The Monomyth in Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun

Donald Palumbo

A single, continuous narrative initially published infour volumes—The Shadow of the Torturer (1980), The Claw of theConciliator (1981), The Sword of the Lictor (1981), and The Citadel of theAutarch (1982)—and followed by a sequel, The Urth of the New Sun(1987), The Book of the New Sun is Gene Wolfe’s sciencefiction masterpiece. The text is a fictitiousautobiography, and Severian, its ostensible author andprotagonist, often reflects on the task of writing. Afallen torturer who eventually ascends to the throne of theAutarch—“the legitimate head of the whole of” Urth who,nonetheless, “ran only a small part of it,” a continentthat, several million years in the future, occupies theregion of the globe that is now South America (Urth, 20)—Severian at one point compares the executioner’s art to thewriter’s: He observes, “Those who have paid the carnifax tomake the act a painless or a painful one may be likened tothe literary traditions and accepted models to which I amnow compelled to bow,” yet he notes that the artist “mustadd to the execution some feature however small that isentirely his own and that he will never repeat “ (Shadow,241-42). Much later—after listening to Loyal to the Groupof Seventeen’s story, “The Just Man”—Severian realizes “onceagain what a many-sided thing is the telling of any tale”(Citadel, 84). One of the many sides of Severian’s tale—thatliterary tradition and accepted model to which Wolfe is“compelled to bow,” yet to which he still adds “some feature. . . entirely his own”—is The Book of the New Sun’sincorporation of the monomyth, “the Ur-action-adventureformula” of which “Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a ThousandFaces is probably the most exhaustive, subtle,sophisticated, and spiritually aware explication” (Spinrad,151). And Severian finally decides that his own history islike “every long tale, if it be told truly,” in that, likethe monomyth itself, it, too, “will be found to contain allthe elements that have contributed to the human drama”

(Citadel, 270). Indeed, The Book of the New Sun is sointricately and convolutedly imbued with the monomyth’s plotstructure, archetypal characters, inherent themes, andinternal fractal patterns that recognition of the source ofthese elements, and of their meanings and interrelationshipsin that context, adds an additional dimension to what isalready a fantastically mind-boggling narrative.

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell defines themonomyth as that single "consciously controlled" patternmost widely exhibited in the world's folk tales, myths, andreligious fables (255–56). Its morphology is, in broadoutline, that of the quest. The hero is called to anadventure, crosses the threshold to an unknown world toendure tests and trials, and usually returns with a boonthat benefits his fellows (36–38). Although agreeing withCarl Jung that "the changes rung on the simple scale of themonomyth defy description" (246), Campbell's analysis fillsin this outline with an anatomy of the archetypal hero anddescriptions of those specific incidents likely to occur ateach stage of his adventure. The product of a virgin orspecial birth (297–314), the hero may have been exiled ororphaned, may be seeking his father, and may triumph overpretenders as the true son (318–34). He possessesexceptional gifts, and the world he inhabits sufferssymbolic deficiencies (37). He does not fear death, and heis destined to make the world spiritually significant andhumankind comprehensible to itself (388). If a warrior, hewill change the status quo (334–41). If a lover, histriumph may be symbolized by a woman and accomplishing theimpossible task may lead him to the bridal bed (342–45). Ifa tyrant or ruler, his search for the father will lead tothe invisible unknown from which he will return as alawgiver (345–49). If a world-redeemer, he will learn thathe and the father are one (349–54). If a saint or mystic,he will transcend life and myth to enter an inexpressiblerealm beyond forms (354–55).

The adventure's “departure stage” entails up to fiveincidents: receiving a “Call to Adventure” in the guise of ablunder that reveals an unknown world or the appearance of a

2

herald character from that world; refusing the call;receiving supernatural aid; crossing a magical thresholdthat leads to a sphere of rebirth; and being swallowed in"The Belly of the Whale," a descent into the unknownsymbolizing death and resurrection that may involve anunderground journey symbolic of a descent into hell (36).The “initiation stage” includes up to six incidents:numerous tests endured in “The Road of Trials,” includingthe hero's assimilation of his opposite, shadow, orunsuspected self; meeting, and perhaps marrying, a mother-goddess, who may take the form of the “bad mother” or “TheLady of the House of Sleep”; encountering a temptress;atonement with the father; apotheosis; and acquiring a boon(36, 110-11). The “return stage” also contains up to sixincidents: refusing to return; magical flight from theunknown world; rescue from outside the unknown world; re-crossing the threshold; attaining the power to cross thethreshold freely; and the hero's realization that he is thevehicle of the cosmic cycle of change (37).

Already abstracted from numerous mythological andfantastic sources, the monomyth has again been replicatedmany times over since (as well as prior to) its articulationby Campbell in 1949. Probably most widely known as theunderlying plot structure incorporated into George Lucas’initial Star Wars trilogy (Gordon, Mackay, Sherman, Tiffin),it has also been used as the plot structure for numerousother science-fiction films from the second half of thetwentieth century, including George Pal’s The Time Machine(1960), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dune, Back to the Future, TheTerminator, The Last Starfighter, Time after Time, Bill and Ted's ExcellentAdventure (Lundquist), Logan's Run, Escape from New York,Dreamscape, Tron, The Matrix (Kimball), and the first four StarTrek films (Baker, Reid-Jeffrey)—Star Trek: The Motion Picture, StarTrek II: The Wrath of Kahn (Roth), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, andStar Trek IV: The Voyage Home.1 While essentially a mythologicalplot structure that would appear to lend itself mostnaturally to works of fantasy, and thus might seem anomalousin works of science fiction, it also occurs in meticulousdetail in some of the most well-known and artistically

3

successful science fiction novels of this period, such asAlfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, Daniel Keyes’ Flowers forAlgernon, and each of the six volumes in Frank Herbert’s Duneseries, as well as in The Book of the New Sun and itssequel.2

While Herbert reproduces the monomyth in its entiretyin each of his six Dune novels (replicating it six times),much as each film in the initial Star Wars trilogy containsmuch of the monomyth (essentially replicating it threetimes), Wolfe reproduces the monomyth only once in the fourvolumes that comprise The Book of the New Sun—but then doesrecapitulate it, afterwards, by reproducing it again in Urth.However, one “feature . . . entirely his own,” among others,that Wolfe adds “to the execution” of his tetralogy’svariation on the monomyth is the technique of meticulouslyworking through most of its seventeen episodes infundamentally the same order in which Campbell presents them(although strict adherence to this organization, likereference to every single episode, is unnecessary) whilesimultaneously foreshadowing later episodes in events thatoccur in the first volumes, and echoing earlier episodes inevents that occur in subsequent volumes, so that each novelcontains many elements from throughout the monomyth eventhough the four volumes, overall, move methodically andrelentlessly from Severian’s “Call to Adventure” in Shadowto his final awareness that he will be “the vehicle ofcosmic change,” as the Autarch who will succeed inrevitalizing Urth by manifesting the New Sun, in Citadel.Shadow progresses from Severian’s encounter with Vodalus inthe Citadel’s necropolis in Nessus, his “Call to Adventure,”to his finally transiting the immense Wall of Nessus at thePiteous Gate, his threshold crossing to the unknown worldbeyond Nessus, and is much concerned with the “supernaturalaid” he receives in between; yet it also contains scenesthat clearly foreshadow future events that correspond bothto Severian being be swallowed in “The Belly of the Whale”and to much of the “initiation stage,” particularly meetingswith “goddesses” and “temptresses,” that are the centralconcerns of the next two volumes. While Claw, in turn,

4

foreshadows elements of his eventual “apotheosis” while alsoechoing earlier events that correspond to episodes from themonomyth’s “departure stage,” this second volume focuses onSeverian being swallowed in “The Belly of the Whale” (inrecounting his underground journeys in the mines near Saltusand in the House Absolute) and also contains the firstepisodes of the “initiation stage,” the initiatory tests of“The Road of Trials” and a mystical marriage with the“goddess”—both of which are combined in Severian’sparticipation in the feast of the alzabo, in which heabsorbs Thecla’s persona—as well as his continuingencounters with the “goddess” as “bad mother,” Agia; with“The Lady of the House of Sleep,” Dorcas; and with thetetralogy’s primary “temptress,” Jolenta. While Swordechoes the departure stage’s “Belly of the Whale” episode—inSeverian’s underground journey through Thrax’s vincula,specifically, and his sojourn in Thrax (“the city ofwindowless rooms”) itself, metaphorically—as well as theinitial episodes of the “initiation stage” (in hisparticipation in a “Duel of Magic” and his meeting withanother temptress, Cyriaca), this third volume moves thestory forward by also containing Severian’s negative“atonement with the father,” his encounter with Typhon andduel with Baldanders. Citadel, too, echoes elements of the“Belly of the Whale” and “Road of Trials” episodes—in thatSeverian is mutilated twice while continuing to endure testsand initiation rituals, which include his literalassimilation of the previous Autarch—while concluding thetetralogy’s recapitulation of the monomyth by focusing onSeverian’s apotheosis and acquisition of the boon, throughbecoming Autarch, as well as on all of the “return stage,”his subsequent return to Nessus.

Qualities of the Hero

Before investigating in detail the changes Wolfe ringson the monomyth’s plot, however, it is appropriate isexamine how thoroughly his characterization of Severiancorresponds to Campbell’s anatomy of the archetypal hero.

5

As the torturer’s guild to which he is apprenticed as aninfant recruits apprentices “solely from the children ofthose who fall into our hands,” so that “none of us knowsour descent,” Severian is raised as an orphan, and theprecise circumstances of his birth are a mystery (Shadow,10, 11). He acknowledges, “I have never known my father ormy mother,” and on one occasion admits that he “could nothelp thinking . . . of the parents I would never know” (9,50). Still, Severian does inadvertently find and, muchlater, identify his father, whom he deduces at the end ofCitadel (316) is Ouen, the waiter at the Inn of Lost Loveswho had served Severian in Shadow, whose note to DorcasSeverian had unwittingly intercepted, and who also turns outto be Dorcas’ son (Shadow, 193). Even though he neveractively searches for his father as such, Severian doesliterally seek his father, unknowingly, when he subsequentlyattempts to find the man who had written that note (196-97).Moreover, in eventually ascending to the throne of theAutarch, Severian triumphs over at least one pretender tothat throne, Vodalus, the rebel leader who knows that onebecomes Autarch by taking the appropriate drug and thendevouring “the living cells of [the previous Autarch’s]forebrain”; shortly before Severian becomes Autarch, when hemeets Vodalus for the last time, Vodalus is seeking theAutarch (whom he incorrectly, at this point, suspects isSeverian) in order to kill and supplant him (Citadel, 238,225-27).

Severian is exiled in numerous ways and several timesover. His guild “serves as a focus for the hatred of thepeople” and is “hated and despised even by those (indeed,most of all by those) who make use of its services” (Shadow,13, 22). Thus, even as a member of the torturer’s guild,Severian is already a social outcast, “was something worsethan a slave . . .in the eyes of the common people” (64).Yet he begins his memoir with an account of thecircumstances that lead to his “exile” (1, 121; Claw, 86)from the guild, its Matachin Tower, the Citadel in which itstands, and the city of Nessus—his punishment for betrayingthe guild by giving Thecla, the “client” with whom he falls

6

in love, a sharp knife with which she can kill herselfquickly rather than suffer the slow, agonizing death of “therevolutionary” to which she had been condemned (Shadow, 95).On being “cast . . . out” of his guild, Severian is sent toThrax to serve as “a carnifax, who takes life and performssuch excruciations as the judicators there decree. Such aman is universally hated and feared” (102, 101). While onthe road to Thrax, Severian endures that contumely thepublic reserves for members of the guild that had ostracizedhim, even though he has lost the compensating sense ofbrotherhood that membership in the guild had provided. Whenhe is arrested for “creating a disturbance” merely bywearing his fuligin cloak, he learns that he cannot travelwhile openly displaying the habit of his guild; and soonthereafter he discovers that his mere presence drives awaycustomers so effectively that he can use it to blackmailinnkeepers into giving him food and lodging (110, 113-14).Indeed, the Autarch predicts that “they will hate you, forwhat you once were” even after Severian ascends to thethrone (Citadel, 208). An echo of his outcast status as amember of the guild, Severian feels that he is “despised byeveryone” while he is Lictor of Thrax; an echo of hisexpulsion from Nessus and of the circumstances surroundingit, he is soon exiled from Thrax, too—is twice exiled—whenhe realizes that he must “flee the city” after he sparesCyriaca, the adulterous wife of the city’s archon, Abdiesus,rather than obey Abdiesus’ order to kill her (Sword, 16,71).

Severian also possesses numerous exceptional gifts.First, he frequently boasts that his “memory . . . in thefinal accounting loses nothing,” that it is his “joy and . .. curse, to forget nothing,” that “from my earliest memory Iremember all,” even though, ironically, he often makes thisclaim just as he is writing something that is, in somesubtle way, either internally inconsistent or inconsistentwith what he has written previously (Shadow, 2, 3, 9).3

Still, it is probable that Severian has at least a near-perfect memory: His intention at the tetraology’sconclusion is “to write [this manuscript] out again—I who

7

forget nothing—every word, just as I have written it here”during his anticipated voyage to “Yesod, the universe higherthan our own,” where he is to be tested to see if he isworthy to bring the New Sun—a “white fountain,” theopposite of a black hole, that the inhabitants of Yesod willpermit him to place in the sun’s decaying core to revitalizeit (Citadel, 320, 288-89, 253); during this journey, in Urth,he not only rewrites this manuscript from memory but alsolearns that he has been “chosen . . to save your race fromlethe” because he “always remembered everything” (353).This gift of perfect memory may also enable Severian toretain indefinitely his vivid recall of Thecla’s life andmemories, after the feast of the alzabo, without going mad—for taking the alzabo drug, which is reputed to drivehabitual users insane, does not appear to produce such athorough or long-lasting assimilation of another’s personain anyone else—and may likewise aid him, later, in his quickassimilation and ready use of the Autarch’s memories.

