Symbolism in 1st Chronocles

[Plotinus]

Let me try yet one more explanation of what I mean.

A reader comes across an event in the plot of the series, that Elena's Covenant-Bannar statue teaches Mhoram the Ritual of Descretation.

One thing the reader might do is just accept that on face value as an event like, "an apple fell from a tree", and keep reading to see what happens next. To that reader, it is arbitrary that it was Elena's Covenant-Bannor statue that taught Mhoram the Ritual of Descretion--Mhoram might just as well have discovered an old book that contained the Ritual in it--all that is important is Mhoram knows the Ritual now.

However, to a reader truly interested in the story, as something more than just the sequence of events being related, his curiousity is naturally going to be aroused. What about the author's understanding of Covenant, Banner, Mhoram, Elena, and the Ritual of Descretation makes this a plausible occurance? What about my, the reader's understanding, of them makes it plausible? What is going on in the *story*, which is more than the sequence of events being related in it, makes this plausible?

To ask these questions isn't necessarily to do violence to the story by forcing it to conform to some message or moral (though some might certainly do that)--it is to show a geniune interest in the story, a willingness to think about the story and enter into a dialogue with it, an openness to being provoked to thought by the story.

[wayfriend]

I don't disagree with anyone looking into the story for deeper meanings. I've dabbled myself.

There even may be themes that are "existential"... not sure what an existential theme even is, but maybe I'll learn...

However, that doesn't mean that any conclusion one person draws will be generally agreed by most others.

There's a preponderence of evidence that Donaldson doesn't consider the trials of being human to be either unimportant or ludicrous. Nor have I seen any evidence that he is trying to explore the question of whether it is unimportant or ludicrous, or not. His story is consistently about people struggling in unusual circumstances to esteme their own effectiveness and worth. Any evidence, albeit circumstantial, would be that this is an important and worthwhile endeavor - whole worlds can hange in the balance. (And the fact that whole worlds hang in the balance of one character's search for esteme is exactly what makes it, according to Donaldson, fantasy.)

[[Syl]]

Some of the more symbolic aspects I've touched on before:

Covenant is afraid of heights and suffers vertigo.

Covenant is afraid of horses, and is even allergic to horse blood.

Covenant stares down at black waters, standing on a bridge before crossing it then raping Lena.

His white robe is stained green passing through Morinmoss (and then later, he's found again in a white robe).

Glimmermere is deep, cold, clean, and clear, reflecting everything around it. Yet it doesn't show anything transient immersed in it. More than that, there's someone who studies dreams and their meanings on the edge of it. Mhoram discards the Krill in it, and then in the 2nd chrons, Covenant turbulently brings it back up.

All sorts of banes and bad stuff is found underground, including Foul himself

Spoiler

except, so it seems, in the Last Chrons

[iQuestor]

WayFriend wrote:

His story is consistently about people struggling in unusual circumstances to esteme their own effectiveness and worth. Any evidence, albeit circumstantial, would be that this is an important and worthwhile endeavor - whole worlds can hange in the balance. (And the fact that whole worlds hang in the balance of one character's search for esteme is exactly what makes it, according to Donaldson, fantasy.)

What is meant by esteme? I looked that up in a dictionary, but it wasn't found. Did you mean esteem?

esteem: (n) the regard in which one is held; especially : high regard <the esteem we all feel for her>; it can also mean worth, or value.

Is fantasy really a character's search for their own worth or value? I am not sure I agree that that is the point of fantasy, however it does play out usually that the person finding or acknowledging their own particular worth or value is a by product of the traditional happy ending. The worth or value of the character is then tied to the quest or point of the fantasy.

Perhaps the protagonists have the potential worth or value inside them (character growth) , but it isn't realized until they have made the sacrifices required to fulfill the quest. Indeed, the happy ending or successful result is less important that the sacrifices along the way in this regard, in my opinion. If TC had ultimately failed, I think he still would have gained this worth through his sacrifice (however short that may have been), but that is another thread.

Of course, if esteem is meant the value or worth of what has been saved, i.e. The Land, The race of men, the rightful King of Gondor, whatever) then perhaps that is the symbolic esteem you speak of. Of course , this worth can also by symbolic of the characters worth...

