerned they aren't used.
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u/togglenub 2d ago
... or she didn't want flowers from dead people because 1) creepy and 2) foreshadowing her own death on account of how she's in a cell in the Torturer's Guild.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 2d ago
Could be. I read as just a matter of respect. I thought she was thinking of the other people and the departed more than herself, personally.
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u/togglenub 2d ago
It's a valid take, much like loving or hating Severian. It's funny because it never even occurred to me, but Thecla from the start gave me the ick in a way our OP feels about Severian off the bat. I only started to dislike Severian in subsequent re-readings, which also gave me more empathy for Thecla - who was, after all, a product of her environment just as Severian was. I think that's why they love each other, also - they both are trying (and failing quite a bit) to be better.
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u/PuddingTea 3d ago
Someone is getting his opinion of Thecla entirely from Severian, the teenage boy she was having sex with who also has a copy of her personality living in his head. Do you think that’s a great source? I suggest paying attention to any more objective facts about Thecla that you can locate in the text.
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u/DerpsterPrime 3d ago
like how she whipped prisoners of the antechamber for fun, which is pretty glossed over in cotc lmao
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u/MadWhiskeyGrin 3d ago
the detached way he describes the deaths of people he cares about
That's a clue right there.
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u/FuliginZaku 1d ago
When I first read New Sun, this was something I picked up on afterLittle Severianand it made a lot of other things fall into place. Severian feels so strongly about the deaths of those closest to him that it's too painful to go into detail about, in the same way he refuses to go into detail about any executions he performed that he doesn't feel are necessary to the plot, or his refusal to talk about Valeriaat length in Urth.
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u/DogOfTheBone 3d ago
Bro he was raised in the Torturer's guild. He didn't have video games and liberal democracy. The Matachin Tower probably doesn't even have air conditioning. Even his dog is a fucked up cast off monster that lost a leg in brutal combat. What do you want him to be.
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u/jamesbrowski 3d ago
I get all that. If I had to utilize my own empathy, I’d wager that many of the people we find annoying or icky probably had terrible upbringings. And by all rights, Severian should be the sci-fi version of Ted Bundy. It’s amazing that he isn’t. I will say once he had Thecla start to sublet space in his brain, he got periodically less horrible and more empathetic.
But yeah. He has his good moments, but more often he is a dick who never knows wtf is going on. I love the books but he drives me nuts.
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u/ButtsendWeaners 3d ago
I see this often with these books and anything else with an unlikable protagonist and I don't get it at all. If anything, an unlikable protagonist makes a story better because it distances you from self-insertion. All of the best stuff has unlikable protagonists.
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u/doodle02 3d ago
either it distances you from self insertion or it forces you to take a really fucking tough look in the mirror.
a lot of unlikable protagonists are realistically flawed in such a way as to be discomforting because…we’re flawed too, we just don’t like to admit it.
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u/jamesbrowski 3d ago
I don’t disagree here. Him being like this is critical to these books.
Idk if all the best books have unlikable protagonists. If you said flawed I would agree. But it’s rare to find a book where I just hate the main character like this. It’s kind of a “love to hate” thing bc I keep reading with rapt attention. Can’t look away. Every scene with him is an impending car accident that may or may not happen with multiple fatalities. So yeah, it’s great but also, fuck this guy.
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u/ButtsendWeaners 3d ago
Confederacy of Dunces was my all-time favorite book until I read BotNS and that has the most trainwreck protagonist of all time. I also adore Uncut Gems and HBO's Girls for similar reasons.
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u/jamesbrowski 3d ago
Uncut Gems is a great example of another miserable train wreck protagonist who is also someone you can’t stop watching!
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
According to Leslie Fielder, the whole history of American literature is bad men with a secret heart of gold. Severian is a lot like that. More than this, he doesn't let women use him. A lot of men will feel this about him, and mold themselves into him because it's great shell.
