Hello everyone,
Wow, that was such an entertaining & informative read that I just had to stop lurking & post to it.
First of all, regarding Lena's rape, I think it is important to realize that Covenant thought he was dreaming. I mean if you were about to get hit by a police car and then suddenly the red siren lights turned into eyes and the siren turned into a couple voices, you found yourself on the top of a cliff outcropping on a mountain, climbed down & was healed of a disease that had changed your life, taken your wife & child, & to top it off you got an erection for the first time in several years, you probably would go with it yourself, absolutely sure that it was a dream & you could do whatever you wanted because there would be nothing to pay for & no ramifications. Granted, it's a peculiar what to act if even in a dream but I've had many dreams where I've done things that I wouldn't ever do in real life.
If you spoke with Thomas Covenant just after he returned to our world the first time, while he was still able to afford believing, and you asked him how he felt about it, I am certain that his answer would be heartfelt and apologetic. If you could somehow ask him as a reader to a character, WHY? WHY DID YOU DO THIS? He would cry because it would hurt him so much.
Second. Regarding Trell & Atarian. They did not forgive him. But they should have. As the other thread about this states, it killed them. I've read a few accounts of tortured POWs who forgive their captors. And when I think about how terrible a person can be to another person in the state of war when all of our morals are thrown away and we are worse than animals, I think HOW COULD YOU FORGIVE THAT!?!? And yet they do. They have to, otherwise they would be continuing the torture and therefore torturing themselves.
Third. Elena. Lena probably talked up Covenant all the time. They rode the great horses because of him. But as for Covenant and a father admiring his daughter in a sexual manner; I'm absolutely positive that this has happened all throughout history & that it happens all the time in our place in history. A man is a man. If his daughter is hot, he's going to see it.
I think what happens is that we are all too often looking to blame others for their faults and rarely if ever look at our own. Most of the world firmly believes that Michael Jackson was guilty. I think that most of this was due to his becoming so ugly through his excessive plastic surgeries. We would automatically be more lenient toward someone who looked like Elvis. We're a very shallow society. It happens all the time. Black man faces prison time while a blonde haired blue-eyed man gets parole. We grant custody to women far more often than men because we assume that a mother is more beneficial to children than a father (and it doesn't even matter that she was the unfaithful spouse that caused the divorce). We get all angry at our boss who gave a promotion to someone else and we think we deserve it more. Meanwhile, we're lying to each other, spreading gossip about each other that really causes stress and grief and little good at all just so we can feel more important about ourselves, and generally doing absolutely anything to step on absolutely anybody that gets in our way of climbing social ladders with no care about "deserves" at all. It's just me, me, me, me, me. We've become greatly selfish.
But that's just surface stuff. Although almost no one here will talk about it, we all have things in our lives that darken ourselves. It might not be rape, but even that is possible. Some people here may have very dark secrets about things they would never share. Let's say for instance that I killed someone. I haven't, but let's say I have. I bring it to your attention. I tell you how terrible I feel about it. What are you going to think about me? Or, let's say that I had sex with a young girl or a young boy. I haven't. But if I brought that to you, then wouldn't you feel even more alienated towards me? It's as if it is better to murder someone than to abuse someone!!!!
Also, we all mature with age and become more forgiving. Covenant was twenty-eight when he raped Lena & he also fully believed he was having a dream, with good reason I might add. When I was twenty-eight, I would be very disappointed with people and talk to them and people around them about whatever it was I was disappointed about. Now, I realize that all that is quite useless. People all have to learn the hardway. You can help steer them clear of obstacles out in the distance, but once they are driving through them there is nothing you can do about any of it. So what does this have to do with anything? Well, it's just that Covenant was caught up in his sexual relationship with Elena before he knew she was his daughter. He might have said he didn't believe in the land, but it was real enough for him to not go around raping teenagers all over the place too. So he tried. But just like real humans in a real world, Thomas had to unlearn what he had gotten himself into. And that takes time. I think that is why Hile Troy was so exasperated with him. He wouldn't listen, but not because it wasn't good advice, rather because he couldn't listen. Just like we can't listen. People will say, why are you with that guy? He's just going to hurt you. ANd we'll do EVERYTHING in our power to stay with him and do whatever it is that we want until we get hurt & then just hope that those same people that warned us won't say I told you so.
I think Covenant was very sane. He did great things. He made great messes. But he tried to do the right thing. He learned that choosing not to decide is still making a choice. He learned that sometimes one life is more important than a whole world of lives. We have the advantage of continuous hindsight while we read. But I'm quite certain that we would have made a mess of things along the way if we got plopped into a different world. Also, and perhaps far worse, Covenant saved the Land, twice. I'm almost positive I would have ruined that one. I might not have raped a young girl, but I almost certainly would have made sure she died by failing to even understand what I was supposed to do much less do it the right way. Covenant was messed up. I'm sure all people who have no sensation in their extremities and have to do VSE all the time, lost their family, and can't think of writing are messed up to. It's a miracle he didn't have a nervous breakdown & just end up mumbling and drooling up on Kevin's Watch; but that probably wouldn't have been a very good story to read.
That was my post. Of course, not believing in god or the bible means that I don't accept that argument I'm afraid. Rather the reverse in fact, we have made "unnatural" the things that are so. (Not necessarily a bad thing of course, for very valid and important reasons, but we have to differentiate between what is natural and what is practical, I think.)
don't really have anything to add, but the last few posts in this thread are just great