My point is that a person couldn't be searching for their own worth, because they'd never find it -- only through selflessness, putting another Ideal ahead of themselves, could they truly find their own worth.

Mind you WayFriend, I am not picking on your spelling or your point of view, I just want to know what you mean by your post.

[Zarathustra]

There even may be themes that are "existential"... not sure what an existential theme even is, but maybe I'll learn...

Wayfriend, I think you articulated a general problem on the board. You are one of the more thoughtful, analytical, and literary minded people here, and yet you freely admit an ignorance with existential themes. If you are unsure about it, then most likely there are many others here with the same problem. Perhaps a new thread should be started: Existential Themes in the Chronicles.

Yeah, I'll get right on that. Or maybe another time. The problem with defining existentialism is that there are so many different "flavors" of it--from Christian to atheist--that it's very difficult to pin down. Existentialism is not a unified school or movement in philosophy. Even some of the classic existential philosophers begrudged that term being applied to them. And each stresses different problems, and they all come up with different solutions.

Existentialism is a HUMAN philosophy. It deals with people and their existence in the world, in their lives, in their social circles, in their activities, etc. This is to be contrasted with what philosophy was for several millennia preceding the rise of existentialism: a philosophy of concepts or ideas.

Existentialism can trace its beginnings to skepticism (David Hume's insights could be seen as a precursor to it). The hopefulness of the Age of Enlightenment ran up against some road blocks as a few people (like Hume) noted that science and reason could not solve all problems, could not prove the existence of God, could not provide a systematic way to deduce morality, could not provide absolute knowledge of the "external" world, etc. Because of the limits of reason, the human condition is one of alienation--alienation from the world, from God, from himself, from Absolute knowledge (alienation is a perfect description of TC's initial's state at the beginning of LFB). Man is basically on his own, to choose his own morals, to decide his own fate, to decide what he will be. Mankind is like an ontological centaur, half brute animal, half god-like being. Nietzsche said man is a tightrope walker, a precarious crossing between the Last Man and the Overman. We choose what we will be--we have no "essence." We are unique among things in the world because even our existence is an issue for our freewill (we can kill ourselves, in other words).

All this is very scary for people who would rather have God tell them what to do and how to live. Scary for people who would like to blame all the bad stuff that happens to them on Fate, the Devil, their parents, etc. So we devise ways to abrogate our responsibility of choice (like Covenant's bargain with the Ranyhyn in LFB). We fall into inauthenticity because our lives and our being is "too much" as Sartre might say. We devise things like the Oath of Peace to control our lives, to limit our actions, to tell us how to live. Rather than trusting ourselves to choose, we give up our freedom in various ways ("it's all in God's hands," as my mother says).

Crap, I might as well start that new thread if I go much further. Anyway, there is much, MUCH more to existentialism, including various reactions and solutions to the Void, as SRD calls it (lack of absolutes, source of meaninglessness). Camus states we can revolt against our own absurdity, Kierkegaard says we must take a leap of faith, Nieztsche says we can choose our own meaning and values, etc., etc. But this post is getting much too long.

At some point, I'll do some hard thinking and trace out all the existential themes in TCTC. But in closing, I'll leave you all with this one, major theme: man's reaction to his own mortality and the destruction of beauty (entropy). If there is no God or Fate to balance the horrible cost of living, whence comes our hope? Whence comes our meaning? Why not suicide (as Camus might ask)? That is the first question of philosophy.

[wayfriend]

What is meant by esteme? I looked that up in a dictionary, but it wasn't found. Did you mean esteem?

Yes, I meant "esteem". (Brain flatulence.)

Is fantasy really a character's search for their own worth or value? I am not sure I agree that that is the point of fantasy

No, but Donaldson's definition of fantasy is that an internal struggle of a protagonist is externalized into a fantasy world. So if that struggle happens to be finding the worth and value of oneself, then when it is externalized in a fantasy world, then the characters and events of that world become included in that struggle.

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.