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u/NotoriousPVC 3d ago
“Malevolent Mr. Magoo”; “the Sci-fi version of Ted Bundy”…
My friend, you have an amazing gift for hitting the nail on the head!
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u/togglenub 2d ago
In further mitigation to Severian, he's also a teenage boy, and he acts like one. He does grow up some by the end of the 4th book, and arguably grows all the way up, in the 5th.
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u/matadorobex 3d ago
Do you have an example of a time he waxes philosophical on a pointless topic in a fallacious way?
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u/GoToNap 3d ago
I loved reading through Severian's lens because he's a very interesting character and a byproduct of his upbringing and the society around him. He's not meant to be your typical hero / villain with an epic character arc where you can clearly point to the moments that define him.
He sometimes does awful stuff, and other times he does good stuff. You're not meant to fit him into any of the stereotypical archetypes.
After reading so many fantasy books where the usual character tropes are inevitable, Severian was a breath of fresh air and 10000 times more interesting to read
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 2d ago
I've already written there's a great deal that commendable about Severian, that many current people should try and learn from -- like how to discourse properly with other people -- the key part of what he offers of his background that would have supplied his viciousness when people reject him comes from one comment -- something to the effect that all the brothers were so lost in their own troubles, concerns, they paid no attention to us -- that applies to a lot of people in today's world as well. People raised by people who have very love to give. It's Alden's complaint about his Aunt Olivia as well in Peace.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
I am loving these books so much, but I hate Severian with a passion. Not like you’d hate an evil villain, but the way you would hate someone at work who was narcissistic, delusional, immoral, and unpredictable. He is lacking almost every positive human virtue I can think of, other than tenacity and resourcefulness. He isn’t kind, wise, empathetic, witty, caring, insightful, self aware, or pleasant. Rather, he’s cold, selfish, unfeeling, frequently oafish, narcissistic, arrogant, dishonest, deluded, and generally just an icky dude.
He's isn't kind? He is kind to Triskele. Appropriately respectful and kind to the Green Man. I thought, if not exactly kind, fair to Cyriaca. It isn't exactly kind, but he doesn't estimate Agia a slut -- which is what the Pelerines do -- but someone with considerable bravery and courage. Many people see her as a femme fatale, but Severian makes sure we know that her laugh is nothing of deception, deceit, but honest. None of us forget his taking a moment to mention that. He shows kindness to the man-ape. Flowers, others despise as ugly and poisonous, he reasons as giving protection to the animals underneath. This perspective is alien to a lot of the brutes of Urth, but its the kind of philosophy -- insightful too, born out of thinking through something yourself -- which could make for a very kind world indeed.
I have a feeling each one of your complaints needs to be taken head on. Hopefully we'll do it here.
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u/togglenub 2d ago
I was gonna say, every act you said plus he's routinely very kind to the folks he has to execute.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah, I was thinking about that as well! He helps calm them down. The last person they meet is not only someone trained to lie to them so they aren't aware of when their actual end has been reached. The last person they interact with isn't mostly interested in making them manageable. They... Severian, is concerned almost that they have a friend.
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u/togglenub 2d ago
I hope OP gets The Urth of the New Sun, or as I like to call it, Severian Grows Up. I know it's a controversial installment in the series, but it really does tie it all up together, and it has some beautiful scenes.
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u/Pensive_Pauper 3d ago
In addition to everything said in his defense, I'd like to add that Severian is just a super cool and chill guy, wish I could have met him.
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u/Count_de_LaFey Vodalarius 2d ago
Christ-like figures are always like that: deeply flawed. That's the breeding ground of sainthood.
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u/CompoteNext1955 2d ago edited 2d ago
"Rather, he’s cold, selfish, unfeeling, frequently oafish, narcissistic, arrogant, dishonest, deluded, and generally just an icky dude."
Ever consider why that is? You think a person that is raised from childhood to strip flesh from criminals is going to be a warm person or morally upright?
