One last thing I suppose: The ghoul-bear is not "in disguise". Nor is the caribou. The ghoul-bears are Annese. Are they animals? Yes. All the Annese are animals -- as we are continuously told even by V. The owl-mice are *actually* owl-mice and owl-mice are Annese. The cat is a cat but it is an Annese cat and V sees them all as Free People races or types. Although a 6-foot, red-haired Scandinavian and a Rainforest man of Central Africa might look a bit different -- although Wolfhounds and Dachshunds look even more different -- they are actually the same "people".
"A Story" reminds me more than anything else of "Tracking Song" in which every creature the protagonist meets seems to be some form of primate (at least) and might well a human-descended species.
5. I believe ya'll pointed out the most obvious signal that V and Number 5 are sharing minds... when the Group Norm gets confused and begins suggesting that they came from Atlantis or Gondwanaland --essentially repeating what Number Five recorded of his childhood lessons. You asked "how could John V Marsch have gotten Number Five's diary?" Well, he couldn't. He's been in prison almost from the time Maitre was murdered. And the diary wasn't completed until he was released.
As for the sharing of dreams:
In the first novella, Number Five dreams:
"...dreams had come to flicker in the emptiness, dreams of fences and walls and the concealing ditches called ha-has, that contain a barrier you do not see until you are about to tumble on it. Once I had dreamed of standing in a paved court fenced with CORINTHIAN PILLARS so close set that I could not force my body between them, although in the dream I was only a child of three or four. After trying various places for a long time, I had noticed that each column was carved with a word-the only one that I could remember was carapace-and that the paving stones of the courtyard were mortuary tablets like those set into the floors in some of the old French churches, with my own name and a different date on each."
Now it matters a lot that a "Corinthian pillar" is a column with ornate leaves at the top.
So near the beginning of "A Story", Sandwalker has a dream that mirrors Number Five's dream. So I suppose it was suggested by V's dreams:
"Around him in a circle stood immense trees, each rising from a ring of its own serpentine roots. Their bark was white like the bark of sycamores, and their trunks rose to great heights before vanishing in dark masses of their own leaves. But in his dream he was not looking at these. The circle in which he floated was of such extent that the trees formed only a horizon to it, cutting off the immeasurable concavity of the sky just where it would otherwise have touched earth."
In prison, V dreams of that circle again. This time in a a darker context:
"What did I dream of? The howling of beasts, the ringing of bells, women (when I can remember what I have dreamed I have nearly always dreamed of women, which I suppose makes me unusually blessed), the sounds of shuffling feet, and my own execution, which I dreamed of as having taken place in a vast deserted courtyard surrounded by colonnades."
Of course all these dreams are hinting at the "Observatory" on St Anne (to which Number Five has never been) with its circle of trees.
4. I think the fact that Number Five calls his father "Maitre" is intended to signal that he is "French." In a society ruled by an English-speaking government, what is the social cache of putting on French affectations? Especially when the French are viewed with such suspicion? Especially, when he has designs on political power himself?
I think the fact that he is French is intended to signal that he is something of a relic.
I think Wolfe put himself in this story for the same reason he puts himself (wolves) in all his stories. The idea that Gene Wolfe is supposed to be a descendent of our Gene Wolfe is an amusing idea but the idea never struck me as a *meaningful* theory. Wolfe likes inhabiting his stories. Still, this is far in the future and it hardly seems impossible for a descendent of Wolfe to take his family to France or Quebec or Sierra Leone and leave from there to space.
@G.L. McDorman The connection I'm making is that there is some significant tension between the English government and their French speaking subjects.
But let's try it the other way around. Is there a reason -- which I've failed to appreciate, beyond the character's name -- that makes you think his primary culture is English? "Wolfe" is of Norman-French origin after all.
@James Wynn I think that tension only exists on Sainte Anne, at least if we believe Constant.