[iQuestor]

Thanks --

[Plotinus]

Plotinus, great post! You might want to post part of it to the GI for SRD to reply to.

About the Covenant/Bannor sculpture... <searches memory> ... I thought that when TC saw the sculpture, he did recognize that it was of himself, but didn't want to acknowledge it. So he said something to the effect of "it's Bannor" to try once again to avoid responsibility.

If so, then what of Mhoram's subsequent understanding of the Ritual? In this case, Elena had not created a mixture of the Haruchai and TC in the sculpture. Since TC was essentially lying or avoiding, then the Lords' interpretation of "the sculpture of Covenant which the ur-Lord thought was Bannor" is misled. (TC was always "closed" to the healthsense of the Land's inhabitants, so they couldn't simply tell when he lied). But it could be that as a seer, Mhoram recognized Covenant's inauthenticity, at least intuitively, and maybe grasped some other truth... perhaps something along the lines of the effect of fear, of denying one's own power.

The text seems to indicate there is more to it than that in two places:

(1) When Mhoram contemplates that Covenant mistook the marrowmeld for one of the Bloodguard, he notes that Elena was too good an artist to make such a confusion possible accidentally.

(2) After the destruction of the Staff of Law, Bannor asks Covenant, "Have you forgotten that High Lord Elena carved our faces as one in her last marrowmeld work?" (Page 387 of The Power that Preserves).

[iQuestor]

Yes Plotinus -- but what does that work mean? If I remember, it affected Mhoram deeply, and was responsible for his loss of his oracular gift as well as his deeper understanding of the ritual of desecration, which led to the abandonment of the Oath of Peace.

Bannor of the bloodguard had preserved it, and had given it to Mhoram when they had come together on Gallows Howe in Garroting Deep... Bannor had explained the history of the bone sculpture.

In fact, had had explained it unaccustomed detail. His habitual bloodguard reticence had given way almost to prolixity; and the fullness of his description had led circuitously to the great change in Mhoram's own life. By a curious logic of its own, it had put an end to the High Lord's power of prevision.

He was no longer seer and oracle to the Council of Lords. Because of what he learned, he caught no more glimpse of the future in dreams, read no more hints of distant happenenings in the dance of the fire. The secret knowledge which he had gained so intuitively from the marrowmeld sculpture had blinded the eyes of his prescience.

It had done other things as well. It had afflicted him with more hope and more fear than before... Elena's marrowmeld sculpture had taught him the secret of the Ritual of Desecration.

- TPTP pp.28-29

This part always sticks in my mind, and I do not completely understand what Mhoram actually saw, although it was (in part) a change in the bloodguards vow and their relationship to Covenant. When Bannor related the events around when Elena made the sculpture, he saw the Bloodguard were subtly changing as well.

So you can see, this one sculpture heralded the first changes in the bloodguard which eventually led them to be the protectors they are in RUnes, and also led Mhoram to the settign aside of the Oath of Peace, and setting the Lords on the Path to the CLave.

Dang. Is this a new thread????

[Zarathustra]

In the marrowmeld sculpture, Mhoram saw the empowering paradox of passion and discipline.

The "Covenant part" represented the passion--the wild magic of white gold. This is a source of power to us all, to allow our passions to shape our lives and find their expression in our deeds. However, unchecked passion can lead to destruction of the Arch of Time, or in our own lives, it can lead to hurting ourselves, others, and our environment.

The "Bannor part" represented unflinching control, disipline. This is a necessary part of our lives, for it is what checks our passion and keeps it from becoming too "wild." However, too much disipline leads to inhuman, inauthentic, life-denying absolutism. So it, too, must be tempered with passion.

Paradox.

Ah heck, let's let SRD himself describe it. From the Gradual Interview:

Bill Foley: I'm hoping that you might be willing to bring into sharper focus the revelation that High Lord Mhoram has leading into the Power that Preserves that enables him to unlock his additional power (knowledge of the Ritual of Desecration, blue flicker in the Krill, etc.).

I understand that his "secret" deals with overcoming the limits imposed by the Oath of Peace but I seem to want to understand it a little bit more literally. Is it that power requires a willingness to harm, hate or do violence? Something like that? (Again, looking for a "tune-up" here...)