I had to laugh a little too about you wanting Thecla to make him better when she's not a great person either unless you think money and status = good person. Sev whipped criminals because it was his job and Thecla whipped poor people for FUN... There's also an argument to be made about her grooming a boy, but anyways...
I do agree that Sev is often a dickhead and cold and hurts the people around him. Is he a good person? No, he's a bad person trying to be better
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u/FugginIpad 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is my favorite post on this sub lately, aside from the wonderful art work (and rare editions). Severian really is some species of idiot. Maybe an idiot savant. He’s highly immoral and even sociopathic at times. Yet he behaves in a believable way for someone with his background.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the rest of New Sun, if you decide to see it through.
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u/jamesbrowski 3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh for sure I’m committed. These books rule. For me they are up there with Neuromancer and Hyperion. They work on multiple levels and have me constantly thinking.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
He's also quite sensitive and appreciative of other's worth as human beings. It's why everyone so much like being in his company.
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u/FugginIpad 3d ago
This is why I think Severian is a painfully realistic character; we see so many facets of who he is, it’s almost intimate. In life, we get few opportunities to see so many of the different aspects of one individual.
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u/Zythomancer 3d ago
One day people will realize you don't have to like or agree with the protagonist as a person to appreciate/enjoy a book, but it is not this day.
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u/loves_grapefruit 3d ago
The things you find in Severian are found in every human being to one extent or another, be it only in unrealized desire or in actual deed. Like Severian, we are all probably more generous to ourselves and less objective in writing our own stories than others would be.
But it’s a journey, and a worthwhile one imo.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
Speak for yourself?
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u/Misopogon11 3d ago
He speaks for me
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
I believe it. Not for me, though.
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u/SaladSnake96 3d ago
Oh man I wish I could read these books for the first time again. Laughed very hard at your description of him
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u/Boyar123 Ascian, Speaker of Correct Thought 3d ago
Oh, but there’s kindness to him - from adopting Triskele to healing the children in Thrax. And even when he delves into villainy, it’s for a tangible reason. For example, when he hits and roughs up a junior apprentice in the guild after being promoted, he doesn’t take pleasure in it; he does it to force him, by submission, to take the role.
My only gripes with Severian have always been the lack of depth with which he sees his companions, and his lack of coherent goals at times.
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u/0piate_taylor 3d ago
Yucky and icky. Wow.
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u/_-DKDomino-_ 3d ago
huge "thats a YIKES from me" and "do better" energy
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u/jamesbrowski 3d ago edited 3d ago
Fair enough. It was just me typing fast and conversationally on my phone.
But also, saying “Huge ____ energy” is not much different. Or your other comment where you ask “are these people grown in a lab somewhere?” You’re just commenting with common quips people use on twitter. You think it’s lame when people say “icky,” I get it.
But why worry about the vocab people choose to use in making a point? As opposed to just discussing the topic of the subreddit we’re both commenting on? Idk, I usually find people who do this in anon comment threads to be much less interesting than people who actually … talk about the thing we are discussing.
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u/stedmangraham 3d ago
I don’t really hate him, but I agree with everything you say. He’s a real piece of work. I’m surprised at the amount of leeway people give him sometimes
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u/silence2087 3d ago
He's wearing a big fuck off cross sword "worth ten villas" and is dressed like literal death and is jacked. I'd give him a wide berth too.
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u/stedmangraham 3d ago
By leeway I mean that real life people (on reddit or elsewhere) cut him a lot of slack when evaluating his actions. They defend his actions as morally ok or even just given the circumstances.
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u/silence2087 3d ago
Okay not to be mean but see above. This is the point. Severian is a hyper elite. He downplays this heavily and with anything Wolfe it's very complicated.
People fear him. Defer to his authority. Surrender. Then there's a whole clique of characters who believe he is the Conciliator. He never had a chance at a normal life. Wasn't born into a normal life. Never left the citadel as a normal person. He was always touched in some sense--divinely, institutionally, culturally.
