/lit/ - Literature

>>22167130
It's absolutely retarded. Severian includes the bad parts and hints at worse parts, so we can assume he's not that much more of a piece of shit than he describes. He worries for the women in his life, risking his own to give Thecla mercy and even throwing everything away for Cyriaca who he just met.

When he first spots weakness in Dorcas, he ashamedly admits that even then he knew he's going to betray and hurt her. If he did not care about hurting her, why make the remark?

When I was Severian's age I didn't understand women at all. I wanted to try as many as possible and even when I dearly loved them I treated them like shit. I think that's quite normal for young men even without growing up among seekers of truth and penitance.

Are these the words of a complete sociopath?


Possibly most important, my
thoughts were oppressed by worry for Jonas, and by the feeling (which had
been growing on me all day) that this place was the end of my journey; that
I would never reach Thrax; that I would never rejoin poor Dorcas; that I
would never restore the Claw, or even rid myself of it; that in fact the
Increate, whom the owner of the Claw had served, had decreed that I who
had seen so many prisoners die should end my own life as one.