What was it really all about?

[Rex Complexis]

The question I've been asking myself, after re-reading the first chronicles for the umteenth time is, what is it really all about?

Many ideas present themselves to me. The main one in my mind is the land is meerly a canvass for Covenant to wrestle with his own problems. He's at a stage in his life where despair is starting to win, he remembers love and companionship but is too frighted of these warmer emotions to open himself to them. Without these despair is overtaking him and will lead to his destruction. If he gives into these warmer emotions then he risks the life of the lady he describes at the rock garden - enjoying life but being destroyed by it. So the trilogy is all about his emotional crossroads and finding the self growth to answer the despair within his own soul. The final coflict with Foul is the end result of the different attempts he's made, the bargains, the realisations.

How far off the mark do you think I am here?

[hierachy]

Yes, the land, in the first chrons at least, is definantly an externalisation of covenant and what goes on inside him.

[Furls Fire]

Hail and well met Rex!! This might answer your question...

From the Gradual Interview on StephenRDonaldson.com...

If anything, the tradition I was drawing on was Christian (because of my background in fundamentalist Christianity, not because I am in any useful sense a believer): the Trinity, God in Three Persons. Except I obviously wasn't thinking of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. More like Creator, Destroyer, and Holy Ghost (wild magic). Or Creator, Destroyer, and--what shall we call Covenant as the protagonist of the drama?--Acolyte. But you're quite right about the "shared identity" theme. I was explicitly thinking of the Creator, the Despiser, and wild magic as aspects of Covenant himself. And the part of himself which he denies--wild magic, his own personal power to assign meaning to his life and experiences--is the part which must mediate his internal conflicts (the struggle between the creative and destructive sides of his nature). Hence the thematic development from the first to the second "Chronicles." In the first, Covenant opposes his--dare I say it?--Dark Side and wins (an expensive--and temporary--victory). In the second, he surrenders to his Dark Side, and thereby gains the power to contain it (another expensive--and temporary--victory). "The Last Chronicles" will explore this theme further as Covenant's quest to become whole continues. (Linden Avery is also on a quest to become whole, but hers takes an entirely different form.)

My general view of the kind of fantasy I write is that it's a specialized form of psychodrama. Putting the issue as simply as I can: the story is a human mind turned inside out, and all of the internal forces which drive that mind are dramatized *as if* they were external characters, places, and events. This is easier to see in the first "Chronicles" because the story is simpler: the Land and everyone in it is an external manifestation of Covenant's internal journey/struggle. Everything is more complex in "The Second Chronicles" because there are *two* minds being turned inside out. Which means that there are actually three stories at work: Covenant's, Linden's, and the interaction between the two.

<sigh> And if I wanted to say more than *that* on the subject, I would write dissertations instead of novels.

(04/27/2004)

Hope that answers your question

[Seafoam Understone]

I always thought it was this that helped give the best synopsis of the whole thing. It's the note the old man gave to Covenant before he was "hit" by the police car.

A real man--real in all the ways that we recognize as real--finds himself suddenly abstracted from the world and deposited in a physical situation which could not possibly exist: sounds have aroma, smells have color and depth, sights have texture, touches have pitch and timbre.
There he is informed by a disembodied voice that he has been brought to that place as a champion for his world. He must fight to the death in single combat against a champion from another world. If he is defeated, he will die, and his world - the real world - will be destroyed because it lacks the inner strength to survive.

The man refuses to believe that what he is told is true. He asserts that he is either dreaming or hallucinating, and declines to be put in the false position of fighting to the death where no 'real' danger exists. He is implacable in his determination to disbelieve his apparent situation, and does not defend himself when he is attacked by the champion of the other world.

Question: Is the man's behaviour courageous or cowardly? This is the fundamental question of ethics.

[Rex Complexis]

Many thanks for this. That Donadlson chap is very clever isn't he?

Rex

[sesusan]

So does this lead us to beleive that the 3rd Chronicles will give us TC battling the Creator or ...bum bum bum...the power of creation?

[Cail84]

Those interview clips shed alot of light on to what i was thinking as well:) im really glad The Talking hat got me to join this sight!
Cail

[Variol Farseer]

My general view of the kind of fantasy I write is that it's a specialized form of psychodrama. Putting the issue as simply as I can: the story is a human mind turned inside out, and all of the internal forces which drive that mind are dramatized *as if* they were external characters, places, and events.

Which is a more specific and perhaps less useful version of my own definition of fantasy:

Fantasy is fiction based on everted symbolism.

Where I differ with SRD's explanation (not, I think, with his actual practice) is that I discount the 'as if'. It's not that SRD dramatizes the internal conflict as if it were external. Instead, he makes it external — a much more honest and powerful thing, metamorphosis instead of mimesis. Leave in the 'as if', and you have the recipe for allegory: a thoroughly unpopular art nowadays, and perhaps justly so. Take away the 'as if', treat the events of the story — the everted symbols — with all the seriousness of reality, and you have something that surpasses allegory as a living man surpasses a wax figure in Mme Tussaud's.

The key to fantasy, I believe, can be found in an Anglo-Saxon proverb on the nature of power:

When a man can do as he wills, he is what he does.

The function of 'magic' in fantasy is to make the human will an effective force in the material world. The author gives his characters the power to do as they will; we can therefore see what they really are. Having real power, the characters have to make real decisions, with real effects and outcomes; this transforms the dull grey angst of psychodrama into the vivid hues of drama — ebon ichor incarnadine viridian.

Well, that's why I write the stuff, and I suspect it's why SRD does, too.

[Gil galad]

So does this lead us to beleive that the 3rd Chronicles will give us TC battling the Creator or ...bum bum bum...the power of creation?

he should fight the worm