The Redemption of She Who Must Not Be Named

A place to discuss the entirety of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Moderators: kevinswatch, aliantha

User avatar
Ur Dead
The Gap Into Spam
Posts: 2295
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 1:17 am

Post by Ur Dead »

The Redemption of She Who Must Not Be Named..

Did she really need redemption or did she just need to remember who
she was. Saying "I am myself" means she didn't care to have a name.
She had to remember what was she was and what she was going to do.
In the case of a cosmic being.. anything they want to do and nobody was
going to stop her.

Good ole Foul got a taste of a passing retribution as she passed. Any lesser
being would have stuck around, made a mop out of Foul and clean out Gravin Threndor of all the evil in the place. All in time for lunch.

I wouldn't dare meet her in a dark alley.
What's this silver looking ring doing on my finger?
User avatar
wayfriend
.
Posts: 20957
Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2004 12:34 am
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 4 times

Post by wayfriend »

Absolutely she needed to be saved.
User avatar
wayfriend
.
Posts: 20957
Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2004 12:34 am
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 4 times

Re: The Redemption of She Who Must Not Be Named

Post by wayfriend »

wayfriend wrote:In the end, what frees She Who Must Not Be Named from her torment, and her prison, is the release of the souls she kept within herself. She did not know who She was, because She had made of herself an amalgamation of individuals, and in her grief had drowned herself in a sea of misery.
I need to publish a public retraction about this.

I have been listening on my last pass through the Chronicles, and I picked up some things that I hadn't picked up before.
In [i]The Last Dark[/i] was wrote:"I AM MYSELF!"

When Linden's heart beat again, she was no longer inside the bane. Instead she had the sensation that she was being carried; cradled with the tenderness of a lover. Powers that surpassed understanding protected her from the ruination of the Lost Deep.

She was given a moment to watch the bane release souls into the waiting arms and mouths and bodies of the ur-viles and the Waynhim: a torrent of long anguish so suddenly relieved that she could not name what became of it.
As you can see, my earlier interpretation of the order of events is wrong. SWMNBN did not release the souls and then become herself; she became herself and then released the souls.

The former sequence suggests that the captured souls are part of her identity problem - an idea I was fond of. The latter sequence suggests that the souls were released as a gift perhaps, or were unloaded, as Linden suggests, so that they would not hinder Her departure. Or maybe She simply didn't care any more.

The sequence of events is much clearer to me now.
  1. SWMNBN tells Linden she must have her true name in order to be released.
  2. Linden suddenly deduces that Emereau Vrai must know her true name.
  3. Linden requests Emereau Vrai be released to the Demondim-spawn.
  4. Emereau Vrai is released to the Demondim-spawn; they accept her "gladly".
  5. The Demondim-spawn "consume" Emereau Vrai; they become taller, more human.
  6. The Demondim-spawn chant "at the bane".
  7. She responded with the cry, "I AM MYSELF".
It's fairly straightforward now to see that Emereau Vrai must have known Her true name all along, that the Demondim-spawn learned of it when they incorporated her spirit, and then they barked it to She. A bit clever, really, in that we never get to hear her name as it's spoken in Vilish, but neither do we need to.

So if anyone else understood it this way and I suggested you were not entirely accurate, my apologies.

I don't think any of this has larger implications for the Redemption of She Who Must Not Be Named. It was still Linden who had the insight, and who provided the impetus, for Her restoration. But the Demondim-spawn provided a necessary element that I did not see.

Alas, I am not as fond of this better interpretation of events. Linden's sudden idea feels a bit unearned. And the solution to the whole name issue is far more mundane, less connected to the larger issues of identity explored in the Chronicles. I admit I was maybe seduced by the beauty of my incorrect notions.
.
User avatar
samrw3
The Gap Into Spam
Posts: 1842
Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2008 3:05 am
Been thanked: 2 times

Re: The Redemption of She Who Must Not Be Named

Post by samrw3 »

wayfriend wrote: The former sequence suggests that the captured souls are part of her identity problem - an idea I was fond of. The latter sequence suggests that the souls were released as a gift perhaps, or were unloaded, as Linden suggests, so that they would not hinder Her departure. Or maybe She simply didn't care any more.