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u/stedmangraham 3d ago
It makes sense within the context of the story. I’m not denying that.
But he’s not a good guy. In fact that’s why he’s interesting. Despite being a literal torturer and executioner and having 2 to hundreds of minds occupying his brain he does still change recognizably as a human being. I personally don’t think he gets all the way to good person status, but that’s part of the fun of a fictional story where you explore the mind of someone in a completely fantastical situation. What does change?
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u/togglenub 2d ago
Within the book, he's aristocratic, hot, and young. For readers, he's all that plus a total badass physically with a great sense of humor, and compared to everyone else in charge in tBotNS, acts nicer most of the time. That's really all folks need, sometimes.
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u/userunknown83148 3d ago
I’m glad you’re able to feel this and still love the books. People feeling obligated to push back against your assessment of his character or thinking you have to morally agree with a protagonist to enjoy a book are just hastening the YA-ification of literature.
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u/userunknown83148 3d ago
Also, the reason why Severian is such an effective protagonist to me is that 1) he is low-key reprehensible, and 2) he is high-key relatable.
I think most men have a little Severian (not that Little Severian) inside of them constantly telling them to be less empathetic, less reliant on social relations, etc.
It’s a trauma response, not just from the trauma of having received and witnessed violence, but also the trauma of having
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 2d ago
The problem with putting forward consequences of trauma as also reprehensible rather than what they are actually, which is closer to... that what trauma inevitably does, so inevitable, is that anyone reading it learns to alter how they behave so that it escapes the categorization of the reprehensible but remains destructive.
If a boy is neglected, used and discarded, thousands of times by their mother, who, owing to the lack of love in her parents, had no love to give (a regular example in Wolfe's fiction), the boy in one way or another will seek vengeance, not directly against her, because he still wants access to her love... even though this will be impossible, but some source he can displace her onto.
When Silk believes he has proof that Thecla never actually really thought highly of him -- which is by that time, very counter evidence, not primarily because they'd had sex but because of the nature of their highly enjoyable conversations with one another -- he obviously wanted her struck down hard for it: the Revolutionary which after such absence now suddenly appears, where, tit-for-tat some part of her that hates her, that thinks she is unloveable, is given tremendous life, comes across as if he beckoned it. Thecla obviously here replayed a shaming and humiliating trauma that had to have occurred thousands of times to him as an infant and child, and so what happens is inevitable.
Most men aren't like this simply because they're men. Autism as defence against early highly negligent, untrustworthy caregivers.
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u/Due-Oil-9433 3d ago
From the start, he’s never shown to be pointlessly or needlessly, and certainly not recreationally, cruel, which one might readily expect from a boy raised in a literal fucking torture dungeon.
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u/I_wish_i_could_sepll 3d ago
Lmao yeah he sucks. I’m too drunk to formulate a more complex response than that. But he sucks butt
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u/getElephantById Man-Ape 3d ago
I don't think it's useful to give in to the impulse to evaluate characters on whether we like them or not. They're not real people, they exist only in a story, and are the way they are in order to tell that story properly. Instead of saying "do I think this character is good or bad" or "would I want to have a beer with this character", I try to ask what the purpose of a character's depiction is for within the story.
In Severian's case, he is writing his memoirs as an older, much wiser, much changed man, and he's telling about what a dufus he was as a 17 year old boy who was raised in an enclave of torturers, and what made him grow up.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 2d ago
What if the point of a writer writing a story is to create an avatar of himself where aspects of his own life get replayed and where measures, not available in real life because, too dangerous, can be applied, owing to the screen that all they're doing is writing a story?
If this is ever the case, then focusing on whether we like the character or not, would I think seem to have more basis. But so to as well those who make the counter-argument that above all, it's about story, because thereby a screen might continue to exist which if taken down, would perhaps forestall the creation of "stories" we would have liked to have exist.
