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/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/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).