I'm also interested to know how the inspiration for his understanding was found in Elena's Marrowmeld sculpture of Covenant/Bannor. In what way didthis trigger his understanding?

Thanks!





I can't actually tell you how Mhoram's imagination/insight works: hell, I don't know how *mine* works. But I think I do know *what* he saw: the empowering paradox of passion and discipline.

That's cryptic, I know. There's no good way to explain the potential hidden within paradoxes. But look at it this way. The Oath of Peace is, in effect, "modeled" on the Bloodguard. (I mean thematically, not literally.) The Bloodguard are all about emotional control: so is the Oath of Peace. Witness Atiaran's appeal to Triock when he wants to kill Covenant--and her own subsequent attitudes. Covenant, on the other hand, is all about passion (in this context, "passion" means "intense emotion"). Witness his rape of Lena, and the way he wears his emotions on his sleeve.

Elena's marrowmeld sculpture put forward the notion that the control of the Bloodguard and the passion of Covenant are two faces of the same dilemma (the need of passion to be controlled, the need of control to be enlivened by passion); and that those two faces can be combined into one.

From this, Mhoram extracted the understanding that the Oath of Peace has been, well, misapplied. It is literally a prescription for behavior; but it has been taken as a proscription against passion. Yet passion is power, as Covenant so often demonstrates. (And power is dangerous: therefore the Bloodguard knowingly, and the people of the Land unwittingly, have suppressed their access to it.) Mhoram learned to find his own version of "the eye of the paradox": the point where both passion and control can be affirmed.

Mhoram's great insight most definitely does *not* involve "a willingness to harm, hate, or do violence." Rather it involves a willingness or ability to make choices which are not ruled or controlled by passion (e.g. hate, anger, despair, or fear), and then to act on those choices with absolute passion.

Blake wrote, "Reason is the circumference of energy." Gichin Funakoshi wrote, "If your hand goes forth, withhold your anger. If your anger goes forth, withhold your hand." Someone (I've forgotten who) wrote, "Beauty is controlled passion." Mhoram learned to understand this. The fatal flaw of the Haruchai (and of Atiaran, and of Trell, and of Troy, and of the Unhomed, and of Kevin--and of Covenant early on) is that they did not.

(11/24/2004)

[wayfriend]

Dang. Is this a new thread????

I believe that Elena's sculpture comes under the heading of symbolism.

Have you seen the GI responses regarding the sculpture?

Think of it as the sort of cryptic warning you get from an oracle. The warning to Bannor is fairly straightforward. Look at what happens to Korik, Sill, and Doar in "The Power that Preserves." The warning to Covenant is more subtle. Elena's sculpture hints at the danger for Covenant in the moral absolutism/purity of the Bloodguard.

(04/14/2004)


I can't actually tell you how Mhoram's imagination/insight works: hell, I don't know how *mine* works. But I think I do know *what* he saw: the empowering paradox of passion and discipline.

That's cryptic, I know. There's no good way to explain the potential hidden within paradoxes. But look at it this way. The Oath of Peace is, in effect, "modeled" on the Bloodguard. (I mean thematically, not literally.) The Bloodguard are all about emotional control: so is the Oath of Peace. Witness Atiaran's appeal to Triock when he wants to kill Covenant--and her own subsequent attitudes. Covenant, on the other hand, is all about passion (in this context, "passion" means "intense emotion"). Witness his rape of Lena, and the way he wears his emotions on his sleeve.

Elena's marrowmeld sculpture put forward the notion that the control of the Bloodguard and the passion of Covenant are two faces of the same dilemma (the need of passion to be controlled, the need of control to be enlivened by passion); and that those two faces can be combined into one.

From this, Mhoram extracted the understanding that the Oath of Peace has been, well, misapplied. It is literally a prescription for behavior; but it has been taken as a proscription against passion. Yet passion is power, as Covenant so often demonstrates. (And power is dangerous: therefore the Bloodguard knowingly, and the people of the Land unwittingly, have suppressed their access to it.) Mhoram learned to find his own version of "the eye of the paradox": the point where both passion and control can be affirmed.

