Leper's End:
Alas dear Foamy! Within the echoes of beautiful Giantish laughter the Sunbirth Sea meets Hotash Slay and Ridjeck Thome crashes down on the Pure One. In a monsterous gout of steam and wild magic Thomas Covenant realizes it was Saltheart's choice alone to remain and is unable, at last, to add another major piece of quilt to his collection...
Completely exhausted and obliterated Covenant lays in "a grave of oblivion" ready to die.**Yet something obdurate argued with him. That wasn't your fault, it said. You couldn't make his decisions for him. Beyond a certian point, this responsibility of yours is only a more complex form of suicide.
**He acknowledged the argument. He knew from experience that lepers were doomed as soon as they began to feel they were to blame for contracting leprosy, were responsible for being ill. Perhaps quilt and mortality, physical limitation, were the same thing in the end--facts of life, useless to protest.
What is this other innocence the Creator speaks of? Without his consent Thomas Covenant is cast into the Land and in the end finally redeems it. But the Creator could not interfere, could not shape Covenant into his tool against his Enemy. Covenant has had to shape himself, albiet VERY unwillingly, and conquer his despair in order to discover his own freedom and independence and allegiance to confront and overcome despite.**"Then take peace in your other innocence," said a voice out of the darkness. "You did not choose this task. You did not undertake it of your own free will. It was thrust upon you. Blame belongs to the chooser, and this choice was made by one who elected you without your knowledge or consent."
There ensues a mindbending thesis on creationism and the emotion of despair that we can discuss endlessly, perhaps. Capped by such fantastic quotes as:
I realize I'm greatly simplifying here, but the analysis of this short debate is, really, what the entire series is all about. I cannot do it alone, it could take the group many posts to dissect these matters to any justice. I am dying for your contributions, so forgive me if the rest of this rendering sounds oversimplified and trite--there is no way to make this short, but..."...It is the habit of despair which damns, not the despair itself. You were a man already acquainted with habit and despair--with the Law that both saves and damns. Your knowledge of your illness made you wise.",
"...You had already tasted the way in which a creator may be impotent to heal his own creation, It is ofttimes this impotence which teaches a creation to despair."
(and)
"God and creators are too powerful for despair."
The Creator wishes to reward Covenant, somehow, for his efforts. It breaks my heart that his only request is to save Foamfollower, something the Creator is helpless to do. The Creator offers to let him live out a full and healthy life in the Land, which Covenant declines. He offers to teach him to remember his experiences in the Land as real, which he refuses on the grounds of insanity. Finally the Creator offers him life in his own world.
Apparently the parents of the snakebitten girl have realized the enormity of Thomas Covenant's unselfish rescue and have rushed him to the hospital. The doctors there are unaware of his allergic reaction to anti venom and he is on the brink of death. Covenant declines to die that way and the Creator restores him to life on our Earth. But before he returns the Creator shows him a celebration at Glimmermere where High Lord Mhoram praises him for saving the Land and casts the krill of Loric into the unreflecting waters while proclaiming,
The rioting and routing of Foul's armies have shown the people of Revelstone that Foul has been defeated and the krill has told Mhoram that Covenant has left the Land. As if a miracle has occured on Easter, Thomas Covenant returns to our world....from this day forth we will not devote ourselves to any Lore which precludes Peace. We will gain lore of our own--we will strive and quest and learn until we have found a lore in which the Oath of Peace and the preservation of the Land live together. Hear me, you people! We will serve Earthfriendship in a new way.
I have to say I always share Mhoram's tears especially in the fact, that after the aborted summoning at the beginning of The Power That Preserves, he never gets the chance to see his dear friend again. And there's one little tidbit that really blows my mind, I noted it in my first reading twenty years ago and didn't in my second two years ago: The antivenom/aminabhavam connection! TC has to be eating the aminabhavam at the same time the anti venom is being administered to him in our world! The anti venom for rattlesnake bites comes from horse blood, heck the two words almost sound the same. And both are killing him! Amazing! I know you can carry this arguement futher...
Sorry if I left out key parts or didn't go into stuff deeper than you'd like--but, obviously, it's murder trying to keep the conculsion even this short. I have no doubt that you'll be able to aptly fill in my gaping holes!
Thomas Covenant: Unbeliever.
Thank you SRD! Thank you!