WGW Chapter 12 - Those Who Part

[duchess of malfi]

Or mine???

[dlbpharmd]

You'll be a mother in law someday, won't you Duchess?

[duchess of malfi]

Yes, and I have Vowed not to do things like get drunk at weddings and start throwing punches.

[Durris]

Watch out--Vows can be broken.

* * *
Pardon me, I'm experiencing an uncontrollable attack of theorizing.

"Those Who Part" brings to fruition a development that has been building throughout the second series.

James Fowler, in Stages of Faith, quotes somebody, I think it's Alfred North Whitehead: "faith is the journey from God the Void to God the Enemy, and from God the Enemy to God the Companion." The way Fowler explains this, the encounter with "God the Enemy" is any experience of something that bursts the bounds of one's world view and is initially regarded as an overwhelming threat.

To Sunder, Covenant is an emissary of God the Enemy, coming from outside the Land, outside the Sunbane, outside the Clave’s power, outside the world, and turning inside out the moral framework learned from the Clave. (Covenant also is an emissary of God the Enemy to Memla. [Very differently, Honninscrave and Linden are emissaries of God the Enemy to the Lady Alif and the Caitiffin Rire Grist, who had been in the idolatrous grip of the Kemper.]) And Covenant’s ontological intimidation against Brinn and Cail in their attempted vengeance upon Linden makes him a God the Enemy figure to them briefly, although in that role he’s a mere opening act for aHKA!

By the time of “Those Who Part,” the remaining people of the Land no longer need a God the Enemy figure to overturn the Clave’s world view; Linden’s cure of the Sunbane will speak for itself. But in agreeing to guard the memory of the Land’s real meaning as they guard Revelstone, Durris et al. become Covenant’s inheritors in the sacred work of confronting the Clave’s former subjects with the truth. With the end of Clave and Sunbane that confrontation need not be as deep a discontinuity as Sunder experienced. Yet by this time Sunder is far on the trans side of realizing that “the shedding I have done is no less than murder,” and has—if not made his peace with it, certainly established a new and redemptive direction. His compatriots in Stonedown and Woodhelven are still on the cis side and have to start realizing it from zero. The victims in their own villages are far past speaking, but their could-have-been victims the surviving Haruchai speak for all.

When Brinn judges first Hergrom and then Linden, he is not far from being the Heavenly Prosecutor of the Book of Job. I trust that Durris will be much less inquisitorial.

[wayfriend]

As it happens, yesterday I was watching the Elohimfest interview clips, the one about how the original trilogy got started, and I heard

And I was suddenly thinking Wait a minute! If I want to write a story about a guy whose going to reject fanatasy, then I should write about somebody for whom fantasy would be infinitely preferable to reality. If you have a really nice life, as of course suppose we all do, and you had this extended, horrific dream, full of archetypal evil, and you wake up and say, oh thank Jesus, that was just a dream, good thing that wasn't real - now you're just being sane, that's just self interest, we all do that. But if your life is a walking nightmare, and you have a fantasy that is glory incarnate, and you still say, wait a minute, I know the difference betweeen reality and fantasy, and that difference is important, it matters, and I'm going to cling to it - even though that one's way better - now we're talking about a moral principle of some kind. We're talking about religion. We're talking about an article of faith. We're talking about a belief structure which transcends the self interest of the individual. Now we're talking about something [?] fascinating. And whose life could possibly be worse than a leper's? Well - then I had a story! Oh, what kind of fantasy world is this? The exact opposite of having leprosy - that's easy!

That evening, in my pre-Runes re-read, I happened to be reading TOT: Withdrawal from Service. Where the whole Merewives thing begins for Cail.

It dawned on me that there is a parallel between Cail here and Covenant in the first Chronicles.

Cail knows the difference between fantasy and reality, and even though reality is infinitely preferable (in that the fantasy comes with peril and possible death), Cail rejects reality and chooses the fantasy in order to follow his desire.

[Durris]

That evening, in my pre-Runes re-read, I happened to be reading TOT: Withdrawal from Service. Where the whole Merewives thing begins for Cail.

It dawned on me that there is a parallel between Cail here and Covenant in the first Chronicles.