Mhoram's great insight most definitely does *not* involve "a willingness to harm, hate, or do violence." Rather it involves a willingness or ability to make choices which are not ruled or controlled by passion (e.g. hate, anger, despair, or fear), and then to act on those choices with absolute passion.

Blake wrote, "Reason is the circumference of energy." Gichin Funakoshi wrote, "If your hand goes forth, withhold your anger. If your anger goes forth, withhold your hand." Someone (I've forgotten who) wrote, "Beauty is controlled passion." Mhoram learned to understand this. The fatal flaw of the Haruchai (and of Atiaran, and of Trell, and of Troy, and of the Unhomed, and of Kevin--and of Covenant early on) is that they did not.

(11/24/2004)


I’ll have to refer to you back to earlier discussions of the Oath of Peace because I don’t want to re-explain the insight which allowed Mhoram to become more effective than his immediate predecessors, even though he lacked the Staff of Law. The point is this: for a long time, the people of the Land saw the Oath of Peace as a proscription against certain emotions, while Mhoram learned to see it as a prescription for certain behaviors. In so doing, he opened the door for his own actions, and for the actions of others, to be galvanized, energized, empowered by previously-rejected emotions. Now, speaking as a student of the martial arts, I believe this to be A Good Thing--as long as no one re-creates the conditions which led to the formulation of the Oath of Peace in the first place. And those conditions were: action *determined* by emotion (Kevin and the Ritual of Desecration, Trell and the devastation of The Close) rather than action determined by conscience and then *energized* by emotion (“Lord Mhoram’s Victory”).

Well, the unfortunate fact is that emotions are messy, wisdom is rare, and conscience can be misled. In a very real sense, therefore, I think that when Mhoram removed the “proscription against certain emotions” and replaced it with the “prescription for certain behaviors” he did indeed open the door for the (eventual) emergence of the Clave. (There’s a *reason* why religions tell you how to feel--and it isn’t just because religions are about control [although they certainly are]. They’re also trying to avoid the dangers inherent in letting emotion determine action. Just to pick one example: history has shown us over and over again that punishing people for murder is a less effective deterrent than teaching them that rage, jealousy, and greed are evil.) An inevitable effect of unleashing emotion--even in the best of all possible causes--is that for some people emotion will then begin to overwhelm wisdom/conscience/morality.

So I think that Mhoram’s insight made the Clave possible. Does this mean he made a mistake? Far from it. Consider the alternative: Mhoram stays trapped within the confines of the “old” Oath of Peace; the Lords are defeated; Revelstone is over-run; and Covenant’s victory over Lord Foul does nothing to prevent a kind of cultural Dark Age (one which, in fact, closely resembles the state of affairs in “The Runes of the Earth”).

In practice, however, it was not Mhoram’s insight which led to the “ineffective guardianship” of the Masters: it was the vacuum of culture and lore left by the Clave’s defeat which inspired the Masters to take on a challenge that became too big for them.


(01/01/2005)

[iQuestor]

Malik and Wayfriend, that was awesome. thanks!

[Zarathustra]

Wow, I'm tempted to type, "great minds think alike," but Wayfriend might be typing the same thing right now . . .

One minute apart referencing the same GI post. Cool.

Anyway, I'm wondering how Plotinus will interpret this in terms of freewill. I suppose the symbol could equally represent the paradox of freewill, which also involves control and out-of-control, so to speak, determinism and freedom. The two are paradoxically intertwined.

[Plotinus]

I see a lot of things represented in the Convenant/Bannor statue, and it teaching Mhoram first the Ritual of Descration and along with it the secret to Kevin's lore.

Obviously, SRD has given one of the things it represents.

However, there are clearly other, interrelated levels of meaning going on here, whether intended or not by SRD.

For instance, it teaches Mhoram first the Ritual of Desecration because it is also about the inability to forgive. We are told repeatedly that the Bloodguard do not know how to forgive--and how could they? They are the embodiment of the Law, applied so absolutely as to transcend the very bounds of mortality. And we hear repeatedly that it is an inability to forgive himself that leads Kevin to the Ritual of Desecration--he can't forgive himself for being mortal, for *failure*.

