The Reality of the Land

[paradox]

My first topic here guys... I was just wondering how many here actually think that the Land is real and How many think that it is just a dream?

Reasons concerning Gilden-fire are out since it wasn't really included in the actual chronicles....

Before you use Hile Troy, think about the fact that Covenant never really talked to him in the "real" world. And just because the Department of Defense could not find him does not mean that he didn't really exist.. It is the Government after all...

[kevinswatch]

Heh, nice first topic, but wrong forum. Just so you know. The Dissecting the Land forum is for our group readings of the Covenant books, with a topic for each chapter. For open, free discussion about the Chronicles, you should post this in the Thomas Covenant Discussion forum near the top of the index.-jay

[dlbpharmd]

Agreed, and moved.

[Zarathustra]

I don't think your poll leaves any room for possible "middle ground" solutions. The eye of the paradox. So I didn't vote. I think the situation is a lot more complex than "dream" or "real."

There are several threads here about this subject. (I've started a couple myself--I'm fascinated by the metaphysical status of the Land.) Look for "What is the Land?" I can't remember the names of the others.

[sgt.null]

when TC is there the Land is real.

[paradox]

don't think your poll leaves any room for possible "middle ground" solutions. The eye of the paradox. So I didn't vote

i was wondering about that.. i added another option that said:

It doesn't really matter, the demand for absolute answers is dangerous... and i have none...

but it didn't appear.... how can i edit this?

[Nerdanel]

I think the Land is more real than the "real world".

[dlbpharmd]

don't think your poll leaves any room for possible "middle ground" solutions. The eye of the paradox. So I didn't vote

i was wondering about that.. i added another option that said:

It doesn't really matter, the demand for absolute answers is dangerous... and i have none...

but it didn't appear.... how can i edit this?

Go back to your intial post, and click "edit" then add the desired change.

[Holsety]

Whoops, I voted dream. For some reason, I initially interpreted this as "is the land real in real life", not necessarily within the chronicles.

Yes, I think the land is real. I think it is 'contained' so to speak within covenant and others, or sprung from covenant, or something like that. To me, it's clearly not real in the strictest sense, considering Covenant's spending his time in the 2nd chrons apparently unaffected by the wounds suffered IRL (though the venom might reflect those wounds). But it's not just some fantasy world dependent on covenant's imagination or whatever (rather, it's dependent on SRD's imagination!).

[balon!]

Im not sure, I think that if it were a real world, it would not be an alternate of our world. The time difference is far to great.

[Gil galad]

I think one of the main points is that in the end it doesn't matter whether the land is real or not, covenant still has to deal with the consequences of his actions in either case.

[Rocksister]

This is pretty far-fetched, but I believe the Land is in all of us, so to speak. So it's real. I believe it is the struggle within TC against his own self. Linden's got caught up in his because of her involvement in his life, and her refusal to leave him alone, and her own struggle within her own self. I look at it as kind of your bad self fighting against your good self. It's so much easier to give in and just let the stronger side have its way, but you know it's wrong, so you keep on fighting against the odds to beat it. I know you all think Rocksister has had way too many hits of Diamondraught today, but this is actually the product of a sober mind. This is somewhat scary, yes. I welcome your thoughts if you aren't too freaked out to share them. I am somewhat reluctant to delve this deeply into the human psyche "out loud." I hope SRD doesn't pick this post to read.............

[Zarathustra]

Rocksister, I think your views are similar to mine, and not far-fetched at all. I'm staying out of this because I've already discussed it death. You will find company in your interpretation in my thread, "What is the Land?" You'll have to search for it . . . it's disappeared off the 1st page.

Edit: This is from SRD's essay on Epic Fantasy (you can find it on his webpage). I add this so you won't feel embarrassed for voicing your opinion. You should feel proud, instead! Donaldson would smile if he read your post.

Put simply, fantasy is a form of fiction in which the internal crises or conflicts or processes of the characters are dramatized as if they were external individuals or events. Crudely stated, this means that in fantasy the characters meet themselves - or parts of themselves, their own needs/problems/exigencies - as actors on the stage of the story, and so the internal struggle to deal with those needs/problems/exigencies is played out as an external struggle in the action of the story. A somewhat oversimplified way to make the same point is by comparing fantasy to realistic, mainstream fiction. In realistic fiction, the characters are expressions of their world, whereas in fantasy the world is an expressions of the characters. Even if you argue that realistic fiction is about the characters, and that the world they live in is just one tool to express them, it remains true that the details which make up their world come from a recognized body of reality – tables, chairs, jobs, stresses which we all acknowledge as being external and real, forceful on their own terms. In fantasy, however, the ultimate justification for all the external details arises from the characters themselves. The characters confer reality on their surroundings.