I think the strongest reason to believe that Maitre's (and Number 5's) first language is English is simply that Number 5 wrote his journal in English and frequently emphasizes the Frenchness of people and structures. There certainly could be reasons that Number 5 writes in English even though his primary language is French, of course (though I think in that case he would also have translated "maitre" to "master"). But I've also always assumed that this was a family of American settlers simply because Gene Wolfe is American and it had never occurred to me to question it.
I also wonder how many people in the cities of Sainte Croix speak French as their native language now that several generations have passed. I don't think we see a single instance of anyone speaking French on Sainte Croix, where the French and Anglo cultural groups have intermarried. On Sainte Anne, though, where the French-speaking population has been kept apart, we do indeed see people speaking French and discussing the French language and code-switching.
@G.L. McDorman Well, okay. I suppose the argument could be made either way. I find it more compelling that the Master was French, but -- ultimately -- nothing in my reading of the plot hinges on it. I suppose there is thematic fuel in his English or French orgins whichever way one sees it.
3. No. It's some vague supposing that I picked that up from the VRT story where he writes:
"At least half of me is ANIMAL. The Free People are wonderful, wonderful as the deer are or the birds or the tire-tiger as I have seen her, head up, loping as a lilac shadow on the path of her prey; but they are animals [NOTE THAT THIS COULD BE READ AS SAYING THAT SOMETIMES THE FREE PEOPLE **ARE** A DEER OR BIRD OR TIRE-TIGER]. I have been looking in the bowl at my face, pulling my beard back as much as I could with my hands, wetting it from the sanitary pail so that I could see the structure of myself, and it is an animal’s mask I see, with a muzzle and blazing animal eyes. I can’t speak; I have always known that I do not really speak like others, but only make certain sounds in my mouth-sounds enough like human speech to pass the Running Blood ears that hear me; sometimes I do not even know what I have said, only that I have dug my hole and passed to run singing into the hills.
"Now I cannot speak at all, but only growl and retch. "
I understood that bit to be V's recognition that in his long solitary confinement he was regressing from his humanity-- losing the ability to maintain the speech part of his simulation. And if he could stop mimicking humans, perhaps he could reclaim the his Faerie dryad nature again. I think there is a parallel instance of this in another Wolfe work. In The Book of the Short Sun (a story that has more than a few parallels to The Fifth Head of Cerberus) there is a mult-legged dog-like creature called a "hus"-- named Babbie. The longer Babbie is with the Narrator, the more humanish he becomes. At one point, he even steers the ship. But when he is separated from the man, and runs feral in the woods, he loses those human-like behaviors over time and becomes an animal again.
But it doesn't matter for V because he can't stop imitating humans as long as he is on St Croix.
2. The dates of the colonization are not meaningful. When the English colonists arrive on St. Anne, they positively assume that the French-speaking settlers they meet are merely parallel colonists of those on St Croix. English rulers are newbies. They see two planets. Two colonies. There's no way to notice a lack of written records of St Anne not being there. There is no way the records could not state that colonies were the same age -- the French settlers, although in poverty, are standing right there in front of them. The "French girls" referenced by Mrs Blount are positively not human. They are Annese...
"When I was growing up those little French girls that had been too small to fight was growing up too, and weren’t they the cutest things? They got most of the handsome boys, you know, and all the rich ones. You could go to a dance in your prettiest dress, and one of those Frenchies would come in, just in rags you know, but with a ribbon and a flower in her hair, and every boy’s head would turn."
So when the English arrive on St Anne, the French colony is non-human.
To be fair, I'll note that I haven't forgotten Robert Culot "one of the last survivors of the first French settlers [...] now dead about forty years". That is a problematic declaration for me, but he is problematic as well for anyone who says the original colony on St Anne was 180 years previous. I assume what is meant is that he was simply one of the last French settlers from before the English" but that doesn't mean he was living on St Anne before the war.
The Group Norm says:
“We either came recently or a long, long time ago. I’m not sure which.”
The way I read Wolfe, it is imperative that whatever explanation one gives to this statement, both things must be true. I admit my timeline requires a couple (or many, many more) cognitive leaps. But once you've made them, the story seems to fall into place.