Similarly, Covenant can't forgive himself--first for being a leper, then for his crimes and failures in the Land, etc.

Covenant ultimately transcends this inability to forgive himself in the final battle against Foul--taken on the Christian analogy, he forges a new convenant for himself beyond the Law in which failure can be forgiven. In the Wounded Land, he names this having learned to forgive himself as what he learned that enabled him to defeat the Despiser.

The statue, then, also represents this inability to forgive failure that is common to both Covenant and Bannor, and hence the first secret of Kevin's lore it reveals is the Ritual of Desecration--that part of Kevin's lore arising from the inability to forgive.

[Plotinus]

Now, on another level, the statue also represents freedom.

Bannor is Pure Law--which we learn when Elena wields the Staff of Law for the Despiser is not the opposite of Despite.

Covenant, as SRD says, represents pure passion unbounded by Law--he is from outside the Land and hence not bound by its Law, he is the Unbeliever who attempts to deny even the reality of this Law (which has itself obliterated his own Law, the Law of Leprosy), to commit himself to any cause, etc.

But in terms of freedom, both Law and passion represent different forms of bad faith when they are used to deny the responsibility for and of choice. The Law of the Bloodguard, their Vow, is supposed to be so absolute that it permits no free will, leaves no choices to be made. Covenant gives the lie to this when he forces the Bloodguard to make a choice in interpreting their Law, pits their loyalty to the old Lords against their loyalty to the new Lords.

Whatever the Bloodguard had chosen, to tell or not tell Elena the name of the Power of Command, didn't matter--they were confronted with their bad faith either way, confronted with having to choose, with acknowledging that even their Vow and their centuries of pure obedience to it had not obliterated their free will, the necessity of their choosing. And if they could choose in interpreting their vow, had to choose in interpreting their Vow, that meant it was also possible they could choose to *break* their Vow, that their Vow was not, for all its power and duration, some external absolute insuring its own fidelity, but that it was instead supported at each instance by the decisions of each individual Bloodguard--and hence at each instance in danger of being violated--it was corruptable. The "subtle undermining" of the Vow Convenant forces on the Bloodguard--what is it other than demonstrating to them that the Vow did not suffice to remove the necessity of choice from them?

On the other hand, in refusing to commit himself to anything in the Land, in pretending to be a slave to his passions, Covenant is also attempting to deny his freedom, to deny his responsibility for his choices, and is thus committing bad faith.

Thus, throughout the first two books, while Covenant certainly feels bad about having raped Lena, it is not until the third that he fully accepts responsibility for it. Before that, he is fleeing his responsibility, and speaks of the rape in terms of being overcome with passions unleashed by his disorientation in the Land and the sudden removal of his impotence, as though he were a slave to his impulses and had no choice.

Sartre gives the famous example of a person in grief, who is determined to *be* that grief, to give up all choice to it, to have it define them completely, but who finds it is impossible, their mind keeps wandering from the source of the grief, the grief starts to fade over time, and the person has to keep forcing themselves to remain in grief--to keep *choosing* it.

Elena is a danger to Convent's flight from his freedom in several ways--she confronts him with the consequences of his passion, his rape of Elena, and thus threatens to make him accept responsibility for that rape in a way he has not done yet, and he is falling in love with her, and thus in danger of committing to something.

Thus, Elena represents a crises for both Bannor and Covenant's bad faiths, demanding that they both accept responsibilty for their choices and thus acknowledge the freedom they're both fleeing. And it in this crises that she molds the statue, capturing the crises of their mutually opposing bad faiths, Bannor's flight into Vow, Law, and Reason, Convenant's flight into Unbelief, Passion, and Uncommitment--flights, in both cases, away from the responsibility of their freedom to choose.

Mhoram reads this in the statue and learns that freedom is necessary, and that it requires both passion and commitment, and the acceptance of responsibility for the choosing of both. It is a doubly dangerous and precarious balance, both because there is ever the danger of fleeing freedom into one or the other bad faiths--into succumbing to passion or the strictures of Law as an excuse to pretend one doesn't have a choice, as well as because freedom itself can choose evil.