Cail knows the difference between fantasy and reality, and even though reality is infinitely preferable (in that the fantasy comes with peril and possible death), Cail rejects reality and chooses the fantasy in order to follow his desire.

Yikes.
Wayfriend, you've hit core again.

In both series, in a way, the Haruchai are complementary to Covenant. Not opposite in the way that good and evil are opposites. But where the TC of the first series resolutely refuses the Land's "seductions," the Bloodguard exemplify a maximal capacity to respond to the moral and aesthetic appeals of the Land. The Vow was not an act of either logic or obligation, but of passion. This comes through most conspicuously in Gilden-Fire.

In the second series, both TC's Unbelief and the Vow are ancient history; and Cail's passion in responding to the "delusion" of the merewives is not a figure of speech. Nor, as it turns out, is the fantasy as unreal as either the long-ago TC or the Giantesses who so recently saved Cail from drowning might have supposed.

[malinda_maloney]

My question is... now this is probably terribly obvious to everyone else, but how exactly is Cail going to find the merewives if by some unfortunate chance they aren't on the coast of the Land?

[Believer]

I figured he was stubborn enough to swim however far he needed to. Or maybe he'd take time to build a little raft or something...

I've absolutely loved Cail's speech about the sweetness of the delusion... Even if it's delusion, the sweetness of it is enough. Mmm.

[dlbpharmd]

My question is... now this is probably terribly obvious to everyone else, but how exactly is Cail going to find the merewives if by some unfortunate chance they aren't on the coast of the Land?

It's not obvious to me, and I've never thought about it - I've started a thread in Runes forum (since the discussion will involve Runes spoilers.) Maybe someone in there can help us.

[Durris]

I had assumed that the merewives would find Cail on their own, and have no difficulty doing so. Haruchai telepathy has seemed to work better with nonhuman sentients than with non-Haruchai humans. And I imagine the merewives can perceive his intent to accept them across any amount of distance.

I'd figured that Cail would set sail with the Giants on Starfare's Gem and the merewives, sensing a call (telepathy, pheromones, whatever ) would appear when and where it pleased them to do so.

[dlbpharmd]

That seems to be the general consensus.

Durris, when are you going to read Runes and bring your extraordinary analytical skills to Runes forum?

[Durris]

Thank you for the vote of confidence, dlbpharmd!

I daren't read Runes until I've finished writing my Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts article on the first 6 books, because I know Runes will change retroactively how I see everything in the mythos. I'm making progress on the article (now working on the discussion of Gilden-Fire), but keep having to put it on the back burner when medical editing opportunity knocks.

Life does tend to get in the way of mythology...

[malinda_maloney]

Ahh... that makes sense.

[Herem]

I've not posted in Dissecting the Land, mainly because I was somewhat in awe of all your analyses of the Chronicles thus far!

Coming towards the end of re-reading White Gold Wielder, after almost six books and countless chapters, I truly feel sorry that the Chronicles are coming to an end...SRD has a talent, almost unique in the fantasy I have read, for making the reader identify deeply with and care about his characters. Even TC at his most obnoxious in LFB is much more human than some identikit sword-wielding warrior- come to think of it, even SRD's sword-wielding warriors are seriously complex - witness the First, Quaan etc, never mind the non-sword-wielding Haruchai!

But I digress...I've been moved to write this by the sheer transcendent beauty of the writing in White Gold Wielder, which in my humble opinion may rate as the best in all the Chronicles (controversial, possibly). During the three preceding chapters, "The Banefire", "Aftermath", and "Those who part" I have been close to, or actually in tears for most of the time.

Linden's voice, wet with tears, as she realises TC is on fire with venom.

Nom's assault on

Giant-wrought Revelstone

, heartbreaking although for the right reasons.

The horror of the na-Mhoram's [/i]grim.

The unavoidable slaughter of mindless Clave servants and coursers in the forehall.

Gibbon's cynical stance within the Hall of Gifts, TC is unable to match the Banefire without going over the edge.

Honninscrave achieving redemption for his perceived failures and guilt by slaying Gibbon-raver, and becoming

the Master

of the raver so he may be rent by Nom.

"The Sandgorgon speaks."

Linden's appeal to Covenant as he climbs to the Banefire:

"Please. Please don't. I can't let you. You mean too much".

