or like yesterday when I started writing something real fast and a pop of lightning blinked out the electricity for 2 seconds exactly when I typed an exclamation point.The image I'm left with in my head after reading Inspite of Her is of "Tony". It was close to two years ago when I first saw him being put out on the little metal porch of an IP classroom. He was, probably, 8 but looked 4, a really scrawny little thing who, when he didn't periodically tap on his xylophone, always looked straight ahead and rocked back and forth continually for two periods straight. He looked like he was smiling, but who can tell. I worked with a couple of autistic kids before and their artwork simply blew me away: very detailed portals to completely different dimensions.
In the chapter we meet Jeremiah ("the prophet of woe") Jason up close and personal. Jeremiah shows classic sings of being an autistic savant, but he can't be: autism is congenital. Psychologists have insisted his condition is a "dissociative disorder", "hysterial conversion reaction" or "somatoform disorder", in anycase Jeremiah's state was clearly caused by trauma. And the most direct trauma we can assess is his sticking his right hand in Lord Foul's bondfire at the beginning of The Wounded Land, when he was five. Linden Avery saw him do it and, as a matter of fact, had to amputate the top of his thumb and the last two fingers of his right hand to save his hand after she came to and assisted Dr. Berensford in the emergency room. Actually they probably had to treat at least 30 burned hands that night including Marsha Jason and her other children, Hosea and Rebecca.
Marsha Jason had a rough life; abandoned by her husband when she was pregnant with Jeremiah and had "...subsisted at the mercy of various welfare agencies. In one form or another, she had kept her children alive throught the charity of strangers. And then, when her self-pity and ineffectiveness had reached unendurable proportions, She had discovered the Community of Retribution." Quite a strange group, to say the least, had they drugged and brainwashed her and her children? (and did this open Jeremiah up to worse trauma) Who were these people? Sacrifice for sin? Ritual murder? Where do they come from? You need to go back about 16 pages to find Linden's explanation, "From despair. They're broken by their own hollowness. It makes them implode." Was Jeremiah already on the road to such hollowness? For God's sake he was only 5! How could they do such things to a child?-before all that Marsha described him as normal---but how normal can you be in that group?
So what's the connection between Linden and Jeremiah? Well Linden finally succeeded in adopting him about two years later--which makes him now about what? 15? Well Jeremiah really didn't do anything for the first two years or so, but he did fill a major space in Linden's heart along with her loss of Thomas Covenant. And Linden understood his barren mental cell after being violated by the Clave and rendered comatose by the Elohim. One day, during a doctor's visit, Jeremiah actually started doing something: putting blocks together and creating intricate forms. Since then Linden had bought him increasingly complex sets of blocks, legos, lincoln logs, tinkertoys and racetracks that he constructed into marvelous buildings and worlds, without wasting a brick.
But what does that have to do with right now? Well we know that Roger's sudden appearance, strange demands, odd history and raver-like sense of purpose has triggered off a thousand alarms in Linden's head and is giving her long pauses of flashback to her time in the Land. Here she remembers the steadfastness and lessons of The First and Pitchwife and Covenant's death. She now has to take some real personal action to protect Joan and others around her, especially Jeremiah who she loves with all her heart. Linden has never forgiven herself for her failure to intervene at the bondfire, and perhaps even to have prevented Covenant's death in our world. She has contacted affable and trustworthy Bill Coty to double security at the hospital and even thought of grabbing Jeremiah and fleeing. But no, Foul will not touch those she loves, those she is responsible for. Besides how can Jeremiah really be in trouble? How can Roger even know of his existence? But...even if she decides to hide Joan...he can find her address.
That in mind she returns home, mind racing, and she's totally relieved to find that Jeremiah and his babysitter are sitting, rocking, calmly in the living room when Sandy shows her what he's created today: full scale renderings of Mt. Thunder and Revelstone!!!!!!!!!!!!
We know Foul can influence/possess people in our world. Maybe Nom was remarkable enough due to his taking the rended samadhi's essence that he was able to crossover.
, so I'm not surprised by his absence... unless we found someone else who went, and then, since we're going from Joan's PoV, he could've appeared to them as well.
"He lacked the experience, the background, to react effectively." Echoes of Roger's earlier words, which in turn echoed Covenant's in TWL. Again, I point out a possible clue that Roger may be more like Linden and Covenant underneath than we have seen. 