And, cognitive leaps are absolutely necessary when reading a Wolfe story. Not all the answers are detectable -- to the exclusion of all other possibilities -- from the words on the page alone. The first novella was not expected to be expanded to three but the Annese were still central to the story yet still completely remote and mysterious. The aquastor of himself Severian meets in the stone town is not explained until Urth of the New Sun... which Wolfe did not intend to write when he wrote that bit.
In this case, we are expected comprehend that St. Anne follows the rules of Faerieland:
That it is hidden but constantly present. That it's inhabitants are constantly seeking to supplant us, either by agreement (ala the Mabinogion) or by changelings.
One last thing I suppose: The ghoul-bear is not "in disguise". Nor is the caribou. The ghoul-bears are Annese. Are they animals? Yes. All the Annese are animals -- as we are continuously told even by V. The owl-mice are *actually* owl-mice and owl-mice are Annese. The cat is a cat but it is an Annese cat and V sees them all as Free People races or types. Although a 6-foot, red-haired Scandinavian and a Rainforest man of Central Africa might look a bit different -- although Wolfhounds and Dachshunds look even more different -- they are actually the same "people".
1-appended
"A Story" reminds me more than anything else of "Tracking Song" in which every creature the protagonist meets seems to be some form of primate (at least) and might well a human-descended species.
Incidentally, when I saw the movie Annihilation, I immediately thought of The Fifth Head of Cerberus.
5. I believe ya'll pointed out the most obvious signal that V and Number 5 are sharing minds... when the Group Norm gets confused and begins suggesting that they came from Atlantis or Gondwanaland --essentially repeating what Number Five recorded of his childhood lessons. You asked "how could John V Marsch have gotten Number Five's diary?" Well, he couldn't. He's been in prison almost from the time Maitre was murdered. And the diary wasn't completed until he was released.
As for the sharing of dreams:
In the first novella, Number Five dreams:
"...dreams had come to flicker in the emptiness, dreams of fences and walls and the concealing ditches called ha-has, that contain a barrier you do not see until you are about to tumble on it. Once I had dreamed of standing in a paved court fenced with CORINTHIAN PILLARS so close set that I could not force my body between them, although in the dream I was only a child of three or four. After trying various places for a long time, I had noticed that each column was carved with a word-the only one that I could remember was carapace-and that the paving stones of the courtyard were mortuary tablets like those set into the floors in some of the old French churches, with my own name and a different date on each."
Now it matters a lot that a "Corinthian pillar" is a column with ornate leaves at the top. So near the beginning of "A Story", Sandwalker has a dream that mirrors Number Five's dream. So I suppose it was suggested by V's dreams:
"Around him in a circle stood immense trees, each rising from a ring of its own serpentine roots. Their bark was white like the bark of sycamores, and their trunks rose to great heights before vanishing in dark masses of their own leaves. But in his dream he was not looking at these. The circle in which he floated was of such extent that the trees formed only a horizon to it, cutting off the immeasurable concavity of the sky just where it would otherwise have touched earth."
In prison, V dreams of that circle again. This time in a a darker context:
"What did I dream of? The howling of beasts, the ringing of bells, women (when I can remember what I have dreamed I have nearly always dreamed of women, which I suppose makes me unusually blessed), the sounds of shuffling feet, and my own execution, which I dreamed of as having taken place in a vast deserted courtyard surrounded by colonnades."
Of course all these dreams are hinting at the "Observatory" on St Anne (to which Number Five has never been) with its circle of trees.
4. I think the fact that Number Five calls his father "Maitre" is intended to signal that he is "French." In a society ruled by an English-speaking government, what is the social cache of putting on French affectations? Especially when the French are viewed with such suspicion? Especially, when he has designs on political power himself?
I think the fact that he is French is intended to signal that he is something of a relic.