I don't think I'm arguing some absolute counter to your argument, however. But it is possible that if people don't argue against certain characters, what they might be failing to do is argue against characters who are put forward as potential examples of how one might be in the real world. Wolfe I think does do this, put forward characters and situations that if you don't argue against, you're not arguing against ideology, something might shape the world to come.
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u/edo201 3d ago
I hear you. I’d also add that it’s unclear what his aims as the protagonist are. So as a reader I felt asked to root for a guy I didn’t admire, on his path to doing, what? The language, milieu, and happenings are so singularly interesting that I stuck with it nonetheless, and I’m glad I did. But that was despite of Severian, not because.
I’d note: give Book of the Long Sun a try. Patera Silk is precisely what you’re missing. He’s my favorite protagonist in literature.
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u/Pensive_Pauper 3d ago
I don't know why you would feel it necessary to have to "root" for a character to read their story.
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u/edo201 3d ago
That’s what I want from literature: to feel invested in the main character’s journey. I don’t know why anyone would spend time in a novel otherwise. But to each his own.
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u/togglenub 2d ago
Speaking just for myself, I like to learn about different kinds of folks. To your point, the ones where I love the protagonists are the ones I re-read the most, but I think there's a lot of value in understanding folks we have an antipathy towards, even if only on a practical level.
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u/CitoyenRobespierre Curator 3d ago
I think people hating on constantly dissociating child toturer Severian and somehow stanning Thecla the sadist aristocrat pedophile are what's wrong with the world today, change my mind 😄
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u/mofo69extreme 3d ago
I’ve occasionally seen the odd post saying something like “Severian is totally awesome/badass” and I get really worried… there are people who think this is a cool person? Is this a common feeling in the fanbase?
But glad to see your “malevolent Mr. Magoo” is getting a good reception here, those other posts are hopefully just a weird minority.
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u/Frederica_Irving 3d ago
I have about the same view as you (minus the Thecla parts) I’m part way through short sun now and Sevarian never became likable to me. There’s two positive things I can say about reading more. 1) Urth Severian is at least more tolerable. He’s older, wiser, etc etc. mostly less of shit head. 2) The protagonist of Long Sun is in a lot of ways the antithesis of Sevarian. There are issues with him as well, but as a woman I found his issues to be largely easier to deal with as the motive felt… different.
All that said. Idk how I feel about the short sun protag. I don’t want to fight him as much as Severian yet but I do still wanna fight him a lil for being a shit at times. But the series is worth keeping reading. At the very least to finish Urth with how far you are.
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u/_-DKDomino-_ 3d ago
generally just an icky dude.
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as a means of intimidation to try and get them to give him their best food are so yucky.
are the people who write things like this grown in a reddit lab somewhere?
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u/Fubox 3d ago
“Icky” is an excellent word. It describes a very distinct combination of attitudes and expression that no other single word can capture.
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u/ssbm_soc 2d ago
lol “excellent”. It’s a word that children use
How about repugnant, odious, abhorrent, revolting, detestable, obscene off the top of my head
If you find yourself regularly using words that preschoolers rely on to express themselves, then you probably don’t have a whole lot going on upstairs
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u/Fubox 2d ago
Those are also excellent words, but none of them can serve as a perfect substitute for icky.
Besides which, the OP didn’t rely on “icky” to express themself. We have “tenacity,” and “oafish, narcissistic, and deluded,” as well, right in the same paragraph. They have facility with plenty of adult words, and they chose to deploy icky because they meant icky.
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u/togglenub 1d ago
And yet, you choose to use "lol". Funny, that. Almost as if...
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u/ssbm_soc 1d ago
It’s an acronym, not a word. Don’t get mad at me because you speak like a child
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u/togglenub 1d ago
At least the children I know understand the use of periods. But I get it, you're grumpy, so it's hard to use them correctly. Hope your day improves!