More remarkably, Severian also seems to have aninconsistent power to heal the sick and raise the dead,including himself, and to perform other sundry miracles aswell. While he at first ascribes these cures andresurrections to the power of the Claw of the Conciliator—the priceless sapphire relic that Agia steals from theburning Cathedral of the Pelerines and hides in Severian’ssabretache in Shadow, and that he subsequently carries withhim until Baldanders destroys it at the conclusion of Sword—Severian finally deduces that “the power . . . is drawn frommyself” (Citadel, 282). Even before he receives the Claw,Severian resurrects Triskele, the dog he finds among theother “dead” animals “where the keepers of the Bear Towerthrow their refuse . . . He seemed as dead as the rest, buthe opened one eye” the moment Severian touches his carcass(Shadow, 25, 26); as Severian recalls later, “Triskele . . .had stirred back to life beneath my hand two years before Ibore the Claw” (Citadel, 322). With the Claw in hispossession, although he does not yet know he has it,Severian appears (in retrospect) both to raise Dorcas fromthe dead in the Botanic Gardens and, miraculously and

8

inexplicably, to escape being killed by the avern leaves,which “always kill,” in his duel with Agia’s brother Agilus atthe Sanguinary Field; it is likely that the avern leaf doeskill him and that he immediately resurrects himself,however, for Dorcas twice tells him, “I thought you weredead,” and Severian himself surmises that “perhaps it wasdeath” and later observes, “I should be dead” (Shadow, 170-71, 204, 207, 209, 205, 229). After he discovers that hehas the Claw, Severian uses it to turn water to “wine”(Claw, 38, 111); to heal his own wounded arm, pacify theman-apes, and staunch the bleeding of a man-ape’s stump inthe Caves of Saltus (49-51; see also Sword, 52); toresurrect Cornet Mineas, the ulhan killed by the notulesthat had pursued Severian and Jonas (Claw, 97); to heal thewounds he and Jonas receive in the prisoners’ antechamber ofthe House Absolute (114); to tame a wild bull of the pampas,heal the herdsman Manahen and his son, and turn the sod wallof their hut green overnight (230-34); to heal the deathlyill young girl and her infected brother in their jacal inThrax (Sword, 52); and—with the Claw remnant, after itssapphire casing is shattered—to resurrect the dead soldierMiles and then heal both himself, again, and the courtierEmilian in the Pelerines’ lazaret (Citadel, 9, 59, 60).

However, Severian also tries unsuccessfully to use theClaw, among other such occasions, “to save Jolenta” (Sword,22), to restore the blasted and charred body of littleSeverian at Typhon’s mountain (166), and, with the remnant,to aid an insane woman in the Matachin Tower’s oublietteafter he returns to Nessus (Citadel, 282). The testimony ofextraterrestrials and of the Pelerines themselves reinforcesSeverian’s conclusion that this transient power to performmiracles resides in himself and not in the Claw: Afterexamining the Claw, the “cacogens” (extraterrestrials whoprefer to be called “Hierodules”) Ossipago and Famulimusagree that “it cannot have performed the feats ascribed toit” (Sword, 231); later, one of the Pelerines aiding thewounded in the lazaret observes, “As for its workingmiraculous cures and even restoring life to the dead, do youthink our order would have any sick among us if it were so?”

9

(Citadel, 58). In Urth, after he nearly destroys himself andthe Ship by attempting unsuccessfully to resurrect itssteward while in the void of space, Severian learns that hehad previously performed such miracles by drawing power fromUrth “or from its old sun” (which is why he fails on theShip, as it is near neither) and that he can now produceeven greater marvels by drawing upon the power of the NewSun (42, 144).

All the resurrections Severian effects in the tetralogyforeshadow that he will be the Autarch who will bring theNew Sun, and thus effect Earth’s resurrection, in Urth. YetSeverian will be successful in bringing the New Sun, whileall previous Autarchs who had tried have failed, preciselybecause he has the training and sensibility of aprofessional torturer, his third and last exceptional gift.While Severian acknowledges that this training has taughthim “how to manage . . . men and women” (Citadel, 149), andhas thus prepared him to be Autarch, it has also taught himto administer pain and death—but only exactly as much as isdeemed necessary, and only when it is deemed necessary—withabsolute equanimity. He tells Dorcas, “Excruciation andexecution are arts, and I have the feel, the gift, theblessing. . . . I enjoy exercising my skill, the only realskill I have—enjoy making things go perfectly” (Sword, 63,69). Prior to the unequivocal destruction of Urth per se inUrth, Dr. Talos’ play—which is reputed to be “a dramatization . . .of certain parts of the lost Book of the New Sun” and clearlyportrays a popular mythology—establishes, too, that thecoming of the New Sun will destroy Urth and kill most of itsinhabitants in the process of bringing it renewed life(Claw, 179; see also 179-99 and Urth, 147-48, 153, 303).Severian’s unique willingness to herald the New Sun eventhough this sentences Urth to death (as a prelude to itsrebirth)—the requisite quality no previous Autarch seems tohave possessed—is a consequence of his having incorporatedthe ethic of the torturer, which enables him to put Urth onthe rack because it is necessary. Severian, who laterrefers to himself as “Urth’s executioner,” also learns inUrth that he has been “chosen . . . to save the world”

10

because he is “a torturer” who “had often meted out theharshest justice” as his “duty” (343, 161). In the contextof the tetralogy and its sequel, possessing this equanimityof the torturer is Severian’s most essential special gift.

Thus is it appropriate that others often see Severianas a personification of “Death,” particularly when he isattired in his fuligin cloak or performing the offices of acarnifax, lictor, or executioner. He is “Death” in the eyesof Robert, whose hut Severian and Agia visit in the BotanicGardens (Shadow, 161); to Dorcas, whom he resurrects shortlythereafter (Sword, 68); to Agia, who shouts, “Death! Death iscome!” in announcing Severian’s arrival at the SanguinaryField for his duel with Agilus (Shadow, 201); to Dr. Talos,who also announces that “Death has come” when Severianarrives during a performance of the play (234); to Cyriaca,whose life he spares in Thrax (Sword, 32); and, mostappropriately, to the Autarch, who, knowing already thatSeverian will be his successor, greets him by saying,“Welcome, Death,” on meeting him in “the Second House. . . .a secret palace within the walls of the House Absolute”(Claw, 155-56). As he personifies death, Severian does notfear it, even though there are other things he does fear.When he nearly drowns in the river Gyoll as an apprentice,he reports, “I was no longer afraid, even though I wasdying, or already dead” (Shadow, 15). He likewise exhibitsno fear of death when he is certain that the guild willexecute him for having assisted Thecla’s suicide, althoughhe would prefer to die without torment, and he offers tokill himself to save the guild from embarrassment (99-100).Dismayed by Thecla’s death and his expulsion from the guild,he feels that his own death “would be no more than just”when challenged to the avern duel (130). When he doesnothing to avoid the duel, even after learning that hisdeath is “practically certain,” Agia observes, “dyingdoesn’t bother you—that’s refreshing,” and then realizesthat Severian is truly “not afraid to die” (135, 137).Vodalus, too, notes Severian’s “willingness to die” when hefinds him in the wreck of the Autarch’s downed flier(Citadel, 224). And Severian decides, apparently like nearly

11

everyone else, that he “would not run first,” that he“wanted to press forward, to get the fighting begun, to dieif I was in fact to die” prior to the only militaryengagement in which he participates as a uniformed combatant(173-74).

Severian believes that this cultivated attitude offearlessness in the face of death has saved his life manytimes. While a captive in Vodalus’ camp he reports, “I sawhow little it weighed on the scale of things whether I livedor died, though my life was precious to me. And of thosetwo thoughts I forged a mood by which I stood ready to graspeach smallest chance to live, yet in which I cared not toomuch whether I saved myself or not. By that mood, I think,I did live; it has been so good a friend to me that I haveendeavored to wear it ever since” (Claw, 69). Yet Severianconsiders himself to be a “coward” on some occasions—forexample, when he does not react quickly enough to savelittle Severian’s mother, Casdoe, from attacking zoanthrops(Sword, 167; see also 112)—and feels “terror” while duelingBaldanders (247). Although he proclaims, “I’m not afraid ofpain, or of death,” he does “feel fear” in anticipating apitched battle with the Ascians (Citadel, 153, 169). He isalso somewhat “afraid” of unfamiliar “machines,” such as theAutarch’s flier, and acknowledges that he would be “afraid”to travel beyond the solar system (201, 251).

The Book of the New Sun is set several million years inthe future, after “the strength of the world [Urth’s naturalresources] has been exhausted” (Claw, 75). Moreover, Urthis dying because its sun is dying. This, of course, is thedeficiency Severian’s world suffers and that it isSeverian’s destiny to redress by manifesting the New Sun.Agia notes, as she and Severian prepare to enter the BotanicGardens’ Jungle Garden, that “the real jungle is dying inthe north as the sun cools . . . it has been dying so formany centuries” (Shadow, 150). Later, Severian reflectsthat “the heart of Urth herself . . . is dead, and coolingand shrinking within her stony mantle like the corpse of anold woman” (Sword, 86). And to its inhabitants,particularly to many of those who follow Vodalus, the

12

exhausted Urth and its dying sun illustrate “that we havefallen far from the brave days of the past,” from “theancient high civilization Urth has now lost” (Claw, 74, 14).Finally, towards the end of Citadel, the aquastor (a being“created and sustained by the power of the imagination”) whotakes the form of Master Malrubius explains to Severian “thesecret history of Time”: The inhabitants of Yesod—who werecreated by the “Humanity” of some unknown iteration of theuniverse’s endless “cycle” of creation, expansion, and“implosion” to be “a race such as Humanity wished its own tobe,” and who then “escaped” to a “universe higher than ourown”—“shape us now as they themselves were shaped” on the“anvil” of “our need in this age to fight against an ever-more-hostile world with the resources of the depletedcontinents. . . . but when the New Sun appears, it will be asignal that the earliest operations of that shaping arecomplete” (255, 254, 288-89). Thus, as the advent of theNew Sun is a sign that humanity has taken a first steptoward evolving into something higher and wiser— something“united, compassionate, just” (288)—the fact that Severian’sdestiny is to bring the New Sun suggests that his role is,indeed, to make the world spiritually significant andhumankind comprehensible to itself, or at least to signalthat the struggle to attain these ends has finallysurmounted the first threshold, just as it also suggeststhat the world’s deficiency is the debased nature ofhumanity throughout its history (contrary to the opinion ofVodalus’ followers) as well as the depleted continents anddying sun.

Although the monomythic hero need fill no more than oneof these conditional roles, Severian encompasses them all inalso being a warrior, lover, ruler, world-redeemer, andmystic; while he does not exhibit the conditional trait of aruler, he does possess the definitive characteristics thatCampbell associates with each of these other archetypes.That he will be a warrior is foreshadowed in his initialmeeting with Vodalus in the necropolis, for when he graspsthe ax and kills the volunteer who is about to strikeVodalus, Severian “had chosen to fight, a thing a torturer

13

does not normally do” (Shadow, 21; see also 7). The hero aswarrior will slay the “ogre-tyrant” who “is precisely themonster of the status quo” (Campbell, 337), and Severiandefeats two such ogre-tyrants: Typhon, the resurrectedAutarch from Urth’s glorious past who had “once . . . ruledthis planet, and many more,” and who has “two heads, like anogre in some forgotten tale,” whom he kills; and Baldanders,the giant who oppresses the inhabitants of Lake Diuturna,who escapes death in his duel with Severian by sinking intothe lake (Sword, 173, 170). Severian trains the People ofthe Lake to fight and leads them against Baldanders, but he“had never so much as seen a battle, much less taken part inone,” prior to this (217). However, he had previouslyfought Agilus in the Sanguinary Field, the man-apes in themines of Saltus, the alzabo in Casdoe’s mountain hut, andthe zoanthrops (voluntarily lobotomized humans) whosubsequently kill Casdoe and her father, as well as Typhon.He literally becomes a warrior when he joins Guasacht’sirregular calvary and then participates in the war againstthe Ascians as a combatant in Citadel. And Severian doeschange the status quo in the tetralogy, finally, by becomingAutarch; he is destined to change it far more, in Urth, bymanifesting the New Sun that will destroy and thenrevitalize Urth.

Severian is a lover many times over. He first has sexwith the false Thecla of the House Azure (a brothel modeledon the House Absolute and, surprisingly, managed by theAutarch; see Shadow, 74-75), with other “hired bodies in thetown” of Nessus (138), “often” with Thecla herself in hercell in the Matachin Tower (138; see also Sword, 209), andsubsequently with Dorcas, Agia, Jolenta, Cyriaca, Pia (aslave in the Hetman’s house on Lake Diuturna; see Sword,209), and Daria (a comrade in Guasacht’s irregulars; seeCitadel, 153). Yet, while he falls in love with both Theclaand Dorcas, these other liaisons are merely brief, casualaffairs or, in Agia’s case, the product of an intense butconflicted lust, “a love that was deadly and yet notserious” (Shadow, 126). Dorcas, the “only . . . livingwoman” he desires by the end of the tetralogy (Citadel, 153),

14

as Thecla is dead, is his shadow (as is Thecla, too, in amore gruesome way). Both he and Dorcas are resurrected fromweed-choked waters—Dorcas, literally, from the lake in theBotanic Gardens’ Garden of Endless Sleep in which the deadare preserved, and Severian, figuratively, from the riverGyoll while an apprentice (Sword, 170-71, 15-16). Beforethey even leave the Garden of Endless Sleep, Dorcas tellsSeverian, prophetically, “I am like you; I would bend timebackward if I could”; and, at the end of Sword, Severiannotes that “Dorcas was another self (as Thecla was yet tobecome in a fashion as terrible as the other was beautiful),and if I loved Thecla, Dorcas loved her also” (180, 231).Later, Dorcas has a “terrible” dream in which she isshunned, as Severian is in reality, and Severian realizesthat the two of them are also alike in that neither is whathe or she appears to be (Claw, 168, 171-72). Accomplishingthe “impossible task” of resurrecting her from the Garden ofEndless Sleep does lead to Severian sharing a “bridal bed”with Dorcas. Yet this dynamic also occurs, but in reverse,in his relationship with Thecla. Not only is Severianresponsible for Thecla’s death, rather than her resurrection(although she is, later, resurrected within him), but hissharing a “bridal bed” with her also anticipates, ratherthan results from, his accomplishing another “impossibletask,” becoming Autarch: While he is her lover during herincarceration, Severian is far more closely and inextricablywedded to Thecla after her death, when she is “the bride” atthe feast of the alzabo and he absorbs her persona by eatingher flesh after taking the alzabo mixture (86); yet thisceremony also foreshadows his assimilation of the Autarch’spersona, Severian’s apotheosis, which is accomplished,similarly, by his taking “another drug . . . andswallow[ing] the living cells of [the Autarch’s] forebrain”(Citadel, 238).

