& Chapter 2: "Halfhand"
In the end of LFB we left Covenant
The ordeal in the land has left Covenant mentally shaken. He is unable to digest it, unable to accept it, yet unable to deny it either.Walking up the long driveway to his house as if that were his only hope
At first he wraps himself in oblivion, but slowly the memories of his experience returnfor two weeks he shambled through his life from day to day in a kind of somnolence ... He wraped blankness about himself like a bandage, and did nothing, thought nothing, recognized nothing.
As the memories come back, Covenant feels that he is losing his grip on sanity, that his dream is a subconcious death wish, and he responds with the only answer he knows: dicipline.he had behaved with a subtle infidelity which now made him squirm.
Covenant does his best to repress the memories, to find scientific phsycological explanations to his dream, but the harder he tries to supress it, the stronger the turmoil inside him becomes, until he is driven to seek some solace in being among other human beings.Quickly, urgently, he took a large dose of his medication -- DDS, diamino-diphenyl-sulfone. Then he went into the white fluorescence of his bathroom, stropped his old straight razor, and set the long sharp blade to his throat.
Shaving this way, with the blade clutched in the two fingers and thumb of his right hand, was a personal ritual which he had taught himself in order to discipline and mortify his unwieldy imagination. It steadied him almost in spite of himself. The danger of that keen metal so insecurely held helped him concentrate, helped to rid him of false dreams and hopes, the alluring and suicidal progeny of his mind. The consequences of a slip were acid-etched in his brain. He could not ignore the law of his leprosy when he was so close to hurting himself, giving himself an injury which might reawaken the dormant rot of his nerves, cause infection and blindness, gnaw the flesh off his face until he was too loathsome to be beheld.
When he had shaved off two weeks of beard, he studied himself for a moment in the mirror. He saw a gray, gaunt man with leprosy riding the background of his eyes like a plague ship in a cold sea.
Covenant decides to hitch a ride to the next town. He is picked up by a truck driver. Once more Covenant finds himself in a false position, while the driver lectures him about the behaviour of lepers. Finally when Covenant gathers the courage to assume his identity, the driver does not believe him.He knew of no other antidote to delusion; he could no longer face his dilemma alone.
Covenant is a leper, that is his identity, his self. He was bereft of all his other identities: husband, father, writer.
Covenant embraces this victimized reality and clings onto it like a life line. In his dream, his delusion, he is cured, divested of his last hold of selfhood. The land tries to grant him a new identity - a hero, Berek reborn, but Covenant rejects it vehemently. And now in the bar this identity returns to haunt him again:The doctors there had taught him that his illness was the definitive fact of his existence.
In these two chapters we are again confronted with society's harsh treatment of Covenant: Threatening phone calls, the burning of Joan's stables, his lawyer's meager reaction, the driver's attitude, and the sherif's uncompassionate treatment. Why is it that not even one soul finds a bit of empathy in thier heart for Covenant?"Folks, this is Berek." She began clapping for him as she said, "Maybe he'll sing for us." Good-naturedly, the audience joined her applause. Covenant's hands limped about him, searching for support. Inspite of his efforts to control himself, he stared at his betrayer with a face full of pain. The applause reverberated in his ears, made him dizzy.
No!
For a long moment he cowered under Susie Thurston's look. Then like a wash of revelation, all the houselights came on. Over the bewildered murmurs and rustelings of the audience, a commanding voice snapped, "Covenant."
We also meet a blind beggar outside the bar and Covenant gives him a 20$ bill. What is the significance of the blind beggar he meets outside the bar?
The truck driver that takes Covenant is an interesting character, he also is a victim, the driver lost his arm in the war, but contrast his stance towards life with Covenant's. Interesting that SRD reminds us about Covenant -
At the very beginning of these chapters Covenant was reading a book, and he remembers it saying:But he was not a hero. He had lost the two last fingers of his right hand, not in combat but in surgery;
.modelling the incoherent and vertiginous matter of which dreams are composed was the most difficult task a man could undertake .... the dreams of men belong to god
What is SRD's message in this passage?