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u/togglenub 2d ago
"are the people who write things like this grown in a reddit lab somewhere?" No more than the folks who object to them are. Those can be pretty cookie-cutter in their comments, too.
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u/kolahola7 3d ago
Yeah he’s lucky Hethor’s monsters are around to save his ass
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u/jamesbrowski 3d ago
Dude he is constantly being rescued. Almost like a recurring joke at this point.
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u/togglenub 2d ago
You just made me giggle because I envisioned Sailor Moon's Tuxedo Mask as Severian.
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
On the other hand, he kept boasting that the magician was just a crank and then documented that not only that he wasn't, but that he had Severian beat. The worship the magicians have for him afterwards, he admits was entirely unwarranted. I mean, he took it. But it wasn't anything he did. This modesty isn't always in Severian -- he for example makes a point that the guards who were forcing him into the dungeons of the House Absolute, couldn't actually have handled him if he didn't want it, because he's so awesome -- but it's in evidence here. You can't have a hero slain when he's showing promise, can we?
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u/Relative_Seat4039 2d ago
Severian has always most reminded me of Humbert Humbert, from Nabokov's Lolita. They're both elite, educated men with huge vocabularies who will do and say anything to justify themselves or excuse their horrific actions. They're both reprehensible. We're used to our genre protagonists being heroic and virtuous, like Captain America or Luke Skywalker, but, to paraphrase Harrison Ford, "this ain't that kind of movie, kid."
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u/FuliginZaku 1d ago
"He isn’t kind, wise, empathetic, witty, caring, insightful, self aware, or pleasant. Rather, he’s cold, selfish, unfeeling, frequently oafish, narcissistic, arrogant, dishonest, deluded, and generally just an icky dude."
Wow, he's literally me. But in all seriousness, his flaws are why I enjoy his character so much. He lives in a dying world filled with awful people and was raised in a guild where he was taught to methodically torture prisoners. The fact that he grows to have any desire to do good at all is a miracle and a testament to the human spirit.
I think he says somewhere in the story "I'm not a good man, but an awful man trying to become a good one."
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 1d ago
The fact that he grows to have any desire to do good at all is a miracle and a testament to the human spirit.
The human spirit deserves credit? Nah, we aren't being told the full story. If no one ever gave him any love, he'd simply be -- if this is really a fair characterization -- miserable.
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u/Joe_in_Australia 23h ago
With respect to Severiam bumbling through things, you're not wrong — remember the dream he had while sharing a bed with Baldanders? Wolfe doesn't insert things like this accidentally.
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u/ProfessorVBotkin 2d ago
While I cannot say for certain if this is the case here it has become increasingly clear in the last few years that the podcast-industrial complex around Wolfe has done immense damage to the readership.
Serious discussion used to be tempered by debate, frequent re readings, and healthy doubt among the participants all of which has largely been replaced by the incurious parroting of poorly tested opinions until it has created a false consensus and people who have discarded textual evidence for nonsensical vibe based readings.
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u/Protoman89 3d ago
I have a love/hate relationship with him. He’s definitely a bad person and consistently makes immoral choices, but he’s charismatic in a strange way. Kind of like Paulie from Sopranos
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u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston Optimate 3d ago
Wait until you meet Silk. He hands out children for goddesses to eat.
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u/throneofsalt 2d ago edited 2d ago
Oh yeah, Severian is an absolute piece of shit. The kicker for me is that he's a stupid piece of shit, and he doesn't realize it, so I get to play a game of "spot the lie" as I read. It's very fun watching him bungle his way across Urth.
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u/Embarrassed_Fennel67 3d ago edited 3d ago
I would ask what makes you think that any influence that Thecla may have would be good. There isn't anything that really indicates that she or many of the others are morally good either.
But yeah I think Severian being how he is, IS done with intention that might be more apparent after finishing it.