In becoming Autarch, of course, Severian does become aruler and lawgiver; yet this has nothing to do with anysearch for a father, as Severian (although he eventuallyfinds his father, inadvertently) never conducts such asearch per se. Likewise, while Severian is literally a

15

world-redeemer in that he is destined to preside over Urth’srebirth by bringing the New Sun—and is confident at Citadel’sconclusion that “the mission [to Yesod] I am about to setout on will succeed” (285)—all indications that he and thefather are one are merely, albeit redundantly, symbolic.Severian literally becomes one with the previous Autarch byassimilating his persona; and this Autarch may be consideredSeverian’s symbolic father in that he is Severian’simmediate “predecessor” (just as Severian is his heir) aswell as a father-figure to the Commonwealth—even though,ironically, he has lost his “manhood” because he had failedin the mission Severian is about to undertake (251). Also,Master Palaemon—who is clearly Severian’s surrogate fatherin the guild, which Severian ultimately realizes “was myfamily, and all the home I should ever have”—likens himselfto Severian in predicting that Severian, too, “will be amaster” in the guild (275, 279). Moreover, Severian acceptsthe role of father—and, in a punning way, becomes his ownfather—when he tells his namesake and fellow-orphan, littleSeverian, “I’m your father—for now, at least,” after thealzabo and zoanthrops kill his family, subsequently claimsthat the boy is his “son” when the sorcerers kidnap him, andthen refers to him as “my son” after little Severian iskilled on Typhon’s statue (Sword, 114, 138, 180). Finally,as he heals the sick, performs several lesser miracles,communicates with the dead through having assimilated bothThecla and the Autarch, and even resurrects the dead,Severian is a mystic as well; he anticipates transcendinglife and myth to enter an inexpressible realm beyond form incontemplating his prospective journey to “Yesod, theuniverse higher than our own,” at the tetrology’sconclusion, and completes the journey to this inexpressiblerealm beyond form in Urth.

The Departure Stage

Severian feels that his meeting with Vodalus, Thea, andHildegrin in the Citadel’s necropolis is his Call toAdventure, that “it is more than possible I would never have

16

carried the knife to Thecla and forfeited my place in theguild” had this encounter—in which he had “glimpsed thewoman with the heart-shaped face,” Thecla’s sister Thea, andaccepted Vodalus’ “small gold coin,” a symbolic act thatmakes him a follower, “a Voldalarius”—not occurred (Shadow,102, 8). It is for this reason that Severian begins hismemoir with this event and asserts that the necropolis’“locked and rusted gate . . . remains in my mind now as thesymbol of my exile” (1). On finally arriving at the Wall ofNessus’ Piteous Gate at Shadow’s conclusion he reflects, “Itwas by entering that first gate that I set my feet upon theroad that brought me to this second gate,” which is thethreshold to the unknown world “outside the CityImperishable [Nessus] . . . the forests and grasslands,mountains and jungles of the north” (259-60). Vodalus inparticular, whose rebel camp is situated in these forests,is one of several heralds from this world beyond Nessus whoconvey the Call. “The herald’s summons may be to live . . .or . . . to die. It may mark . . . ‘the awakening of theself’” and “rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery oftransfiguration—a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage,which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth”(Campbell, 51); and Severian relates that he had “almostdied [earlier] that day,” when he had nearly drowned in theriver Gyoll but had been saved by Juturna, an undine whoseface was “as immense as the green face of the moon” andwhose “hands were each as long as . . . coffins” (Shadow, 4,15; see Urth, 327). Undines are gigantic sea-creatures whoresemble women and live beneath the ocean as the Brides ofAbaia, a monstrous ally of the Ascians and an enemy ofSeverian’s Commonwealth; as “the herald or announcer of theadventure . . . is often, dark, loathly, or terrifying,judged evil by the world,” and frequently “a beast”(Campbell, 53), Juturna, who presides over the first ofSeverian’s symbolic deaths and rebirths, is the first heraldSeverian encounters. Vodalus is the second, and inaccepting his coin on this “night [that] was to mark thebeginning of my manhood” (a mystery of transfiguration)Severian participates in a rite of passage, even though “he

17

did not know that then,” that he explicitly compares torites of investiture (Shadow, 4, 8). Severian’s thirdherald is Thecla, who is the proximate cause of hisexpulsion from the guild to the world beyond Nessus and whocomes as a “client” to the Matachin Tower from the HouseAbsolute, which is also north of Nessus. That Severianfalls in love with Thecla “at once,” despite the fact thatshe is a “client,” may be the blunder that reveals theunknown world beyond Nessus by precipitating his exile;however, the blunder may also be Master Gurloes’ decision togrant Thecla’s request and order Severian to “keep hercompany sometimes” and “sit with her while she eats,” asthis permits Severian to become emotionally as well asphysically intimate with Thecla, even though Gurloes warnsSeverian “not to please her too much” and specificallyorders him “not to do it for her” if she “wants her bedwarmed” (53, 59-60).4

Although Severian does refuse to “kill” his “friends”to effect Thecla’s escape, and even wrestles a bit with hisconflicting desires “to live out my life in the guild” or tobetray it by giving her the knife with which she can end hertorment, he does not refuse the Call (97). After acceptingthe Call, the monomythic hero receives “supernatural aid”from an old man or crone, who provides a talisman in asetting suggesting a womblike sense of peace, or from aguide, teacher, wizard, ferryman, hermit, or smith whooffers aid in a context of danger or temptation (Campbell,69-72). Severian acquires one false and three genuinetalismans before arriving at the Piteous Gate. The firstand least significant is the false talisman (which is neverused), the coin symbolizing his allegiance that he receivesin the necropolis from Vodalus, “a gold chrisos,” a coin sovaluable that Severian had never before seen one and “knew[of them] only in the same dim way I knew of the existenceof a world outside our city of Nessus” (Shadow, 20);Severian soon hides it beneath “a loose stone” in a“mausoleum” (21), recovers it only after he returns toNessus at the end of the tetralogy, and later still—when henotices that it is “precisely like . . . a bad coin” Dr.

18

Talos had given him that “appeared to have been struck inthe same die”—realizes that it is counterfeit (Citadel, 303).The second talisman is The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky,which Ultan, Master of the Curators, gives to Severian inthe dark, silent depths of an immense subterranean library,an imperturbably peaceful setting, as one of four booksSeverian is to collect and deliver to Thecla. However, thisis the only book he receives from Ultan—a blind “old man”with “eyes . . . the color of watered milk” and a “beardreaching nearly to his waist . . . who had already been oldwhen [Severian] was born”—as Ultan’s apprentice, Cyby,locates and gives him the others; when Severian leaves theMatachin Tower to begin his exile, he steals this book “withits tales from vanished worlds” from Thecla’s cell and takesit with him (Shadow, 43, 42, 40- 41, 104). Immediatelyafterwards, “the older of [the guild’s two] masters,”Palaemon, who is almost blind and whose hands are “dry andwrinkled as a mummy’s,” gives Severian the third talisman,Terminus Est, as a parting “gift” in his study, anotherpeaceful setting (86, 82, 105).5 “An heirloom worth avilla” (216) and, in Severian’s opinion, “the best bladeever forged” (Sword, 58), Terminus Est is a beautifullywrought, “straight and square-pointed,” double-edgedexecutioner’s broadsword with a “hydrargyrum” (mercury) core(Shadow, 106); it may also possess unnamed “higherproperties” that are acknowledged by Abundantius, leader ofthe sorcerers who capture Severian and little Severian inthe mountains beyond Thrax and subject Severian to “The Duelof Magic” (Sword, 143, 140). Severian wields Terminus Est tosave his own life numerous times; he finally shatters it indeflecting a killing blow from, and destroying, Baldander’shigh-tech “mace tipped with a phosphorescent sphere” duringtheir duel (246).

Severian’s fourth talisman is “the Claw of theConciliator, the most precious of gems,” which Agia stealsfrom the Cathedral of the Pelerines (in a scene, like theinitial scene in the necropolis, that is anything butpeaceful) and hides in Severian’s sabretache, and which hediscovers there after he executes Agilus and immediately

19

before he and Dorcas witness the “miracle” or “vision” ofthe Cathedral of the Pelerines rising above Nessus andvanishing “like a bubble in a fountain, leaving only acascade of sparks” (Shadow, 25, 231). As the gem belongs tothe Pelerines, a religious order for women, the Pelerines(more so that Alia) can be viewed, collectively, as the“crones” from whom Severian receives it, albeit indirectly.Both Severian and Jonas, his companion during much of Claw,refer to the Claw as a “talisman” (Citadel, 40; Claw, 61); andTyphon, who also calls Severian a “Talisman-bearer,” refersto it as a “talisman” or “talisman of power” repeatedly(Sword, 177-81). The cataphracts (gigantic metal robots)that stand in the lap of Typhon’s gargantuan statue, arefashioned mountain, turn to “salute the Claw” whenSeverian displays it from the statue’s left eye (181), yetthis and the “miracle” of the Cathedral, perhaps, are theonly two wondrous event that can most likely be attributedto the Claw itself. While many believe that “it performsmiraculous cures . . . forgives injuries, raises the dead,draws new races of beings from the soil, purifies lust, andso on” (Shadow, 144), and while Ava, a Pelerine, suggeststhat it (and not his perfect memory) may have brought Theclaback to life within Severian at the feast of the alzabo(Citadel, 75), it is even more likely that the power toperform all the cures, resurrections, and other assortedmiracles that Severian at first ascribes to the Claw is, ashe ultimately concludes, “drawn from” himself, his abilityto channel the power of Urth and its suns (282). Althoughits sapphire casing shatters when Baldanders throws the Clawfrom his castle window prior to their duel, Severian laterfinds among the sapphire’s shards “the dark core at theheart of the gem,” a “highly polished . . . claw” that“might have been carved in jet” yet “shone with an intensewhite light, like a star” (Sword, 253). As he has beentrying to return the Claw to the Pelerines since he firstdiscovers it in his sabretache, yet they refuse to acceptthis remnant because they do not believe it has anyconnection to their lost relic, Severian leaves the remnantclaw with them by hiding it inside their altar-stone in the

20

lazaret (Citadel, 108-9). Thus, the only one of thesetalismans with which Severian returns to Nessus is The Book ofthe Wonders of Urth and Sky: The counterfeit chrisos neverleaves the Citadel, and Terminus Est and the Claw aredestroyed at Lake Diuturna, yet Severian still has this“brown book” with him during his final conversation in theMatachin Tower with Master Palaemon, to whom he mentionsthat he intends “to carry it . . . [t]o the House Absolute”(279-80).

In addition to being the recipient of four talismans,Severian also encounters various teachers and guides, theoccasional ferryman, smith, and hermit, and several wizards;these characters, most of whom are helpful, collectivelyrepresent every source from which the monomythic hero mightreceive “supernatural aid” in a context that suggests dangeror temptation. The guild’s only two living masters, Gurloesand Palaemon, are literally Severian’s teachers, of course,as was “Master Malrubius, who had died several years before”the point at which Severian begins his memoirs and yetappears to him (including appearances in dreams andimpersonations by aquastors) at least a half-dozen times(Shadow, 15, 90, 243-44; Claw, 10; Citadel, 27-28, 246-56).Thecla must be counted among Severian’s teachers as well; hewrites, “The books I carried to her became my university,she my oracle. . . . If educated men have sometimes thoughtme . . . one whose company did not shame them, this is owingsolely to Thecla . . . and the four books” (Shadow, 76-77).After he assimilates her memories and persona at the feastof the alzabo, Thecla also serves as Severian’s guide withinthe House Absolute, which had been her home, and isespecially helpful in revealing to him how to escape fromits antechamber via “the secret door through which the youngexultants came by night” (Claw, 141). Other guides includeJonas, who “know[s] the route fairly well, at least for mostof the way,” and leads Severian to the grounds of the HouseAbsolute (90); Rudesind the curator, who directs Severian toMaster Ultan’s study in the Citadel, where Severian collectsThecla’s books, and who later shows him a picture of the“Green Room” in the House Absolute, where he locates Dorcas,

21

Dr. Talos, Baldanders, and Jolenta (Shadow, 39; Claw, 154-55); the Autarch, who invites Severian to reach the GreenRoom by using one of Fr. Inire’s “mirrors” that open the waybetween dimensions; Fr. Inire himself (a cacogen and theAutarch’s chief advisor), who provides more practicaldirections (159-62); Mannea, Directress of the Pelerines,who draws “a rough map showing the location of theanchorite’s retreat” for Severian and instructs him “tofollow the course indicated on it precisely” (Citadel, 113);and Agia, who spends Severian’s first full day of exile“guiding” him around Nessus, through the Botanic Gardens tocollect an avern, and to the Saguinary Field for his duelwith Agilus, although in doing so she is plotting Severian’sdeath so that her brother might claim Terminus Est and theClaw after the duel (Shadow, 145).