Covenant eventually ackwoledges his freedom when, in Book 3, the crises of Elena finally hits home, and he accepts responsibility for his choice to rape Lena, and breaks down crying "Lena! How could I have done that to you." And because he has finally accepted it fully as a choice he made, rather than something his impulses drove him to do, he is also finally in a position to learn forgiveness.

When he finally returns to his own world, he has learned the same secret as Mhoram--he accepts that the Law of Leprosy is not just some external absolute like the Bloodguard thought their Vow was, but that it is also a choice of his--a choice to let leprosy define him. He cannot choice not to have the disease, but he can choose his reaction to having it. And because he finally sees *choice* in his leprosy, he can finally forgive himself for being a leper.

[Plotinus]

A few more thoughts on freedom.

Sartre gives a famous analysis of acrophobia of which SRD is surely not unaware. It is, he says, not a fear of falling from a height--it is the fear we will *jump* off the height. It is the fear of our own freedom, our freedom to jump.

It is surely no accident that the first place Covenant appears in the land is 4,000 feet above the ground, and one of his first experiences is vertigo. The Land immediately confronts Covenant with his freedom.

Then, shortly thereafter, it robs him of the Law of of his life, his leprosy, what he has been fleeing into being--a leper--confronting him again with his absolute freedom. And the Land does not even provide him with a new Law--for he is "outside the Law of the Land", being a stranger to it--meaning in part he has no frame of reference for any roles to try to be in this Land, not knowing its culture and history, and has no history of having been any of those roles--he is sundered from his historicity in the sense of being able to flee into it to determine his actions as the actions a Lord should take, the actions a Stonedowner should take, etc.

Robbed of something to *be*, he attempts to flee his freedom by denying responsibility for his choices--by his Unbelief, his refusal to recognize that the Land and thus the consequences of his actions are real, he seeks to escape having to be responsible for his choices, his freedom. And as his crimes and failures add up (the rape of Lena, the failure to stop the massacre of the Wraiths, etc.), he gains more and more reasons to fear accepting responsibility, at the same time he faced more and more with beauty demanding he do so. As he comes to learn, "we are responsibile for our dreams", meaning his Unbelief cannot ultimately shield him from his freedom, it is just another form of bad faith.

On a more physical level, he attempts to literally flee his freedom, "keep moving, don't think too much, see what happens" ("see what happens" as though he can do nothing about it).

And similarly he fears power because with power comes responsibility. If he is powerless--if his decisions can't produce consequences--he believes he will have nothing to be responsible for, and hence his book in the Wounded Land that only the innocent are powerless, and that power implies guilt (because it implies responsibility).

I take it implied in this discussion that responsibility implies freedom, and vice versa.

[Zarathustra]

Plotinus, you've provided one of the most insightful analyses of these book that I've ever seen. It's a shame that it has received such little notice or comment.

Thus, Elena represents a crises for both Bannor and Covenant's bad faiths, demanding that they both accept responsibilty for their choices and thus acknowledge the freedom they're both fleeing. And it in this crises that she molds the statue, capturing the crises of their mutually opposing bad faiths, Bannor's flight into Vow, Law, and Reason, Convenant's flight into Unbelief, Passion, and Uncommitment--flights, in both cases, away from the responsibility of their freedom to choose.

Mhoram reads this in the statue and learns that freedom is necessary, and that it requires both passion and commitment, and the acceptance of responsibility for the choosing of both. It is a doubly dangerous and precarious balance, both because there is ever the danger of fleeing freedom into one or the other bad faiths--into succumbing to passion or the strictures of Law as an excuse to pretend one doesn't have a choice, as well as because freedom itself can choose evil.

I found this in particular to be insightful and revealing. I think it compliments what SRD has already said about the statue, and there is ample evidence in the text for your interpretation. It follows so naturally from what SRD has written, I find it extremely difficult to imagine that he didn't intend this meaning when writing the books--especially given his prior familiarity with these concepts.