Uniting Wolfe's recurrent interests in manipulation and psychology, the story of The Urth Cycle describes a human race caught in two complex processes: that of an external cosmological conspiracy masterminded by the Hierogrammates, and that of its own psychological need for lenitive myths.

Wolfe directs the reader to this conclusion through the adhibition of theatrical metaphors. As Joe Sanders remarks, ‘the relation of audience … to performance is a recurring motif in Wolfe's fiction’ (appearing in texts as diverse as ‘The Toy Theatre’ [1971], ‘The Eyeflash Miracles’ [1976], ‘Seven American Nights’ [1978], Free Live Free [1986] and The Book of the Long Sun [1993–96]), and invariably indicates the presence of a disjunction between what is apparent from a narrative's plot and what is occurring at the level of its story.

For example, in ‘The Toy Theatre’ an aspiring and talented marionettist travels to the planet Sarg to study under the master puppeteer, Stromboli. Throughout the story, the narrator learns his art until, at the spaceport, the reader begins to suspect that what he or she has accepted as a human commentator is, in fact, a mechanised marionette, endeavouring to deny its artificiality. What the narrator has observed is an example of Joruri, ‘The Japanese puppet theatre. The operators stand in full view of the audience, but the audience pretends not to see them.’ The narrator, like Columbine, Lucinda, Julia, Lili and Zanni the Butler, is Stromboli's puppet but, in order to sustain the illusion under which he lives, he ‘pretends not to see’ his operator.

Similarly, the dramatic action of The Urth Cycle constitutes a contrived performance populated with marionettes. Throughout the pentalogy, costumes are donned (Severian wears the robes of a pilgrim, Agia disguises herself as a soldier), masks worn (Agilus appears first wearing a death's-head, Severian has his torturer's mask), masques attended (in The Sword of the Lictor), plays performed (in The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator) and roles adopted until the reader begins to perceive the incidents unfolding around Severian as merely the spectacle beyond the proscenium arch. By implication, there is a playwright for this drama (excluding Wolfe, the literal author, for a moment), a director and machinery, none of which is readily apparent.