Hildegrin the Badger, whom Severian first meets in thecompany of Vodalus and Thea in the necropolis, is theferryman who conveys Severian, Agia, and Dorcas across theLake of Birds in the Garden of Endless Sleep (174-80; see also191). Baldanders, whose castle at Lake Diuturna “was filledwith machines . . . whose uses were beyond . . . conjecture”that he had “found, or constructed for himself,” is thesmith, a decidedly gothic mad scientist who is slowlytransforming himself into a giant in order to achieveimmortality (Sword, 222, 227). The hermit is Ash, “theanchorite of the Last House,” who “lives alone in . . . alonely spot” he cannot leave, his “hermitage,” and whomMannea asks Severian to find and transport to the Pelerine’slazaret (Citadel, 121, 120, 112). Ash is from an alternatefuture in which the sun has grown cold, and each upper storyof his house exists in a different epoch of that future andlooks out onto a different frozen landscape; Severian mustfollow Mannea’s map “precisely” to find the Last Housebecause, “for all those who do not walk the path correctly,even the lowest story stands in the future” (133). Ash hasnever heft his “hermitage” because he can exist outside it,in Severian’s present, only “if the probability for [his]existence [in a future derived from that present] is high”(134); that Ash disappears when he finally leaves the Last

22

House with Severian is but one of many incidents toforeshadow that Severian will bring the New Sun.

The sorcerers who capture Severian and little Severian,and who constitute “an academy of magicians,” can mostliterally be considered wizards; Severian almost succumbs to“Decuman’s spell” in their “Duel of Magic” (Sword, 146,153). However, the various time travelers and cacogens thatSeverian encounters—the green man from the far future, whomSeverian befriends by providing the means that facilitatehis escape from the showman’s tent in Saltus; the Cumaean, acacogen disguised as a witch, who calls Apu-Punchau from thedistant past in the stone town; Ossipago, Barbatus, andFamulimus, cacogens who “travel backwards through time”(Urth, 33); and the aquastors who impersonate Malrubius andTriskele to reveal “the secret history of Time” to Severian;as well as Inire and Ash—possess far more marvelousabilities and may more accurately be considered wizards,even though all believe that “there is no magic. There isonly knowledge, more or less hidden” (Claw, 243). All ofthese characters except Baldanders and the sorcerers aidSeverian—although Agia acts in bad faith, and many othersmerely provide information—and Severian meets all of themexcept Mannea and the “wizards” prior to arriving at thePiteous Gate.

Just as Shadow begins with a threshold crossing—Severian and his fellow apprentices sneaking through the“locked and rusted gate” to the necropolis—so, too, doeseach book of the tetralogy conclude with or anticipateanother threshold crossing: Shadow ends as Severian and hiscompanions traverse the Wall of Nessus at the Piteous Gate;Claw ends, after the Cumaean conjures Apu-Punchau from thepast, when Severian awakens in the “stone town” that heinsists is another “gateway, a gateway to the mountains”(250); Sword ends with Severian walking towards the Ascianlines after leaving Baldanders’ castle, a “lonely tower[that] was to prove to be a[nother] gateway—the verythreshold of war” (254); and Citadel ends with Severiananticipating his journey through “that cloud-racked gate wecall the sky, the gate that shall lead me, I hope, beyond

23

the nearer stars,” to Yesod (324). The “locked and fog-shrouded gate of our necropolis” foreshadows—and thesesubsequent, metaphorical “gateways” and “gates” echo—Severian’s threshold crossing, which occurs at the PiteousGate “with its curling wisps of smoke, this gate which isperhaps the largest in existence, perhaps the largest everto exist” (Shadow, 259). “The Wall and the towering gate”so dwarf those passing through it that “the people lookedlike mites and the beasts like ants pulling at crumbs”(255); “such a mighty structure was the Wall that it dividedthe world” (Claw, 9), just as it is a line of demarcationthat separates Nessus, “the city in which I had lived all mylife,” from the unknown world that lies beyond for Severian,who writes, “when I entered this second gate, I began towalk a new road” (Shadow, 125, 260).

It is abundantly apparent that this threshold crossingleads to a sphere of rebirth. Although he has previouslyseen the deceased Malrubius in several visions, and hasalready resurrected Triskele, Dorcas, and possibly himself—all of which foreshadow the many resurrections still to come—Severian “dreams” of both Malrubius and Triskeleimmediately after traversing the Wall and, soon afterwards,tells the green man that “the New Sun comes asprophesied . . . and there is indeed a second life for Urth—if what you say is truth” (Claw, 10, 26). Of course, theadvent of the New Sun and a consequent second life for Urthis the ultimate rebirth, in Urth, that all the resurrectionsin the tetralogy foreshadow. In addition to therevivifications of Cornet Mineas and Miles that Severianinitially attributes to the Claw (Claw, 97; Citadel, 9-10),other rebirths that occur after Severian crosses thethreshold to the unknown world at the Piteous Gate includethe resurrection of Thecla’s persona within Severian at thefeast of the alzabo; the Cumaean’s return of Apu-Punchau to“that brief period of renewed life” in the stone town(Sword, 186; see Claw, 247-50); Typhon’s resuscitation,which Severian appears to have caused inadvertently when hehad “twisted every dial . . . and shifted every lever” inthe machines near Typhon’s “desiccated” remains “in an

24

attempt to produce some nutrient” for himself (Sword,163;see also 171); and the resurrections of the previousAutarch’s and his predecessors’ personae to “new life”within Severian after he consumes the Autarch’s forebrain(Citadel, 240).

A protective guardian, a destructive watchman, or bothmay defend the threshold to the unknown world (Campbell, 77-89). The “immense” Wall of Nessus, which is “honeycombedeverywhere,” is inhabited by “innumerable soldiers” whoserve as both guardians and watchmen; they guard the Wallfor the Autarch, but are sinister watchers to those passingthrough its Piteous Gate, like Severian, who observes thatmany are “neither men nor women” but “seemed beasts with toomuch of men about them, so that horned heads watched us witheyes too wise” through “windows . . . clearer than glass”(Shadow, 257 passim). However, the Autarch’s inhuman guardsare not the only watchmen at this threshold crossing.Severian learns at the feast of the alzabo that Vodalus’followers have been “watching” him ever since Hildegrin hadferried him across the Lake of Birds; and Vodalus tellsSeverian, “the watchers lost you at the Wall,” which impliesthat they must have witnessed at least the beginning of histhreshold crossing there (Claw, 86).

In the departure stage's final episode the hero is"swallowed" in "the belly of the whale," a journey to theWorld Womb or World Navel in which "the hero goes inward, tobe born again" (Campbell, 90–91). This is frequently aliteral or symbolic death and rebirth involving a literal orsymbolic underground journey that may be an actual orfigurative descent into hell, which often contains devils ormemento mori in the form of bones or skeletons; the hero maymerely enter a temple or similar structure that is guardedby gargoyles, however, and might be literally orsymbolically mutilated or dismembered rather than killed(92). This is the single episode of the monomyth that ismost frequently and elaborately reproduced in sciencefiction novels and films that employ this plot structure,and Claw contains The Book of the New Sun’s most crucial andextensive underground journeys, Severian’s descent into the

25

mines of Saltus and his initial visit to the House Absolute,both of which are also symbolic descents into hell, whilethe remainder of the tetralogy repeatedly foreshadows orechoes these journeys. Soon after traversing the Wall ofNessus, Severian experiences his most obviously subterraneanand emphatically life-threatening underground journey whenhe is tricked by Agia’s forged letter into entering themines northeast of Saltus in search of Thecla. He is almostkilled by Agia and her hired assassins when he enters themines, and again on leaving them, and is attacked whileunderground by the man-apes who inhabit and guard them.Severian believes that this is the one “time . . . when byrights he should [have] die[d],” but he is saved by theClaw, whose azure light pacifies the man-apes—demonic,gargoyle-like creatures who wield thigh bones tipped withgold—after they mutilate him by slashing his right arm withtheir fangs (Claw, 49).

“The whole of [the House Absolute] lay underground,”and Severian enters it, as a prisoner, by descending into a“pit” or “grotto” via stairs that “had been carved toresemble a natural formation of dark rock” (105). Thisentrance to the Autarch’s subterranean “palace” appears tobe guarded by gargoyles in the form of gigantic, animated“statues, forty at least, who . . . rimmed the pit,motionless at last, and looked down on us like a frieze ofcenotaphs” (105-6). And Severian is finally thrust into anantechamber that contains the lost souls of a dismal hell,hundreds of prisoners and their descendants, some of whoseancestors had been incarcerated more than seven generationsearlier, who have “no hope of release” and who “screamed,wept, and prayed” as they are tormented during the night byyoung exultants who lash them with electric whips in the“terrifying” darkness (111, 113). Severian, too, issubjected to this scourging, a mutilation that leaves himwith a “scar that ran across my right cheek” and whose “painwas as severe as any I have ever felt; it seemed as thoughmy face were being torn away” and (116, 112).

Wolfe cleverly acknowledges that Severian’s experiencesin the mines of Saltus and the prisoners’ antechamber

26

intentionally correspond to the monomyth’s “Belly of theWhale” episode by providing him with a companion named Jonaswho accompanies him on this segment of his adventure only.A star-faring robotic sailor who had long ago crash-landedon Urth, where he had had no choice but to replace hisbroken mechanical systems with inferior organic body parts,Jonas meets Severian at the Wall of Nessus, accompanies himto Saltus and follows him into its mines, participates withhim in Vodalus’ feast of the alzabo, and then leads him tothe House Absolute, where the two are incarcerated togetherin the prisoners’ antechamber. Soon after they escape fromthe antechamber, while still within the House Absolute,Jonas uses Inire’s “mirrors” to return to space, andSeverian subsequently emerges through “the Gate of Trees”onto “the rooftops of the greatest palace of Urth” afterfollowing Inire’s directions to the Green Room (144, 164).The fact that the name “Jonas” is a variant of “Jonah”—andthus, in addition to signifying a harbinger of misfortune,also alludes to the Old Testament prophet who is swallowedby a great fish and lives unharmed for three days in itsbelly, the Biblical incident from which the monomyth’s“Belly of the Whale” episode derives its title—is reinforcedby the fact that Severian thinks it “an usual name” (112).

In contexts that likewise reinforce reading them asfigurative descents into hell that symbolize death andrebirth, these two pivotal underground journeys areforeshadowed numerous times in Shadow. Earlier “on the day[he] was to save Vodalus” in the Citadel’s necropolis,Severian nearly drowns while swimming in the river Gyoll,which is associated with hell in being likened to “a great,weary snake” (like the Congo River in Conrad’s “Heart ofDarkness”) as well as by virtue of being a location in whichSeverian sees the dead (14, 12-13). While “perhaps alreadydead” himself, and while experiencing his first “vision” ofthe deceased Malrubius, Severian is saved by the undineJuturna, whose “hands . . . as long as . . . coffins” freehim from the nenuphars’ netted roots so that “[h]e shotright out of the water” (15-16). As he asserts that hisencounter with Vodalus in the necropolis later that “night

27

was to mark the beginning of my manhood,” Severian isfiguratively reborn twice on the day on which his memoirsbegin, and this second symbolic rebirth occurs,appropriately, in a graveyard to which Vodalus has come todisinter a corpse (4). Later, Severian almost drowns againwhile recovering Terminus Est from the Lake of Birds in theGarden of Endless Sleep; he is “saved” this time by Dorcas,who, no “more alert to her surroundings than asomnambulist,” suddenly appears on the bank in the act ofpulling him from the water (172, 175). The Lake of Birdscontains the preserved bodies of innumerable dead; andDorcas, who subsequently notes, “I feel as if I’ve just beenawakened,” is inadvertently resurrected from its blackwaters, in which she has been preserved for forty years,when Severian touches her hand in reaching for his submergedsword (176). As Severian narrowly escapes a watery death inboth, the two scenes in which he is saved by Juturna andDorcas are especially appropriate precursors to thetetralogy’s two central “Belly of the Whale” episodes.

Still other incidents in Shadow anticipate the tomb-like, underground-journey element in these pivotal, symbolicdeath-and-rebirth episodes. While an apprentice, Severianhad often enjoyed resting in the open coffins of the“mausoleum,” which he later claims is his “own tomb,” inwhich he buries Vodalus’ counterfeit chrisos (11; Citadel,321). He “had already adopted as [his] own the devicegraved in bronze above the door . . . a fountain risingabove waters, and a ship volant, and below these a rose”(Shadow, 11), heraldic emblems that are prophetic inthemselves. The fountain represents the New Sun, the “whitefountain” Severian is destined to bring to Urth and that isalso in some sense Severian himself (Citadel, 253). The shipvolant is the flying Ship in which he will travel to Yesod,and “stamped on the reverse [of the coin he buries there]was just such a flying ship as [he] had seen in the armsabove the door of [his] secret mausoleum” (Shadow, 20). Therose represents the Conciliator, the legendary figureassociated with the Claw who is also called “the New Sun”(Citadel, 22); Dorcas tells Severian that the Conciliator

28

“appeared to some pious woman . . . in the form of roses”(Claw, 214), and Severian discovers he is the Conciliatorwhen the Ship deposits him “deep in the past” afterconveying him from Yesod back to Urth in Urth (270).

