The Torturers

I have been delayed while trying to work through my exercise in analyzing The Book of the New Sun. This was easy to anticipate, given that my son is now nearly walking on his own and I still work full-time. My mind wanders before it is snapped back into focus by immediate need, as has been the case since my wife and I brought a baby home after nearly two months of hospitalization. Parenthood is an exercise in incessant vigilance, but the world does not allow for that vigil to go uninterrupted. Adding new thought experiments to this situation is more challenging than I had ever anticipated, naive as that sounds.

I am aging, fully embodying a new identity as a father. With this identity comes a perspective that I anticipated but could not have fully comprehended. There are reminders of my son all over the house. I walk across a padded, multicolored mat on my way to the couch where I drink coffee by the window. In the basement, rainbow toys and cardboard books lie beneath my television. A gate stands between a box of stuffed animals and the desk where I work. When I read the news, a high chair sits in my periphery, a reminder of who I am and what my purpose is. I act accordingly, knowingly or not.

The Book of the New Sun is about many things, some of which I have already explored to a small extent: accretion, the weight of personal and collective memory, ambition, and how the improvement of one’s character is an uneven journey that never ends, to name a few. It is also about identity creation and how much agency one actually has in the process. Severian has many roles throughout his journey, some of which he has consciously chosen and some that he is only passively aware of. He may be a liar, traitor, killer, and more that we have not discussed in this exercise yet, but he is at least acutely aware of who and what he is, something you cannot say about most people.

As I have recounted multiple times in my previous posts, Severian the Torturer’s philosophy is introduced by his assertion that symbols make us, rather than the other way around. Objects are not mundane, even currency. The sword, mask, and cloak that he brings with him are more than tools. They are more than identifiers, as well. When people see the void-like fuligin of the torturers’ cloaks or the masks they wear when mounting the stocks, they are struck with fear and loathing because what they see is a dealer of death, not a man. If he were a man, he would show his face, proof of what he shares with others of his species. More on that later.

What should be understood about the bestowal of symbolic (if also functional) accoutrement in a novel or in our own world is that it is not only done to communicate to those on the outside what the bearer does or the kind of person they are. It also creates an identity for the bearer themselves to inhabit. Severian later observes the veins in his hands that stick out and brands them indicators of manhood; it is not the physical exertion that tends to promote vascularity, but the visibility of the veins. The representation is what makes him, not the work itself. He acts and thinks accordingly.

There is an intuitive quality to this, one that we should cling to in order to avoid thinking beyond it. If you were to buy a fine new suit or gown and wear it to dinner, you are likely to feel, move, think, and behave differently than if you wore something more familiar. Others would perceive you differently than if you were wearing something more casual, but more importantly, your self-image would be altered, if even slightly. It may sound dramatic, but there is a path to actualization here. Symbolic representation is capable of alleviating dysphoria in some instances, empowering transgender people to fully embody their best, most productive selves. Athletes may need a new logo on their uniform to perform the way they expect of themselves. It isn’t magical or superstitious thinking, but a real and scientifically verifiable phenomenon.

Torturers like Severian know this intimately. Unlike our philosopher-executioner, I would guess that his real-life parallels understand it due to animal instinct rather than intellect. Our torturers do not wear blacker-than-black cloaks and they do not carry a headsman’s blade. Some don badges, gaiters, and ballistic vests because they wish to be torturers, others accept these symbols yet do not believe themselves to be what they are until blood is pooling around their feet. As I have been reading through The Book of the New Sun yet again, I have been keeping a keen eye on the news and watching as torturers swagger through the streets of cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis. They capture children, beat the elderly, murder the helpers. They cover their faces but not out of fear. Their masks are not to hide their faces but to negate that which they share with their prey.

The fascist project metastasizing over generations in America has accelerated rapidly in the last decade. It is by definition an effort to make us unrecognizable to one another. Ethno-nationalism depends on not seeing yourself in someone with different features, beliefs, or native tongues. Enforcing this order as a majority group (white Christians, for instance) requires mass demonstrations of self-effacement. How can empathy be extended by a man with no face or name? He is given challenge coins, he carries a rifle, he sits behind tinted glass. He has no home other than The Homeland. He is no one, yet he is anyone. Anyone except you.

Surely there are some torturers who did not join law enforcement because of an ideological imperative to crush the undesirables they perceive. They deserve no pity, even if that is the case. A man does not carry a gun without considering when they can use it and whom they can use it on. No badge is worn without recognition, no matter how fleeting, that it grants the wearer with the authority to do as they please. Inanimate objects do not have agency, but they carry implications and suggestions with them. No matter what rests in the hearts and minds of torturers, they will act accordingly.

It wounds me to see these torturers, these predators. It wounds me because they are cleaving themselves from their fellows. Their actions debase themselves and in turn, all of us. They reject the very notion of humanity with each can of tear gas flung at a gathering of children and every laugh at another’s pain. The physical masks they wear are barely relevant, the aesthetics interchangeable. Their commanders saunter about in oversized coats and surgically alter their features not because it is particularly fashionable but because they are attempting to become something other than their enemies.

We cannot reform or rehabilitate this. A cohort of people bent on shattering the bonds of our shared personhood are categorically incapable of sharing a society that is productive and humane. No amount of vaguely defined “training” or restructuring can make fascism less of a threat. The foot soldiers of this project cannot be redirected and their leaders cannot be bargained with, as they have remade themselves from the inside out, just as they wish to do with the country we share.

Fiction can tell truths obfuscated by the complications of the real world. If we change the scenery, it is impossible to see The Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence as sympathetic. We know the world of The Book of the New Sun is horrific, with guilds that kidnap children to swell their ranks, Autarchs that take concubine-hostages, and arbitrary executions. Nobody would blink at the suggestion that this order must be felled. The situation only becomes morally complex when we convert the Matachin Tower to a police headquarters or The House Absolute to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. These are symbols meant to inculcate a sense of superiority and authority to commit murder in those who inhabit them. The difference is that Gene Wolfe dreamed two of those up and very little else.

Our torturers sought out their fuligin. Severian and his fictional torturers are given it along with the choice to reject it should they choose. It is a bitter and ironic choice, as the label is impossible to fully expunge once given. Both the real and imagined will be burdened by what they have been, and both can walk away to seek their shorn humanity should they wish, or at least what is left of it. I am of the opinion that they should not be given the choice to return to the fold. In fact, I believe they should be forced back into it. Shared humanity means facing consequences for infractions. We punish our own. If they do not want to remove their cloaks, they should be stripped of them. Swords not relinquished should be wrested from their hands. They must be reminded that we will not countenance those above or apart. We all must act accordingly.