I think Wolfe put himself in this story for the same reason he puts himself (wolves) in all his stories. The idea that Gene Wolfe is supposed to be a descendent of our Gene Wolfe is an amusing idea but the idea never struck me as a *meaningful* theory. Wolfe likes inhabiting his stories. Still, this is far in the future and it hardly seems impossible for a descendent of Wolfe to take his family to France or Quebec or Sierra Leone and leave from there to space.
3. No. It's some vague supposing that I picked that up from the VRT story where he writes:
"At least half of me is ANIMAL. The Free People are wonderful, wonderful as the deer are or the birds or the tire-tiger as I have seen her, head up, loping as a lilac shadow on the path of her prey; but they are animals [NOTE THAT THIS COULD BE READ AS SAYING THAT SOMETIMES THE FREE PEOPLE **ARE** A DEER OR BIRD OR TIRE-TIGER]. I have been looking in the bowl at my face, pulling my beard back as much as I could with my hands, wetting it from the sanitary pail so that I could see the structure of myself, and it is an animal’s mask I see, with a muzzle and blazing animal eyes. I can’t speak; I have always known that I do not really speak like others, but only make certain sounds in my mouth-sounds enough like human speech to pass the Running Blood ears that hear me; sometimes I do not even know what I have said, only that I have dug my hole and passed to run singing into the hills.
"Now I cannot speak at all, but only growl and retch. "
I understood that bit to be V's recognition that in his long solitary confinement he was regressing from his humanity-- losing the ability to maintain the speech part of his simulation. And if he could stop mimicking humans, perhaps he could reclaim the his Faerie dryad nature again. I think there is a parallel instance of this in another Wolfe work. In The Book of the Short Sun (a story that has more than a few parallels to The Fifth Head of Cerberus) there is a mult-legged dog-like creature called a "hus"-- named Babbie. The longer Babbie is with the Narrator, the more humanish he becomes. At one point, he even steers the ship. But when he is separated from the man, and runs feral in the woods, he loses those human-like behaviors over time and becomes an animal again.
But it doesn't matter for V because he can't stop imitating humans as long as he is on St Croix.
2. The dates of the colonization are not meaningful. When the English colonists arrive on St. Anne, they positively assume that the French-speaking settlers they meet are merely parallel colonists of those on St Croix. English rulers are newbies. They see two planets. Two colonies. There's no way to notice a lack of written records of St Anne not being there. There is no way the records could not state that colonies were the same age -- the French settlers, although in poverty, are standing right there in front of them. The "French girls" referenced by Mrs Blount are positively not human. They are Annese... "When I was growing up those little French girls that had been too small to fight was growing up too, and weren’t they the cutest things? They got most of the handsome boys, you know, and all the rich ones. You could go to a dance in your prettiest dress, and one of those Frenchies would come in, just in rags you know, but with a ribbon and a flower in her hair, and every boy’s head would turn."
So when the English arrive on St Anne, the French colony is non-human.
To be fair, I'll note that I haven't forgotten Robert Culot "one of the last survivors of the first French settlers [...] now dead about forty years". That is a problematic declaration for me, but he is problematic as well for anyone who says the original colony on St Anne was 180 years previous. I assume what is meant is that he was simply one of the last French settlers from before the English" but that doesn't mean he was living on St Anne before the war.
The Group Norm says: “We either came recently or a long, long time ago. I’m not sure which.”
The way I read Wolfe, it is imperative that whatever explanation one gives to this statement, both things must be true. I admit my timeline requires a couple (or many, many more) cognitive leaps. But once you've made them, the story seems to fall into place.
And, cognitive leaps are absolutely necessary when reading a Wolfe story. Not all the answers are detectable -- to the exclusion of all other possibilities -- from the words on the page alone. The first novella was not expected to be expanded to three but the Annese were still central to the story yet still completely remote and mysterious. The aquastor of himself Severian meets in the stone town is not explained until Urth of the New Sun... which Wolfe did not intend to write when he wrote that bit.
In this case, we are expected comprehend that St. Anne follows the rules of Faerieland:
That it is hidden but constantly present. That it's inhabitants are constantly seeking to supplant us, either by agreement (ala the Mabinogion) or by changelings.