Severian also undertakes two more-literal undergroundjourneys while still an apprentice. He gets lost whiletrailing Triskele through the “dark galleries” beneath theCitadel and finally emerges, “through a hole hardly bigenough for [his] head and shoulders,” in the Atrium of Time—which, although not a temple, is still filled with gargoylesin the form of “[s]tatues of beasts” (Shadow, 30). Heembarks on a similar underground journey when he is sent tothe “tomblike cellar” of the Citadel library to fetchThecla’s books shortly before becoming a journeyman (51).He thinks that Rudesind’s directions to Ultan’s study, at“the bottom of the stacks, . . . suggested I might benearing those ancient tunnels where I had wandered lookingfor Triskele”; and when he finally finds Ultan, afterclimbing down “narrow and steep” steps that descend into“total darkness,” he “quite suddenly . . . felt that he andI were dead, and that the darkness surrounding us was gravesoil pressing in about our eyes” (39-40). Moreover,Severian notes that “[t]he real work of our guild isdone . . . underground,” where the guild’s “clients” areincarcerated and tortured; and during the “ten days” betweenThecla’s death and his expulsion from the torturers’ guildhe “lived the life of a client,” “imprisoned . . . in theoubliette beneath our Matachin Tower” (17, 98; Claw, 21).Finally, traversing the Wall of Nessus at the Piteous Gateis yet another underground journey, at least metaphorically—and one that specifically foreshadows Severian’s descentinto the mines of Saltus, which occurs shortly thereafter—for “to enter the gate was to enter a mine” that alsoresembles a temple guarded by gargoyles or a hell inhabitedby devils, as it is infested with the Autarch’s inhumansoldiers, “beasts with too much of men about them, so thathorned heads watched us with eyes too wise” (Shadow, 257).

Just as they are foreshadowed in Shadow, so, too, arethe crucial underground journeys in Claw echoed in both

29

Sword and Citadel. After participating in a performance ofDr. Talos’ play, Severian leaves the grounds of the HouseAbsolute to continue his journey to Thrax and assume thepost of lictor to which he has been exiled. Thrax is knownas “the City of Windowless Rooms” because “many [of itsprivate buildings] are in large measure dug into the rockitself,” and Severian eventually explores its “crookedstreets that straggle down the cliff between cave-housesexcavated from the rock” (Sword, 3, 8). After attending thearchon’s masked ball, he compares his nighttime view of thecity from these cliffs to the fabled view of “crevices inthe mountains so deep that one can see stars at theirbottoms—crevices that pass, then, entirely through theworld” (50). While Thrax is thus both metaphorically and,to some extent, literally an underground city, its Vinculaor House of Chains, which Severian supervises as lictor, isan unequivocally subterranean hellhole where “prisoners werelodged in a slanted shaft bored into the rock” (5).Severian, who reports that “there is a legend to the effectthat it was originally a tomb,” often inspects “thesubterranean parts of the Vincula”; and Dorcas observes that“down below . . . in the tunnels . . . [i]t’s like a massgrave” (4, 7, 2). While his entire stay in Thrax is ametaphorical underground journey, particularly as henarrowly avoids being killed there by the “Salamander”—anextraterrestrial flame-demon (a devil to the Vincula’s hell)sent by Agia’s lover, Hethor, that murders several of thetown’s inhabitants while seeking Severian’s life (55-59)—Severian’s departure from Thrax is yet another literalunderground journey: Forced into exile again when he sparesthe life of the archon’s adulterous wife, Cyriaca, Severianleaves Thrax by descending “down the long tunnel of theVincula” to its sewer drain and then crawling “rapidly downheadforemost” until he reaches “a grill at the bottom” that“was nearly rusted through” and escapes (78-79).

The northern mountains to which Severian travels afterleaving Thrax are like a temple guarded by gargoyles in thattheir highest peaks have all been sculpted into the faces ofthose forgotten monarchs who “had ruled in the earliest and

30

greatest days of humanity”; metaphorically, the “temple”they guard is the domed structure in the lap of Typhon’smountain, which is also literally guarded by enormousrobotic “cataphracts,” in which Severian finds Typhon’sdesiccated remains (116, 181). However, before discoveringand resuscitating Typhon—who then holds Severian captivewithin the mountain, briefly, in what is yet another life-threatening subterranean encounter—Severian must negotiateone more underground journey. He follows the sorcerers whohave kidnapped little Severian to “a subterranean room,” inwhich he is imprisoned, and then escapes from this room intoan underground “maze” where he is threatened by another of“Hethor’s pets”—“some nameless seeker” that had earliersought him in the prisoners’ antechamber of the HouseAbsolute, a previous underworld—until he “at last . . .climbed cautiously up and thrust [his] head above theground” (135, 141).

Severian is mutilated again at the conclusion of Swordwhen he is bombarded by rock shards, from which he contractsthe infection and fever to which he succumbs in thePelerines’ lazaret in Citadel, during his duel withBaldanders in the giant’s decidedly gothic castle on LakeDiuturna. And he receives his most serious and permanentmutilations in Citadel, when his leg is “laid open” by theblast of an energy weapon during his charge against theAscian line with Guasacht’s irregulars—the injury for whichhe is later yclept “Severian the Lame”—and when his face isripped open by the slash of Agia’s lucivee, a blow “few havesurvived,” shortly after Agia recovers him from the Asciansto deliver him to Vodalus (179, 324, 215). He remains lameand horribly scarred until he is healed on Yesod, ten yearslater, in Urth. Severian is nearly killed again, and theAutarch is fatally injured, when their flier crashes in thejungle; Severian compares being lifted from the flier tobeing “pulled from [a] grave . . . for the flier had fallenon soft ground and half buried itself,” and later comparesbeing imprisoned in Vodalus’ ziggurat, where he feels“almost as dead,” to lying dead in one’s coffin (209, 221).Shortly after these symbolic deaths, with their metaphorical

31

suggestions of interment, Severian becomes the Autarch byassimilating the persona of the previous Autarch, his finalsymbolic death and rebirth. And, at the conclusion ofCitadel, he retraces what is chronologically the first of hismany underground journeys, his subterranean pursuit ofTriskele, by following his own “tracks” through the“tunnels” beneath the Citadel and “squeezing through itsnarrow crevice” to emerge again in the Atrium of Time (323).

The Initiation Stage

The first incident in the monomyth's initiation stageis “the road of trials,” a series of tests in which the herois assisted by the advice or agents of those who had offeredsupernatural aid and by the talismans given him, and whichmay also require that the hero "assimilates his opposite,"which may be “his own unsuspected self" or shadow, “eitherby swallowing it or by being swallowed” (Campbell, 97, 108).Severian’s most crucial test, which the many tests andtrials he endures throughout the tetralogy foreshadow, ishis destined, literal “trial” at “Tzadkiel’s Seat ofJustice” on Yesod, where he will be judged worthy tomanifest the New Sun in Urth (150). The aquastormasquerading as Malrubius, who also warns him that he willface many other deadly “tests” as Autarch, predicts thatSeverian may pass this final “test” because he is someone inwhom “the divergent tendencies of our race may have achievedsynthesis,” an everyman (Citadel, 249, 255). And Severian isan everyman by virtue of being a monomythic hero—who is“Everyman on a mystical quest,” as Spinrad points out (152)—for myth is "symbolic . . . of the dynamics of the psyche. .. . in myth the problems and solutions shown are directlyvalid for all mankind" (Campbell, 19). However, Severian’spivotal “trial” within the tetralogy is his participation inVodalus’ feast of the alzabo, which occurs after his descentinto the mines of Saltus but prior to his initialimprisonment in the House Absolute’s antechamber—that is,between his two most elaborate underground journeys, ratherthan immediately after them—yet this is appropriate because

32

the monomyth’s “Belly of the Whale” and “Road of Trials”episodes, which are contiguous in any case, can also overlapone another considerably in that both entail life-threatening ordeals that may involve being literally ormetaphorically swallowed.

The alzabo is an extraterrestrial “devourer of carrion”that temporarily retains the mental faculties of anycreature it eats; to further their rebellion, Vodalus andhis followers “absorb all that can be learned of the past”by taking a drug “prepared from a gland at the base of theanimal’s skull” and then eating the remains of any deceasedindividual whose memories they want to acquire (Claw, 80).Vodalus, Hildegrin, and Thea are disinterring “the corpse ofa woman” that is to be consumed in such a ceremony whenSeverian first encounters them in the necropolis (Shadow,5). Thecla’s corpse is “served” at the feast of the alzaboin which Severian and Jonas participate in Claw, and theAutarch suggests much later that this is no “coincidence,”that Thecla’s remains were chosen for this “banquet” becauseher loyalty to Vodalus would thereby be “imparted” to allits participants, including Severian (Citadel, 206). Thus,Severian assimilates her persona by “swallow[ing] some partof Thecla’s substance” when he eats her “roasted flesh” andfalls “into a sleep in which [his] dreams were all of her”until they “were one” (Claw, 87-88). And Thecla—for whom hehad already betrayed his guild out of love, and whose memoryhe still venerates—is an “opposite” (as a “client,” anoblewoman, and an exultant in the Autarch’s court) whobecomes his “unsuspected self” or shadow as a consequence ofthis ceremony: On leaving the Citadel library with herbooks, Severian notes that he “hurried along, though I didnot know it, to meet my destiny and eventually myself in theChatelaine Thecla,” whom he has not yet seen; and when herealizes that he has fallen in love with Dorcas, shortlybefore they arrive at the Wall of Nessus, he reflects that“Dorcas was another self (as Thecla was yet to become in afashion as terrible as the other was beautiful)” (Shadow,51, 231). After swallowing her flesh, Severian frequentlyspeaks with her inflections and voice, employs her

33

characteristic gestures, and dreams that he is Thecla (e.g.,Citadel, 26-30); and Thecla’s persona can assume fullconsciousness, and can speak and act through his body, whenhe is sufficiently “weak and ill” (199; see also 204).

As it is a loyalty test, an ordeal that he and Jonasmust undergo to demonstrate (and, the Autarch suggests, tobe further converted to) allegiance to Vodalus before theycan be accepted as his followers, the feast of the alzabo isone of several trials in which Severian participates that isalso an initiation ritual. Thus, in this way, too, itechoes his initial meeting with Vodalus in the necropolis,which concludes when Severian accepts Vodalus’ falsechrisos, for Severian recognizes in retrospect that thistransaction is an implicit rite of investiture: He notes,“When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin . . .Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of thespecial duties and burdens of military life—they aresoldiers from that moment,” just as Severian acknowledgesthat he had begun to absorb “the dogmas of the movementVodalus led” from the moment “the coin dropped into [his]pocket” (Shadow, 8). This implicit rite of investiture alsoforeshadows the formal rite of investiture, “HolyKatherine’s feast,” in which Severian is anointed by hisguild’s masters and elevated to the rank of journeyman,which is likewise echoed in the feast of the alzebo (84).“The Duel of Magic” with Decuman, one of the sorcerers whohave kidnapped little Severian, is another rite ofinvestiture in which Severian participates; while he musttake this “test” to free his captive namesake, it is alsoclearly the ritual through which one becomes a sorcerer:The leader of this “academy of magicians,” Abundantius,tells Severian, “Everyone you see about you has succeeded init, or hopes to”; and the sorcerers hail Severian as a“Great Magus” when they believe he has succeeded, eventhough Decuman is killed by Hethor’s slime beast, not out-ensorcelled (Sword, 140, 146, 143, 150). Nonetheless,Severian is aided in this contest by a talisman: Decuman’spsychic assault “fell almost to nothing” when Severiantouches the Claw during their duel, and Severian reflects

34

that his “very knowledge of the existence of the Claw wasalmost sufficient to counter Decuman’s spell,” just as thelight of the Claw had previously pacified the man-apes inthe mines of Saltus and illuminated his passage “down thelong tunnel of the Vincula” during his escape from Thrax(146, 153, 78). Severian participates in yet another riteof investiture, shortly after Guasacht recruits him, when heis forced to mount a wild destrier as his “initiation” into“the Eighteenth Bacele of the Irregular Contarii” (Citadel,152, 149).

As it pointedly echoes the New Testament verses inwhich Christ is tempted three times by Satan, Severian’sencounter with Typhon is prominent among the many othertests and trials to which he is subjected—which also includehis duel with Agilus, his persistent attempts to locate thePerelines and return the Claw, his battle with the alzabo inCasdoe’s cabin, his assault on the zoanthrops the followingday, and his mission to find Ash and return with him to thePerelines’ lazaret. After first tempting him with food andthen threatening to kill him by casting him from themountain’s right “eye,” Typhon next shows Severian all ofUrth from Mount Typhon’s left eye and offers to “give thisworld to you, to rule as my steward,” if Severian will“kneel” and “swear” to be his “creature . . . evermore”(Sword, 180, 178). Rather than succumb to this thirdtemptation, Severian kills Typhon by unexpectedly strikinghis second head, Piaton’s, which still controls hisautonomic nervous system, while Typhon instinctivelyprotects his own head. In addition to having recently beensymbolically reborn, like Severian, and having previouslybeen Urth’s ruler, which Severian is destined to become,Typhon is also a shadow to Severian—“an ogre in someforgotten tale” to Severian as “hero” (170)—preciselybecause he has two heads, a physical grotesquery that echoesthe dual consciousness Severian had acquired in assimilatingThecla. Thus, like Thecla, Typhon, too, is an “unsuspectedself” that Severian assimilates (in this case, by killinghim) in following the “Road of Trials.” The other “ogre”Severian assimilates is Baldanders, who is not only

35

literally a giant but is also Severian’s “opposite” in thathe can “remember” almost nothing (Claw, 166) whileSeverian’s “memory . . . loses nothing” (Shadow, 2).Immediately after the cacogens in Baldender’s castle notethat they have administered a “test” that Severian “didnot . . . pass”—in not being able to explain why the Claw isrightfully his, apparently—Severian survives his duel withthe giant by forcing him to retreat into Lake Diuturna(Sword, 233). In this trial Severian is aided by twotalismans, both of which are destroyed: Severian shattersBaldander’s mace by striking it with Terminus Est, which alsoshatters; but their duel begins when Baldanders throws theClaw, which shatters on the rocks below, from his castlewindow, yet "the lake people" take the Claw’s fierytrajectory as “it flashed in the rain-swept dark” to be the“signal” to attack the castle that Severian had promised toprovide, and their attack constitutes a distraction thatenables Severian to survive the duel (237).

