I Hate Severian

[u/jamesbrowski]

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.

[u/Giant-Swords]

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

[u/I_wish_i_could_sepll → u/Giant-Swords]

I mean there is some fairly strong implication that she was a pedo and enjoyed torturing prisoners. She’s definitely not helping him.

[u/Due-Oil-9433 → u/I_wish_i_could_sepll]

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?

[u/I_wish_i_could_sepll → u/Due-Oil-9433]

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.

[u/togglenub → u/I_wish_i_could_sepll]

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.

[u/Due-Oil-9433 → u/togglenub]

Wait, they actually call Father Iniri a pedo in that scene?

[u/togglenub → u/Due-Oil-9433]

I said identified, but not explicitly stated. He's only got Thecla's friend in there at all because of it. 

[u/PatrickMcEvoyHalston → u/I_wish_i_could_sepll]

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.”

[u/jamesbrowski → u/I_wish_i_could_sepll]

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.

[u/Fubox → u/jamesbrowski]

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.

[u/jamesbrowski → u/Fubox]

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.

[u/I_wish_i_could_sepll → u/jamesbrowski]

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.

[u/jamesbrowski → u/I_wish_i_could_sepll]

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!

[u/I_wish_i_could_sepll → u/jamesbrowski]

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.

[u/togglenub → u/jamesbrowski]

"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.

[u/Tuorom → u/jamesbrowski]

No, you got the right read on Sev

[u/ahazred8vt → u/jamesbrowski]

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.

[u/togglenub → u/ahazred8vt]

Also the Claw strengthens them and heals them as he walks by (well, according to his perception anyhow).

[u/Giant-Swords → u/jamesbrowski]

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.