Alas, I am not as fond of this better interpretation of events. Linden's sudden idea feels a bit unearned. And the solution to the whole name issue is far more mundane, less connected to the larger issues of identity explored in the Chronicles. I admit I was maybe seduced by the beauty of my incorrect notions.
I guess I am confused...why can't it be both? Why cannot it be true that part of SWMBN problem was mixed identity AND be true that before she took her place up in the cosmos that she released the other spirits. There are possible explanations for releasing them ...as you mention...as a gift or not to hinder her departure. Or if you are a cosmic being about to depart to cosmic plane I think there is good rationale that you cannot be dragging along non cosmic entities that don't belong or prepared for that existence

PS when I say cosmic/cosmos ...is just my lack of wording for what else to call where she goes...so if someone has better name for where she goes I will happily edit this post :D
Not every person is going to understand you and that's okay. They have a right to their opinion and you have every right to ignore it.
DrPaul
Giantfriend
Posts: 492
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:51 am
Been thanked: 2 times

Post by DrPaul »

It seems to me that the most straightforward explanation is that SWMNBN's crisis of identity and purpose both predated her devouring of souls and is what caused her to begin devouring souls in the first place. Once her crisis of identity and purpose was solved, releasing the captured souls was simply the right thing for her to do. Having rediscovered her original purpose and identity, she could not simply have been neutral towards the suffering of those souls. She had to contribute to their redemption and apotheosis as an act of expiation.
User avatar
wayfriend
.
Posts: 20957
Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2004 12:34 am
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 4 times

Post by wayfriend »

I agree with both of those points; they are very possible possibilities.

I don't think we were ever told how SWMNBN came to forget her own name. (Am I wrong?) So we cannot ever be really sure what is the relationship between her lost name and the devoured souls. Of the souls themselves, we have it from Donaldson that she devoured them in a response to her grief at being jilted.
.
User avatar
hurtloam
Stonedownor
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Jan 07, 2014 8:54 pm

Post by hurtloam »

In the end, there is no creator, independent and outsides.
Nor despite, independent and outside.
Love herself is the ONLY metaphysical/multiversal power/necessity left.
I find that fascinating.
And even more-so if one is a subscriber to the idea that TC always was, "really" both creator and despiser....that means love herself was ALWAYS the only independent/metaphysical/multiversal power/necessity.[/color]
I find this interesting. I actually believe our own universe is love coming to know itself. There are a lot of stumbles along the way. There are mistakes. There are splits. Love became twisted into despair and even hatred. Only through self-compassion and self-forgiveness, which can be talked about all day every day but without the emotional body finding a way to let go of guilt and self-Despite that's only words, can hatred and despair find a way back to love.

In response to the earlier post asking how Foul ever could have hoped to fight the Creator, I believe that Foul has been operating on stolen power from the very beginning. Even when he was placing banes in creation, he was doing so using power acquired from She, because She is literally the emotional part of the Creator who was being ignored in favor of the mental and rational. This gave Foul the space to do seduce her and use her power, and really, even to exist. He just uses her as a power source and discards her when he no longer needs her. That's how he recovers from the Ritual, from Covenant's initial defeat of him, and from spending all his power trying to destroy Covenant at the end of The Second Chronicles. He thinks he'll just take what he wants and leave her behind. Plus, his initial plan is to use Jeremiah to trap the Creator.

When She smacks him down, he's down, period, with very little left to him, and can only continue to exist because Covenant makes room for him in his own being. Otherwise, he'll die, because he's lost the ability to escape that world. Also, if Covenant is the originator of both the Creator and Despiser, he's still required to play by the extant rules while he's in their universe. I could imagine that when Covenant dies, Foul rejoins the Creator and ceases to be himself. In fact, I had envisioned the series ending by having the Creator take in Foul, not Covenant; I think Covenant doing so is a temporary solution. But it fits with having the main characters accomplish stuff on their own, and also with owning all of oneself. I am reminded of the Star Trek episode, "The Enemy Within," here, as well as LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea.
Joy is in the ears that hear.
Post Reply

Return to “The Entire Chronicles”