Finally, Severian realizes that the Autarch is“testing” him, somehow, by showing him the faces of theAscian soldiers, and Severian appears to pass this test bypersistently asking, “Who are they?”—by wanting to know moreabout them than merely that “they’re our enemies” (Citadel,202-3). The Autarch is the final “unsuspected self” whomSeverian assimilates, in what is yet another rite ofinvestiture, by taking "a pharmacon like alzabo," "anotherdrug," and literally swallowing "the living cells of [theAutarch's] forebrain," as this act—which pointedly echoesSeverian's assimilation of Thecla at the feast of the alzabo—conveys to Severian those memories and "words of power"through which others will recognize him as the new Autarch(208, 238). The narrative further suggests that eating theAutarch's forebrain is literally to be seen as a "ritual" of"assimilation" in that Severian writes of this event in hismemoirs immediately after officiating, as Autarch, in "asolemn religious ceremony" that "belonged to the seventh andhighest [level of importance], the level of Assimilation";"at that moment, surrounded by the most meaningful andmagnificent symbolism," he reflects, "I could not but think

36

how different the actuality [of becoming Autarch] had been"from this ceremony (228-29). And the Autarch, too, isSeverian's shadow, his "opposite" but "unsuspected self," inseveral ways. Although he had "failed" where Severian willsucceed, the Autarch is a "predecessor" who had "alsoaccepted the challenge" of standing trial on Yesod; in doingso he had proven that "he was braver than many who arecalled heroes" in that he was "the first to go in manyreigns," a valor that Severian will likewise exhibit byaccepting the same “trial” (253). Severian observes that,just as he had served "clients" as a torturer in theMatachin Tower, so, too, has the Autarch served "clients" asa whoremonger in the House Azure; and the Autarch points outto Severian, in turn, that the courtiers of the HouseAbsolute "will hate you, for what you once were," just asthey "hate" him for having been "a servant once, in theHouse Absolute" (195, 208). Finally, the Autarch hadpreviously assimilated the personae of his predecessors, asSeverian does his, in much the same way that Severian hadpreviously assimilated Thecla’s; and by absorbing Thecla'spersona, which often manifests itself in his voice andgestures, Severian becomes, psychically, what the Autarchhad become, physically, through having failed on Yesod, an"androgyne" (Claw, 158).

The hero may also encounter a goddess, a temptress, orboth. The goddess, whose association with the herosometimes culminates in a mystical marriage at a speciallocation, might be "the Lady of the House of Sleep," who isthe idealized “good mother,” a personification of bliss andperfection who may appear to the hero in dreams or visions,or she might assume the guise of the "bad mother," who isabsent, unattainable, forbidding, punishing, or the locus offorbidden desire, and who may threaten castration (Campbell,109-11). Both Thecla and Dorcas fill the role of goddess asthe “Lady of the House of Sleep” while also exhibiting asingle, identical characteristic of the “bad mother.” Inaddition to perceiving her as “my destiny and . . . myself”(Shadow, 51), Severian acknowledges that “Thecla hadsymbolized love of which I felt myself unworthy” (Sword,

37

204). Yet he falls in love with her “at once” and—afterlosing his virginity to “the false Thecla,” her double inthe House Azure (Shadow, 53, 76)—makes love to her “oftenwhen she was unchained but a prisoner” in the Matachin Tower(Sword, 209). Severian’s mystical marriage to Thecla occursonly after her death, however, when he absorbs her personaand memories at the feast of the alzabo, during whichVodalus refers to Thecla as “the bride” and after whichSeverian “fell into a sleep in which my dreams were all ofher” (Claw, 86, 88). Dorcas is even more emphatically a“Lady of the House of Sleep,” although Severian experiencesno such dramatic mystical marriage with her. Yet he does,in retrospect, appear to resurrect her from the Lake ofBirds in the Garden of Endless Sleep, at which point shefeels that she has “just been awakened” (Shadow, 176), latertells her that she was “brought . . . back . . . fromsleep . . . not death” (Sword, 67), and notes that “her eyeswere . . . the deep blue of the world-river Uroboros in mydream” (Shadow, 194). If Severian is correct in concludingthat Ouen, the waiter at the Inn of Lost Loves, is his ownfather as well as Dorcas’ son, then Dorcas would be hisgrandmother, their relationship would be incestuous, andDorcas would also, consequently, be a locus of forbiddendesire, one of the qualities of the “bad mother.” Thecla isa less problematical locus of forbidden desire, for MasterGurloes specifically orders Severian “not to do it for her”if she “wants her bed warmed” (60).

Yet Agia—with whom he also falls in love at firstsight, “a love that was deadly and yet not serious,”“thirsty and desperate” (126, 132)—is unequivocally thegoddess as “bad mother” in that she plots to kill Severianfrom the moment they first meet, tries repeatedly toassassinate him afterwards, and finally mutilates him (asymbolic castration) with her lucivee. She disguises herselfas a septentrion to challenge him to the avern duel—and herbrother, Agilus, dons the same disguise to fight it—in theirconspiracy to claim Terminus Est; lures him with a forged noteto the mines of Saltus, where she waits with hired assassinsto ambush and murder him, in order to acquire both his sword

38

and the Claw; attempts to avenge her brother’s execution atSeverian’s hand by conspiring with Hethor, whom she takes asher lover for this reason, to send such extraterrestrialcreatures as the notules and the Salamander to killSeverian; tries again to ambush and murder him in Casdoe’shut in the mountains north of Thrax; recovers him from theAutarch’s downed flier so that she can turn him over toVodalus, who had promised that Severian’s “agony” would be“spread over weeks,” and spits in his “face as she describedthe torments she and Hethor had contrived for” him (Citadel,243, 218); rescues him from the Ascians, again, because shewould rather torture him slowly than see him die quickly,even by her own hand; and, finally, after Severian becomesAutarch, replaces Vodalus (whom she kills because he hadbroken his promise to torture Severian) as leader of therebel faction that seeks to usurp the Autarch.

Severian also encounters several temptresses. While heis on the road to Thrax, Juturna, the undine who had savedhim from drowning in Gyoll when he was an apprentice, triesto lure him to “the water,” where, she promises, “you will breathe—by our gift—as easily as you breathe the thin weak wind” (Claw, 221).While she might also be considered another “Lady of theHouse of Sleep”—in that Severian recalls, “Once before Idreamed of you”—he sees her as a temptress on this occasionand marvels that he “could be drawn to so monstrous a thing;yet I wanted to believe her, to go with her, as a drowningman wants to gasp air” (221-22). Of course, Thecla is atemptress as well as a “Lady of the House of Sleep,” asSeverian’s love for her compels him to betray his guild, andCyriaca is an unmitigated temptress whose influence onSeverian explicitly echoes Thecla’s. A woman who takes newlovers as “a habit, a way of pushing back the days,” Cyriacasuccessfully seduces Severian at the masked ball hosted byher husband, the Archon of Thrax (Sword, 74). Severianattends the ball, as lictor, under private orders to executeCyriaca as an adulteress, but he takes pity on and releasesher because she reminds him “of Thecla and how I had wantedto free her” (71). This malfeasance makes Severian realize,finally, that he is “a torturer . . . no longer. I had been

39

given a second chance here in Thrax. I had failed in thatsecond chance as well,” but a traitor who must “flee thecity” much as he had previously been exiled from the guildand its Citadel for having aided Thecla (53, 71).

Still, the tetralogy’s primary temptress is Jolenta,the artificially enhanced actress in Dr. Talos’ troupe whois desired by “every man who ever saw her” because her“beauty was perfect” (Shadow, 246). Jolenta brags, “I canmake anyone desire me . . . I make every man stiffen andevery woman itch,” complains, suggestively, “I’m really onlycomfortable when I can keep my legs apart,” and is soirresistible that she seduces Severian while “she wassleeping” (Claw, 175, 176, 177). Thus, as he realizeslater, exercising his “manhood again and again with Jolentain the nenuphar boat” is, at least technically, an act ofrape as well as a betrayal of Dorcas, who “wept in private”after he and Jolenta return from their tryst (202-3, 177-78). This seduction is echoed in several of the rolesJolenta and Severian assume, immediately afterwards, in theperformance of Dr. Talos’ play in the House Absolute.Jolenta portrays “Jahi,” the temptress as serpent in theGarden of Eden and a “succubus,” to Severian’s “Meschia, theFirst Man,” and Dorcas’ “Meschiane, the First Woman”; shealso portrays “The Contessa,” who also attempts to seduce“Meschia”; and, as “Jahi” again, she likewise tries toseduce the “Second Soldier,” another part played bySeverian, before confessing that she has “so charmed sevenof the soldiers of our sovereign the Autarch that theybetrayed their oath” (179, 196, 186, 194; see also 184,193). Severian’s second, seductive encounter with Juturnaand his trysts with both Cyriaca and Jolenta all occur afterhe embarks on his “Road of Trials”—following his crucial“Belly of the Whale” adventures, in the mines of Saltus andthe House Absolute’s antechamber—and prior to the encounterswith Typhon and Baldanders that represent his negative“Atonement with the Father.”

After encountering Goddesses and temptresses, themonomythic hero may experience atonement with the father ora father figure, who is "the initiating priest through whom

40

the young being passes on into the larger world," but the"initiation rites" that signal atonement with the fathermight contain both "a dramatized expression of the Oedipalaggression of the older generation; and the . . . patricidalimpulse of the younger," as "there is a new element ofrivalry in the picture: the son against the father formastery of the universe" (Campbell, 136, 139, 136). Thus,the father can be, and often appears to be, a tyrant orogre; the son cannot experience atonement until he seesbeyond this manifestation of the father; theirs might be anegative encounter in which the father might eat the hero;and the encounter may entail an initiatory rite ofcircumcision (137-39). Although Severian finally deducesthe identity of his ostensible biological father, Ouen—whomhe then reunites with Dorcas, who is more certainly Ouen’smother—in Citadel (316, 319), and while Llibio, the agedleader of Diuturna’s Lake People, embraces Severian “asfathers do their sons” in Sword (210), the crucial father-figures in the tetralogy are the torturers’ guild’s masters,Gurloes and Palaemon; the story’s two metaphorical “ogres,”Typhon and Baldanders; and the Autarch. As the masters ofhis guild, Gurloes and Palaemon are the young Severian’sliteral foster fathers, literally serve as his initiatingpriests when they “anoint” him as a journeyman torturer onHoly Katherine’s Day (Shadow, 87), and literally send himout into the larger world beyond Nessus when they decree hisexile. Severian is reconciled with Palaemon, who had givenhim Terminus Est and for whom he feels a greater affection, atthe end of Citadel when, lame and disfigured, he returns tothe Matachin Tower as Autarch and Palaemon recognizes him byhis voice, the moment of atonement, just as Severianreflects “that this guild was my family, and all the home Ishould ever have” (275).

As a man with “two heads, like an ogre in someforgotten tale,” as well as a former “autarch” and literaltyrant, Typhon is the archetype of the Emperor as ogre-father whom the hero must destroy in a negative encounter,and Severian kills him to escape becoming his “most abjectslave” (Sword, 170, 179, 181). As Severian is destined to

41

become Autarch, and thus an heir to Typhon’s title andpower, he is Typhon’s metaphorical son; moreover, in noting,“I clung to him as the boy [little Severian] had once clungto me,” after the tyrant dangles him from Mount Typhon’s“eye,” Severian compares this temporary dependence on Typhonto his temporary foster-son’s earlier dependence on himself(179). As he is a giant who preys on the local populace, apetty tyrant who had harvested Lake Diuturna’s natives assubjects for his experiments, Baldanders is especiallyreminiscent of the “ogre” in “The Tale of the Student andHis Son” (Claw, 122-36)—a story Severian reads to Jonas fromThe Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky, whose tales, Severian noteslater, “appeared at some times . . . to deal with my ownconcerns” (Sword, 192)—and Severian’s duel with Baldandersis another negative encounter that echoes his encounter withTyphon. Of course, as Severian is his immediate successor,the previous Autarch is a more-imminent metaphorical fatherto Severian than is Typhon, and Severian kills him as well;but this is an act of atonement that leads to literal “at-one-ment,” for Severian kills the dying Autarch at his ownrequest, so that the Autarch’s persona can survive death tolive on within Severian; and Severian has come to realize,at this point, that the Autarch is not the villainous tyranthe had believed him to be when he had pledged his allegianceto Vodalus. Moreover, in removing and eating the Autarch’sforebrain—the reversal of a symbolic circumcision as well asof the possibility that the hero might be eaten by thefather—Severian becomes his own initiating priest, with theAutarch’s advice and assistance, in performing the rite ofinvestiture or “ritual” of “assimilation” through which onebecomes Autarch.