Covenant somehow managing to shut her out, having to shut out the part of him that loves her, deaf to her final cry:

"I love you!"

I don't know why, but rather than an appeal to him to stop , I took that to mean "If you have to go, know that I love you", in the way that her father died thinking"

"You never loved me anyway"

Linden's despair after his ordeal in the Banefire, the recurring beliefs that she is unworthy of him, has tried to commit an atrocity against him.

Her attempts to bury herself within her work with the injured, including the mighty Mistweave, and the Quenching of the Banefire by Nom redirecting the path of Glimmermere.

Linden's meeting with Covenant is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I can remember reading, she is unwilling to touch her "unlovely" hair because she feels it exemplifies her unworth, while he is fused, an alloy of wild magic and venom, resigned yet purposeful. The final line is one of my favourite in the Chronicles, and certainly got the tears flowing:

But the safe gutrock of Revelstone enclosed them with solace, and they did not need blankets

"Those who part" is the final part of what, for me, is the keystone of the book. The Revelstone chapters really have an emotional resonance, having seen it in its glory in LFB and TIW, and staunchly defended in TPTP, then the home of the Clave and Gibbon in TWL, the home of the abominations of the Banefire and the Grim. As well as representing the healing of the wound between Linden and Covenant, the expression of their love for each other, for me that last line also implies that despite centuries of the depradations of Clave and Sunbane, Revelstone is a fundamentally unchanged place, that Earthpower is still holding there.

The scene at Glimmermere has been expertly dissected here, one thing that occurred to me was that the last woman Covenant was here with was Elena, with all the rage at himself that she conjured in him, exemplified by his reaction when she kisses him. With Linden, things seem different, despite the wrong of the Sunbane.

Again, TC's address to the Haruchai is outstanding, so different from his almost brutal assault on their integrity on Rivenrock in TIW. His understanding of their plight, the impossibility of finding service that lives up to their standards, leaves Linden

"Marvelling at what he had become"

As you might have guessed, I think Linden is a great character, which I know is a controversial view with some Her emotional arc within the Second Chronicles is akin to that of Covenant in the first,and their love, so evocatively pictured in TOT, is in my opinion one of the key themes of the Second Chronicles. Reading the first part of WGW, where everything he says to or hears from her is gall, is actually physically distressing. The fact that Linden would forgive him instantly, if he could forgive himself, is almost too much to take...

Sorry for a somewhat rambling post, these 3 chapters have clearly had some sort of effect on me..

[dlbpharmd]

[Herem]

Thanks!

[wayfriend]

I've been moved to write this by the sheer transcendent beauty of the writing in White Gold Wielder, which in my humble opinion may rate as the best in all the Chronicles (controversial, possibly). During the three preceding chapters, "The Banefire", "Aftermath", and "Those who part" I have been close to, or actually in tears for most of the time.

I'm with you. I'm so with you. (I cannot fathom those people who thought WGW was ineffective or a let down...)

[SoulBiter]

WGW is my favorite as well. I have the original that I bought when it came out in hardback and its definetly seen some wear and tear as I have read this book so many times.

One of the things that I love about this book is it brings Giants back to the Land. I had so missed the Giants being there. And seeing them in Revelstone again.. it was just a shame they only got to see the work of their Kin for the first time when they are their to attack the Clave.

[Herem]

Soulbiter wrote:

One of the things that I love about this book is it brings Giants back to the Land. I had so missed the Giants being there. And seeing them in Revelstone again.. it was just a shame they only got to see the work of their Kin for the first time when they are their to attack the Clave.

Absolutely, the impact of the Giants on the 2nd Chronicles is so huge. When they pitch up in Sarangrave Flat, at one of the lowest points of TWL, they bring instant relief although the situation of the company is still dire - aside from Foamfollower we never really saw what Giants were like as a group in the 1st Chronicles - SRD was ingenious in this regard IMO, as the arrival of the Search certainly rectified this in the 2nd!

The reaction of the Giants when they see Revelstone:

"There are no words"

is heartrending, particularly as they are about to attack the Keep. There are so many reasons to love the Revelstone chapters of WGW...the fact that Linden, after the horror she endured at Gibbons hands in TWL (without any of the good memories of Lord's Keep which Covenant retains), is able to find solace in Covenant's arms in Revelstone is particularly moving.