This is obviously true in "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant." The villain of the piece, Lord Foul, is a personified evil whose importance hinges explicitly on the fact that he is a part of Thomas Covenant. On some level, Covenant despises himself for his leprosy - so in the fantasy he meets that Despite from the outside; he meets Lord Foul and wrestles with him as an external enemy

[DukkhaWaynhim]

when TC is there the Land is real.

...because it is real to TC, and that's all that matters.

First Hile Troy, then Linden,

Spoiler

and now Jeremiah & Joan

complicate this solipsistic explanation, but I don't think they rule it out.

DW

[Zarathustra]

First Hile Troy, then Linden, and now Jeremiah & Joan complicate this solipsistic explanation, but I don't think they rule it out.

DW

There's a middle ground between solipsism and naive realism. There's inter-subjectivism. Neutral monism.

[Holsety]

I think one of the main points is that in the end it doesn't matter whether the land is real or not, covenant still has to deal with the consequences of his actions in either case.

I agree, but it's still fun to wonder about. Certain strange stuff, like Hile Troy's apparent nonexistence (then again, I doubt you can just call in the generals in the pentagon on a rainy day IRL), tips the otherwise 'certainty' of its reality.

I think SRD also seems to have been aiming to make the answer uncertain, but ultimately feels it's real - see Gildenfire, and the reason it wasn't published as part of The Illearth War

[paradox]

It does seem that SRD was aiming to make the reality ambiguous.. but then again, how come there are events in the land that are separate from Covenant's experience.

Think of the events in TPTP, specifically the chapter Variol-son..

[iQuestor]

I have also posted long on this topic. I have always been a fan of the 'Land is Real' camp because I want it to be real. its why I read Fantasy. But I cannot prove it. I can and have made many arguments about the reality of the Land. But I cannot discount the arguments Malik23 and others made that support non-reality.

Wayfriend once said that the question is moot, that neither side can be proven or disproven by the works, and that the question, although entertaining, doesnt really matter in the course of the story. I have to agree . (but I didnt really want to )

TC accepted the paradox of the Land, that is was both real and a dream. He did not resolve it. This is the intention of the Author. Take Hile for example. It would have been easy for TC to 'find' him or verify his existence in the real world. But , think on this, would it really prove anything? Linden is 'real' in both worlds, but it doesn't prove the reality of the Land, so why would the discovery that Hile is part of TC's Real World lend any support to either side?

SRD is purposefully ambigous, giving hints and clues that can support both sides. Remember, he always seeks to mislead us.

I have come to believe that it is the paradox of the Land that is critical to the story, not the reality or non-reality of the Land; for SRD to settle the issue would make the story less than it is.

but, like analyzing Hile's strategy or bemoaning Linden's actions, it is what we are here for.

[Nerdanel]

I finally got access to my books again, so here are a bunch of quotes for a fresh angle to the worn subject.

To his blurred gaze, the comrades of the company grew slowly harder and solider - took on the texture of native rock. And the mountain itself became increasingly adamantine. It seemed as immutable as the cornerstone of the world. He felt veils drop from his perception; he saw the unclouded fact of Gravin Threndor in all its unanswerable power. He paled beside it; his flesh grew thin, transient. Air as thick as smoke blew through him, chilling his bones.

...

Everything around him - Prothall and the company and the Ranyhin and the Fire-Lions and the mountain - became too solid for him. They overwhelmed his perceptions, passed beyond his senses into gray mist. He clutched about him and felt nothing. He could not see; the Land left the range of his eyes. It was too much for him, and he lost it.

This quote is extremely clear about the Land becoming too solid for Covenant, instead of fading away.

The concussion threw him on his face in the dirt. Blackness filled the remains of his sight as if it were flooding from the barren Howe.

... People moved, voices called back and forth. But Covenant could not hear them clearly. His ears were deluged by tumult, a yammering, multitudinous yell of glee. And the sound came closer. It became louder and more immediate until it overwhelmed his eardrums, passed beyond the range of physical perception and shrieked directly into his brain.