The penultimate incident in the initiation stage is thehero's apotheosis, which represents attaining enlightenment,is symbolized by an annihilation of consciousness thatentails the merging of time and eternity, and ischaracterized by a symbolic transcendence of duality—representing a return to that lost unity that had precededcreation and is epitomized by the lotus flower, in that ithas many petals yet is one organism—that is signaled by the

42

unification of such opposites as time and eternity, good andevil, male and female, birth and death, truth and illusion,or friend and enemy (Campbell, 149-71). Immediately beforedescribing in his memoirs how he had become Autarch,Severian suggests that his apotheosis is the “actuality” ofbecoming Autarch by noting that the “ritual” of“Assimilation” in which he has just officiated, and whichsymbolizes this rite of investiture, “belonged to theseventh and highest . . . level” of “’transcendence’”(Citadel, 229, 228). In becoming “the Autarch, who in onebody is a thousand,” Severian becomes “Legion” by absorbingthe personae of his predecessors (226, 211)—becomes many inone, like the lotus flower—and in this sense experiencesthat loss of self or annihilation of consciousness in which,like the monomythic hero in apotheosis or the aspirantattaining enlightenment or the Bodhisattva, “ye lose alldifferentiation between yourself and others” so that one “beholdshimself in all beings and all beings in himself” (Campbell,160, 166). This moment of apotheosis is foreshadowed by thehallucinations Severian experiences when he is fedpsychedelic mushrooms in the Hetman’s hut on Lake Diuturna(Sword, 196-99) and by the “effect” that gazing at the nakedClaw, “without its case of sapphire,” has on him—which is“to erase thought” and replace his normal “mode ofconsciousness” with a “higher state” in which he feels thathe has “gained some inexpressible insight into immenserealities” (253-54)—as well as by his assimilation ofThecla’s persona at the feast of the alzabo. The Autarch isaddressed as “Savitar,” among other titles (Citadel, 296);and, as Severian already possesses an androgynous psyche,through having assimilated Thecla—just as the previousAutarch is physically an “androgyne” (Claw, 158)—both areavatars of the Bodhisattva, “the image of the bisexual god .. . [and] the mystery of the theme of initiation,” whose“androgynous character” is “the first wonder of theBodhisattva” myth, the contemplation of which is the classicway to enlightenment explicitly discussed by Campbell (162;see also 152-70). While the Autarch, both innately (byvirtue of the unique nature of his office) and through being

43

“Legion,” intrinsically transcends such dualities as goodand evil, illusion and reality, friend and enemy, and evenbirth and death—as well as male and female, which (and thisis the “third wonder of the Bodhisattva myth”) in itself “issymbolical of the second [wonder] (the identity of eternityand time)” (169)—this transcendence of the time/eternityduality per se is also implicit in the tetralogy’s explicitconceptualization of time, which is identical to theBuddhistic concept of “eternity,” for the Cumaean canconjure Apu-Punchau from the legendary past “[w]ithoutmagic” because “[a]ll time exists. That is the truth beyondthe legends the epopts tell”—and the scientific reason whytime travel is possible in The Book of the New Sun (Claw,245).

Receiving the boon, which is "the means for theregeneration of [the hero's] society as a whole," is thefinal incident in the initiation stage and is implied by thehero’s apotheosis, for the boon in its highest form istranscendent revelation or enlightenment, the “perfectillumination” that apotheosis encompasses as well assymbolizes; however, the hero usually seeks such lessergifts as immortality, power, or wealth (Campbell, 38, 189).As becoming Autarch is prerequisite to Severian’s standingtrial on Yesod, where he will be judged worthy to manifestthe New Sun that will literally regenerate Urth, hisbecoming Autarch is the boon that is “the means for theregeneration of his society.” Becoming Autarch also entailsthe acquisition of such lesser gifts as immortality, power,and wealth—the wealth and power of being the ruler of acontinent, of course, and the promise of immortalityimplicit in the procedure through which one becomes Autarch,as the new Autarch eats his predecessor’s forebrain so thatthe “life and the lives of all those who live in [thepredecessor] will be continued in” the successor, and thusthose who become Autarch need “never die” (Citadel, 238,239). The immediate revelation Severian receives uponbecoming Autarch is the entire contents of his predecessor’smind, as well as his persona: Severian reports, “His mindwas mine and filled mine with lore whose existence I had

44

never expected and with the knowledge other minds hadbrought to his,” including the many “secrets, the words ofauthority” known only to the Autarch, that specificknowledge that demonstrates that one is the Autarch (240,249).

However, shortly after becoming Autarch, Severianreceives yet another revelation that is a more literaltranscendent enlightenment. The aquastor masquerading asMalrubius’s returns and reveals to him “the secret historyof Time, which is the greatest of all secrets, and . . .seemed too great a thing for any living man to know”—that“the universe we know diffuses itself to nullity in theinfinitude of space, gathers its fragments . . . and fromthat seed blooms again. Each such cycle of flowering anddecay marks a divine year. . . . [T]he universe that comesrepeats the one whose ruin was its origin; and this is astrue of its finer features as of its grosser ones . . .though . . . all things advance by some minute step” (254-55, 286). This “cycle” described by the aquastorcorresponds precisely to that “cycle” that Campbell arguesis the symbolic content of the hero’s apotheosis, and thusthe archetypal revelation, “The Cosmogonic Cycle,” the self-similar structure of mythological cosmologies thatcorresponds to, and is the symbolic content of, the monomythas the self-similar structure of myths. “‘The CosmogonicCycle’ . . . the great vision of the creation anddestruction of the world which is vouchsafed as revelationto the successful hero” and which, like the monomyth, isalso “presented with astonishing consistency in the sacredwritings of all the continents . . . is normally representedas repeating itself, world without end” (Campbell, 38, 39,261). In it, the creation and destruction of the world isfollowed by the world's re-creation and redestruction, adinfinitum, as in the “ever-revolving twelve-spoked wheel oftime of the Jains,” its “counterpart . . . the cycle of fourages of the Hindus,” or "the Stoic doctrine of the cyclicconflagration . . . When this universal dissolution isconcluded, the formation of a new universe begins . . . and

45

all things repeat themselves, every divinity, every person,playing again his former part” (265, 262).

The Return Stage

Several incidents may occur in the return stage; butsome are mutually exclusive, and only several—rather thanmost or all, as in the earlier stages—are likely to appearin any given narrative. The hero could refuse to return orto give the boon to humanity, his return could be a “magicflight” opposed or furthered by "magic" means, his attemptto return could end in failure, or he could be rescued fromoutside the unknown world; in crossing the return threshold,the hero might convey new wisdom to the known world, rejectthe unknown world to embrace the known world, experience adilation of time, encounter dangers in returning thatrequire him to insulate himself, or return with a talismanof his quest; finally, on returning, the hero may become the"master of the two worlds," which involves acquiring theability to pass freely between them, or he might achieve the"freedom to live," to participate in the known world withoutanxiety as a conscious vehicle of the cosmic cycle of change(193–243). Severian’s return to Nessus, which beginsimmediately after he becomes Autarch, is in some sense a“magic flight” that is both furthered and opposed byextraordinary (but, as this is science fiction, notliterally “magic”) means. After he is rescued from thebattlefield by the Autarch astride his mammoth, Mamillian,observes the battle from the Autarch’s flier, which is shotdown, and then becomes Autarch himself, Severian is capturedby the Ascians, is recaptured by Agia and imprisoned byVodalus, is returned to the Ascians as a prisoner, andfinally is rescued from behind Ascian lines by the greenman, who has “been running up and down the corridors ofTime, seeking for a moment in which [he was] imprisoned,” torepay Severian for having facilitated his escape from theshowman’s tent in Saltus (Citadel, 245). Then the flyingship bearing the aquastors disguised as Malrubius andTriskele materializes (apparently from that “dimension” into

46

which the green man disappears) and, while Malrubius revealsto him “the secret history of Time,” conveys Severian to abeach on his continent’s western ocean from which he walks“in half a day . . . to the mouth of Gyoll,” where hesecures passage on a riverboat, the Samru, that arrivestwenty days later at the abandoned southern ruins of “my owncity of Nessus,” at which point Severian observes, “In somesense I was home again” (259, 264, 270).

Severian is rescued from outside the unknown world inseveral ways. While Agia is from the known world, as acitizen of Nessus, and in this sense effects “rescues” fromoutside the unknown world in recovering Severian from thedowned flier as well as from Ascian captivity (but onlybecause Vodalus had promised to torture him), and while the“physician” who heals Severian while he is Vodalus’ captiveis also from Nessus (see 216), the aid Severian receivesfrom the green man and the aquastors comes from beyond boththe unknown and the known worlds of the tetralogy. Thegreen man steps out of “the corridors of Time” to rescueSeverian; and the aquastors, who “serve those the Heirodulesserve,” imply that they and their flying ship havematerialized from “Yesod, the universe higher than our own”(245, 248, 288-89). Also, while Severian recrosses thethreshold separating the known world of Nessus from theunknown world beyond its borders when he disembarks from theSamru to enter the abandoned southern quarter of the city,he has already symbolically acquired the ability to crossall such thresholds through becoming Autarch, as hisassimilation of the former Autarch’s memories entailsacquisition of “the secrets, the words of authority” thatopen many doors (literally, as well as figuratively) in theCitadel and the House Absolute and thus permit the crossingof numerous thresholds (249). As Autarch, Severian conveysnew wisdom to the known world by writing his memoirs, thetext of the tetralogy itself, which he intends to call “TheBook of the New Sun” and “send to Master Ultan” for depositionin the immense subterranean library beneath Nessus’ Citadel(320).

47

That his adventure in the world beyond Nessus involvessome dilation of time is indicated by the fact that Severianencounters so many time travelers as well as by thesuggestion that he will become one himself. The Cumaeanconjures Apu-Punchau from the distant past; Ossipago,Barbatus, and Famulimus travel backwards through time; andboth the green man and Ash, the anchorite of the Last House,are from the far future, yet the green man is from a futurein which the New Sun has revitalized Urth, and Ash is from adivergent future in which it has not. Severian actuallydoes travel in time even within the tetralogy, to severaltemporal locations in this alternate future in which thereis no New Sun, when he visits the upper floors of the LastHouse, as only its first story exists in Severian’s time,while the others exist in different epochs of that glacialfuture from which Ash has traveled back to Severian’s time.Moreover, Severian finally comes to believe that there is anearlier or “first Severian,” who “was not returned to hisown time but became himself a walker of the corridors” andthat the “mausoleum” in which he “tarried as a child . . .with its rose, its fountain, and its flying ships allgraven” is his “own tomb” (321), conjectures that foreshadowthe fact that Severian will travel to both the past and thefuture in Urth.

After his successful trial on Yesod, in Urth, Severianis returned to Urth a thousand years before his ownlifetime, “deep in a past that was in my own day scarcelymore than a myth,” and becomes “the Conciliator” (270, 245).He then fords “the Brook Madregot”—a metaphoricalconceptualization of the time continuum appropriate to hislimited, human experiences and perceptions, in which thepast is “upstream” and the future “downstream”—to emergeagain, “fifty years” after his lifetime, at that point inthe future when the gravitational effects of the New Sun’sarrival flood Urth (285, 286, 287, 300). He subsequentlyfords Madregot twice more to travel even further backwardsand forwards in time, back to the era of Apu-Punchau—who,like the Conciliator, is also an “older” Severian dislocatedto the past (184; see also189)—to a time when “the Old Sun

48

had not yet dimmed” (345), and then even further into thefuture of the drowned Urth, which has been renamed Ushas.However, despite his visit to the Last House, the dilationof time that Severian experiences in The Book of the New Sunitself is essentially psychological: When he finallyreturns to the Matachin Tower he is surprised to discoverthat “Eata was still the smallest, and not yet even ajourneyman,” that he “had only been away one summer, afterall,” because he feels subjectively that a much longerperiod has elapsed since his exile from the guild (Citadel,307).

Severian encounters additional dangers in returning tothe known world, as Autarch, in that he is now subject topolitical intrigues and assassination attempts. The“insulation” he adopts to counter this danger is to travelincognito; thus, he does not reveal that he is Autarch untilhe returns to the Citadel and astonishes its castellan bypronouncing “the words of authority applicable to theCitadel” (272). In addition to his knowledge of these“words of authority,” other talismans of his quest withwhich Severian returns to Nessus include Thecla’s personaand those personae of the previous Autarchs that likewisereside in his consciousness; the crippling leg injury hereceives while fighting with Guasacht’s irregulars; thefacial scars inflicted by Agia’s lucivee; the bladeless hiltof Terminus Est, which he shows to Master Palaemon (277); anda new (or, perhaps, due to Severian’s subsequent timetravels, the only) “Claw, perfect, shining, black, just as Ihad placed it under the altar stones of the Pelerines,” athorn that had stabbed him and drawn blood shortly after theaquastors deposit him on the beach of his Commonwealth andthat he immediately places within “the little leather sackDorcas had sewn” for the original Claw (257).

In becoming Autarch, Severian also becomes “master ofthe two worlds” both literally and symbolically. AsAutarch, of course, he is literally “master of the twoworlds” in that he now rules both the “unknown world” beyondNessus through which he has traveled, all of which is partof his Commonwealth, as well as the tetralogy’s “known”

49

world of Nessus itself. But becoming “master of the twoworlds” entails acquiring the ability to cross the thresholdbetween them freely, and “the words of authority” Severianacquires on becoming Autarch, which permit only the Autarchto cross numerous thresholds within his Commonwealth(specifically, those of Nessus’ Citadel, in the “knownworld,” as well as those of the House Absolute, in the“unknown world,” among many others), symbolically confersupon him the ability to cross all thresholds freely.Severian likewise achieves the "freedom to live," toparticipate in the known world without anxiety as aconscious vehicle of the cosmic cycle of change, in finallyaccepting the challenge to participate in his prospectivetrial on Yesod as Urth’s Autarch. The tetralogy concludesjust as he is about to embark on this journey to Yesod, andSeverian is confident that he may be the Autarch who willbring the New Sun—and thus affect the cosmic cycle of changeas it is described by the aquastors in their explanation of“the secret history of Time”—because his coetaneousdeduction “that the power manifested in both Claws is drawnfrom myself” (with other, more metaphysical speculations)“would seem to indicate that the mission I am about to setout on will succeed. I will go with good heart” (282, 285).

Transcendent Themes and Fractal Structures Severian begins the Book of the New Sun as an

apprentice torturer but ends it as the Autarch of Urth whoseimpending trial on Yesod will determine humanity’s future,and Campbell argues that just such a transcendence of pastselves is exactly what the monomyth’s symbolic deaths andrebirths represent. Death presages rebirth in the monomythprecisely because its pervasive death-and-rebirth motif is ametaphor for negotiating transitions from one "stage" oflife to the next via rituals of initiation and investiture:“The standard path of the adventure of the hero is amagnification of the formula represented in the rites ofpassage: separation—initiation—return: . . . the nuclear unit ofthe monomyth," wherein "separation" is "some sort of dying

50

to the world," followed by "the interval of the hero'snonentity, so that he comes back as one reborn," yet “thepurpose and actual effect of these [rites of passage] was toconduct people across those difficult thresholds oftransformation that demand a change in the patterns not onlyof conscious but also of unconscious life [through]exercises of severance, whereby the mind is radically cutaway from the . . . life patterns of the stage being leftbehind. . . . so hat when, at last, the time has ripened forthe return to the normal world, the initiate will be as goodas reborn” (Campbell, 30, 35-36, 10). In replicating this"separation—initiation—return" formula the monomyth (and itshero) echoes rites of passage (and the initiate) inreenacting the drama of death-and-rebirth as a metaphor fortranscending one "stage" of life to the next. Transcendenceis the goal and fate of the monomythic hero as well as theway to that enlightenment that the hero’s entire adventure(and his “apotheosis” in particular) symbolizes, as thehero's "redemptive deed . . . becomes a symbol of the samemetaphysical mystery [enlightenment] that it was the deed ofthe hero himself to rediscover [in apotheosis] and bring toview" (320). Thus is transcendence the overarching theme ofthe monomyth: "For the mythological hero is the championnot of things become but of things becoming," particularlyin his warrior-aspect, in which he slays "the monster of thestatus quo"; more generally, as "the realm of Becoming isalso Nirvana," in abandoning his past selves to attainenlightenment “[t]he hero is the champion of thingsbecoming, not of things become, because he is" (337; 166,citing Coomaraswamy, Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism; 243).And transcendence is also a significant theme in The Book ofthe New Sun, which is essentially the story of both Severianand, through him, Urth and humanity evolving beyond whatthey were toward what they will become—into something“united, passionate, and just”—for the asquators reveal thatthe inhabitants of Yesod “shape us now as they themselveswere shaped . . . but when the New Sun appears, it will be asignal that the earliest operations of that shaping arecomplete” and that humanity has crossed the first threshold

51

in its evolution to become something higher and wiser(Citadel, 288, 289).

Finally, like Herbert’s Dune series and Bester’s TheStars My Destination,6 not only does The Book of the New Sunreplicate the monomyth’s theme, transcendence, as well asits plot structure, but it also echoes the fractal patternincorporated into both this plot structure and the thoughtprocess involved in transcending dualities to attainenlightenment that this plot structure not only representsbut also embodies—in its “Meeting with the Goddess,”“Atonement with the Father,” and “Apotheosis” episodes,which collectively recapitulate the Bodhisattva myth as away to enlightenment (See Campbell, 149-71). "A visualrepresentation of chaotic behavior," a fractal is an image"with an infinite amount of self-similarity" generated in"the realm of dynamical systems" by the "repeatedapplication of an algorithm" or the reiteration of recursivegeometric procedures (Laplante, 20, 3–4, 14–15). "Aboveall, fractal [means] self-similar" (Gleick, 103), and"'self-similarity' . . . means a repetition of detail atdescending scales" (Briggs and Peat, 90)—"pattern inside ofpattern" (Gleick, 103)—as well as duplication across thesame scale. Thus, in a fractal image "the structure of thewhole is often reflected in every part," and any part mightappear to be both "a small reproduction of the larger image"and a near-clone of innumerable like structures on the samescale (Laplante, 3). “As . . . incorporation of theseparate epiphanies of the Mother Goddess and the Fatherinto the encompassing revelation of the bisexual god [theBodhisattva] suggests . . . the very process oftranscendence through which one is to achieve enlightenmenthas a familiar shape—the fractal structure of self-similarity on descending scales. This process is theattainment of revelation-within-revelation or of revelation-beyond-revelation, depending on how one looks at it; andboth ways of looking at it are ultimately the same, just asboth describe the same structure, the pattern of self-similarity on descending scales also exhibited in thetemporal structure of the cosmogonic cycle [revealed to the

52

hero in Apotheosis], with its progressively lesser cyclesnested within each great round, and the analogous shells-within-shells physical structure of the cosmic egg,” both ofwhich Campbell discusses extensively (Palumbo, Chaos, 200;see also 200-216 and Campbell, 255-378).

As the thought process through which one attainsenlightenment exhibits a fractal structure, it is not toosurprising that the monomyth itself, which represents andembodies this process, also exhibits a fractal structure.One can discern this structure by keeping in mind, first,that the Bodhisattva myth is a way to enlightenment thatalso reveals the monomyth’s symbolic meaning, attainingenlightenment and conveying it to others, and, second, thatthe monomyth “is a magnification of the formula representedin the rites of passage: separation—initiation—return,” yet—as“separation” here is “some sort of dying to the world”followed by “the interval of the hero's nonentity, so thathe comes back as one reborn”—the reenactment of this formulain these rites symbolizes death-and-rebirth as a metaphorfor the initiate's transcendence of one “stage” of life tothe next, so that each repetition of the death-and-rebirthmotif within the monomyth is a reiteration of its overall“separation—initiation—return” structure on a smaller scale(Campbell, 30, 35–36). Then, by relying solely onCampbell’s explications of the monomyth’s seventeen episode,one can deduce that each episode “mirrors the monomyth as awhole in at least one of three ways: by echoing its‘separation—initiation—return’ structure symbolically in oneor more death-and-rebirth incidents, symbols, or metaphors;by representing this structure literally in containing oneor more initiation rituals per se; or by reflecting thesymbolic action of the whole, which is attainingenlightenment and conveying it to others, throughrecapitulating in a relevant context one or more aspects ofthe Bodhisattva myth” (Palumbo, Chaos, 218; see 216-23 for athorough analysis of each episode).

Echoing the underlying fractal shape of both themonomyth and its theme of transcendence—the plot and themeit replicates—in at least one recurring element of its own

53

internal structure, The Book of the New Sun reproduces this“pattern inside of pattern” configuration in its obsessiverepresentation of tales within a tale, for the tetralogy isexplicitly a formal narrative, Severian’s handwrittenaccount of his adventures (probably not the copy depositedin Ultan’s library and most likely destroyed by flood,however, but that second, identical penning of his memoirs—recovered in our time—that, in Citadel, he anticipatesrewriting from memory while en route to Yesod and that, inUrth, he does rewrite and then cast from the Ship into therealms of space and time through which it travels), thatcontains within it numerous additional narratives. Inaddition to at least seven formal tales reproduced as suchwithin the tetralogy, each volume also contains amultiplicity of other narratives-within-the-narrative thattake the form of recollected dreams and stories told inconversation. On the evening of that Katherine’s Day onwhich he is elevated to the rank of journeyman, Severian hasa dream in which he is visited by the deceased MasterMalrubius that foreshadows his eventual encounter with theaquastors; and in his first night of exile from the Citadel,while sharing Baldanders’ bed, Severian has a far moreelaborate dream involving the undines that foreshadows threefuture events: the flooding of Urth that will follow theadvent of the New Sun, his participation in Dr. Talos’ play,and the duel at Lake Diuturna that destroys Terminus Est aswell as Baldanders’ mace (Shadow, 89-90, 115-18). Clawbegins with another dream

54

Endnotes

1. Palumbo’s “The Monomyth in Time Travel Films,” whichdiscusses the monomyth in Back to the Future, Star Trek IV, TheTerminator, and The Time Machine, notes that this plot structurealso appears in Dune, Star Trek I, the Star Wars trilogy, and2001.

2. Spinrad’s “Emperor of Everything,” which discusses themonomyth in the first three Dune novels and in The Stars MyDestination at greater length, notes that this plot structureappears in The Book of the New Sun as well. In addition,Spinrad asserts that such science fiction novels as“Neuromancer . . . most of Gordon Dickson’s Dorsai cycle . .. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, Lord of Light, Nova, The EinsteinIntersection, Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld books, [and]Stranger in a Strange Land . . . are brothers between the covers,at least in plot summary terms, to the Ur-action-adventureformula” explicated in “Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces”(151). Yet most of these other science fiction novels,while they do exhibit correspondence to the more general“Ur-action-adventure formula” that Spinrad discuses in verybroad terms, do not exhibit nearly as close a correspondenceto the numerous specific details of Campbell’s analysis ofthe monomyth as do those novels and films mentioned in thisparagraph. Wolfe also recapitulates the monomyth in thistetralogy’s sequel, The Urth of the New Sun. Palumbo discussesthe monomyth is Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon, Bester’s The Stars MyDestination, and Herbert’s Dune series in “The Monomyth inDaniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon,” “The Monomyth in AlfredBester’s The Stars My Destination,” and “The Monomyth as FractalPattern in Frank Herbert’s Dune Novels.”

3. For example, on the very pages on which he makes theseearliest claims that he possesses a perfect memory, Severianwrites, “Roche held me, saying, ‘Wait, I see pikes,’” as thetwo of them and their fellow apprentices, Drotte and Eata,spot the “volunteers” who then quiz them at the gate to thenecropolis; but on the next page he writes, “they had pikes,

55

as Drotte had said” (Shadow, 1, 2). There are at least adozen similarly minor inconsistencies that occur elsewherein Severian’s memoir, usually near a passage in which hementions again his perfect memory.

4. When Severian is rescued from Ascian-held territory bythe aquastors who take the forms of Master Malrubius, who isdead, and Triskele, the dog Severian had resurrected fromthe dead, at the end of the tetralogy, Severian receives asecond Call to Adventure—the call to “bring the New Sun” byagreeing to participate in his “trial” on Yesod (Citadel,252). Although Malrubius (who also appears to Severian whenhe nearly drowns in the river Gyoll, among other occasions)speaks to Severian, “the herald” can be “a beast” (Campbell,53), like Triskele, whom the lame and scarred Severian seesas “the ambassador of all crippled things” (Citadel, 252).After a brief hesitation, which can be interpreted as amomentary refusal of this Call, Severian accepts it. Theprospective “trial” that may bring the New Sun is the “Roadof Trials” Severian must endure in his second monomythicadventure, related in Urth. Just as those events in thetetralogy that best correspond to episodes from the monomythare frequently foreshadowed or echoed by similar experiencesSeverian has elsewhere in the tetralogy, so too doesSeverian’s earlier Call, and his numerous trials in thetetralogy, foreshadow this Call and all the tests Severianwill face in Urth.

5. That the captain of the Samru, a riverboat on whichSeverian secures passage, gives his “craquemarte, theheaviest of the sea swords,” to Severian just as he is aboutto disembark in Nessus, at the other end of the tetralogy,is an echo of Master Palaemon giving Severian Terminus Estjust as he is about to embark on his exile from Nessus(Citadel, 261). Severian notes, as he walks through thelong-deserted southern quarters of Nessus, “Because I hadnever really become accustomed to carrying a sword at mywaist, I drew the craquemarte and put it on my shoulder, asI had often borne Terminus Est” (265).

56

6. See Palumbo’s “The Monomyth as Fractal Pattern in FrankHerbert’s Dune Novels” and “The Monomyth in Alfred Bester’sThe Stars My Destination.”

57

Bibliography

Baker, Djoymi. “’Every Old Trick is New Again’: Myth and Quotations in the Star Trek Franchise.” Popular Culture Review 12:1 (2001), 67-77.

Briggs, John, and F. David Peat. Turbulent Mirror. New York:Harper and Row, 1989; Perennial Library, 1990.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. 2nd ed.Bollingen Series XVIII. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1968. 1st ed. published in 1949.

Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: PenguinBooks, 1987.

Gordon, Andrew. “Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time.” Literature and Film Quarterly 6

(1978), 314-26.Kimball, A. Samuel. “Not Begetting the Future: Technological Autochthony, Sexual

Reproduction, and the Mythic Structure of The Matrix.” Journal of Popular

Culture 35:3 (2001), 175-203.Laplante, Phil. Fractal Mania. New York: Windcrest/McGraw

Hill, 1994.Lundquist, Lynne. “Myth and Illiteracy: Bill and Ted’s Explicated Adventures.”

Extrapolation 37:3 (1996), 217-23.Mackay, Daniel. “Star Wars: The Magic of the Anti-myth.” Foundation 28:76 (1999),

63-75.Palumbo, Donald E. Chaos Theory, Asimov’s Foundations and Robot’s, and

Herbert’s Dune: The Fractal Aesthetic of Epic Science Fiction.Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction andFantasy, Number 100. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,2002.

_____. “The Monomyth as Fractal Pattern in Frank Herbert’s Dune Novels.” Science-

Fiction Studies 25:76 (1998), 433-58._____. “The Monomyth in Alfred Bester’s The Stars My

Destination.” The Journal of Popular Culture (forthcoming).

58

_____. “The Monomyth in Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon.” Journal of the

Fantastic in the Arts 14:4 (forthcoming)._____. “The Monomyth in Time Travel Films.” The Celebration of the Fantastic:

Selected Papers from the Tenth Anniversary International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Donald E. Morse, Marshall B. Tymn,and Csilla Bertha, eds. Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Number 49. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.

Reid-Jeffrey, Donna. “Star Trek: The Last Frontier in Modern American Myth.”

Folklore and Mythology Studies 6 (1982), 34-41.Roth, Lane. “Death and Rebirth in Star Trek III: The Wrath of Kahn.Extrapolation

28:2 (1987), 159-66.Sherman, Marilyn R. “Star Wars: New Worlds and Ancient Myths.” Kentucky Folklore

Review 25 (1979), 6-10.Spinrad, Norman. “Emperor of Everything.” In Science Fiction in the Real World.

Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.Tiffin, Jessica. “Digitally Remythicised: Star Wars, ModernPopular Mythology, and

Madam and Eve.” Journal of Literary Studies 15:1-2 (1999), 66-80.Wolfe, Gene. The Claw of the Conciliator. Volume Two of The Book

of the New Sun. A Timescape Book. New York: Pocket Books, 1981.

_____. The Citadel of the Autarch. Volume Four of The Book of the New Sun. A Timescape Book. New York: Pocket Books, 1982.

_____. The Shadow of the Torturer. Volume One of The Book of the New Sun. A Timescape Book. New York: Pocket Books, 1980.

_____. The Sword of the Lictor. Volume Three of The Book of the New Sun. New York: Pocket Books, 1981.

_____. The Urth of the New Sun. New York: TOR, 1987.

59