After that, voices reached him obscurely, registered somehow through his overdriven hearing.

Bannor said, "Rivenrock bursts. There will be a great flood."

Lord Callindrill said, "Some good will come out of it. It will do much to cleanse the Wightwarrens under Mount Thunder."

Lord Mhoram said, "Behold - the Unbeliever departs. The High Lord has fallen."

But these things surpassed him; he could not hold onto them. The black dirt of Gallows Howe loomed in his face like an incarnation of midnight. And around it, encompassing it, consuming both him and it, the fiendish scream scaled upward, filling his skull and chest and limbs as if it were grinding his very bones to powder.

Now I know that the sound merges into a telephone, but I think that's just a case of police car light/Drool's eyes, and unbearable loudness is attributable not to the telephone, but to the sound of Rivenrock's breaking becoming increasingly more real to Covenant (and not to his companions, who are able to hold a normal conversation). To support his notion, the black dirt seems to become increasingly blacker in concert.

The weight of mortality which entombed Covenant seemed to press him deeper and deeper into the obdurate stuff of the ground. He felt that he had given up breathing - that the rock and soil through which he sank sealed him from all respiration - but the lack of air gave him no distress; he had no more need for the sweaty labor of breathing. He was plunging irresistibly, motionlessly downward, like a man falling into his fate.

Around him, the black earth changed slowly to mist and cold. It lost none of its solidity, none of its airless weight, but its substance altered, becoming by gradual increments a pitch-dark fog as massive and unanswerable as the pith of granite. With it, the cold increased. Cold and winter and mist wound about him like cerements.

He had no sense of duration, but at some point he became aware of a chill breeze in the mist. It eased some of the pressure on him, loosened his cerements. Then an abrupt rift appeared some distance away. Through the gap, he saw a fathomless night sky, unredeemed by any stars.

...

Now the cold stiffened under him, so that he felt he was descending on a slab, with the breeze blowing over him.

Once again, the air of the Land appears more solid the farther away we are from being there.

But the fire had a voice. At first, it was too loud to be understood. It reverberated in his ears like the crushing of boulders. He inhaled it with every failing breath; it echoed along the conflagration in his chest. But gradually it became clear.

Here the noise situation is seen in reverse.

I think all of these quotes point to the Land being more real than the so-called "real world". I think it's like in Zelazny's Amber novels, where Amber is the center of existence and Earth is merely one of its shadows. The time-flow differential occurs there too.

I think the destruction of the Land would mean the destruction of the "real world" too.

Spoiler

So if Linden managed to save Jeremiah and not the Land, she wouldn't have really saved Jeremiah.

And this is not even getting into multiple, tremendously unlikely and contrived delusions/supernatural phenomena (especially with the Last Chronicles) that are needed to explain the intricacies of the plot without the reality of the Land. Remember: the combined probability of a series of events is multiplicative, not additive.

[Penner Theologius Pott]

My first topic here guys... I was just wondering how many here actually think that the Land is real and How many think that it is just a dream?

Reasons concerning Gilden-fire are out since it wasn't really included in the actual chronicles....

Before you use Hile Troy, think about the fact that Covenant never really talked to him in the "real" world. And just because the Department of Defense could not find him does not mean that he didn't really exist.. It is the Government after all...

I'm reminded of an essay by Bill Waterson (creator of the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes") in which he mentioned his battle to prevent merchandising for his creation, fearful that it would "settle the issue of Hobbes' reality for children once and for all." The nature of Hobbes is simple, he explained: Calvin sees him one way, everybody else sees him another way. This doesn't mean that either perspective is necessarily incorrect.

I'm also reminded of the following passage from "The Tao is Silent", by Raymond Smullyan:

"At all costs, the Christian must convince the heathen and the atheist that God exists, in order to save his soul. At all costs, the atheist must convince the Christian that the believe in God is but a childish and primitive superstition, doing enormous harm to the cause of true social progress. And so they battle and storm and bang away at each other. Meanwhile, the Taoist Sage sits quietly by the stream, perhaps with a book of poems, a cup of wine, and some painting materials, enjoying the Tao to his hearts content, without ever worrying whether or not the Tao exists. The Sage has no need to affirm the Tao; he is far too busy enjoying it!"