Thought about power

[SGuilfoyle1966]

If this shows up somehwer,e I had some weird thing happen.

Anyway, I saw the random quote of the day on the front page, and it generated a couple of random thoughts.

(The One Tree, Chapter 22, "Also love in the world")

"You're afraid of yourself."

For a moment, he frowned as if he were on the edge of retorting, You mean if I were arrogant or inexperienced or maybe just stupid enough, there wouldn't be anything to be afraid of? But then his shoulders sagged. "I know," he murmured. "The more power I get, the more helpless I feel. It's never enough. Or it's the wrong kind. Or it can't be controlled. It terrifies me."

In the One Tree, Covenant is searching for the RIGHT kind of power. Searching for ENOUGH power. Even as he is afraid of it.

But what power? It is stated explicitly at one point, either toward the end of One Tree or in WGW, but I'll jump back to the original series to see where perhaps the idea might have germinated.

When Foamfollower is thinking about "hope."

He puts it another way? "What use is power, if it is not power over death?"

In the end, all power is transitory, unless it is power over death.

Oh yeah, where it was stated explicitly was in WGW. In Andelain. Covenant was hoping that the breaking of the Law of Life might have some way to redeem him from his loss of life IN THE REAL WORLD.

What do we get at the end of Fatal Revenant?

Well, what use is power unless it is power over death?

Linden has wielded enough POWER to bring Covenant back to life.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

She has surpassed Covenant, for one thing.

Just a couple of thoughts. Whatcha think?

[dlbpharmd]

Very interesting. Where is the quote from Foamfollower located?

[iQuestor]

When Foamfollower is thinking about "hope."

That was at Man-Home when the ranyhyn reared to Covenant. I remember that Foamfollower said something like:

Does it surprise you then that I have been thinking about hope"

[amanibhavam]

Funny, I thought FF said this in TPTP, when they are walking towards Ridjeck Thome.

[iQuestor]

I could be wrong. dammit. now I have to look it up.

[wayfriend]

As the Lord walked away to ready the company, Foamfollower said, "My friend, there is hope for you."

"Forsooth," Covenant sneered. "Giant, if I were as big and strong as you, there would always be hope for me."

"Why? Do you believe that hope is a child of strength?"

"Isn't it? Where do you get hope if you don't get it from power? If I'm wrong - by hell! There's a lot of lepers running around the world confused."

"How is power judged?" Foamfollower asked with a seriousness Covenant had not expected.

"What?"

"I do not like the way in which you speak of lepers. Where is the value of strength if your enemy is stronger?"

"You assume there is some kind of enemy. I think that's a little too easy. I would like nothing better than to blame it on someone else - some enemy who afflicted me. But that's just another kind of suicide. Abdicate the responsibility to keep myself alive."

"Ah, alive," Foamfollower countered. "No, consider further, Covenant. What value has power at all if it is not power over death? If you place hope on anything less, then your hope may mislead you."

"So?"

"But the power over death is a delusion. There cannot be life without death."

Covenant recognized that this was a fact. But he had not expected such an argument from the Giant. It made him want to get out of the cave into the sunlight. "Foamfollower," he muttered, climbing out of his bed, "you've been thinking again."

[amanibhavam]

I was referring to another conversation between TC and FF, where FF says that "does it then surprise you that I've been thinking about hope" retort. I think that is in TPTP.

[wayfriend]

It's the same conversation, about a page further along. The morning after Covenant summoned the Ranyhyn.

[Fist and Faith]

"If the wild magic may not be called up by the simple decision of use, then I do not understand it at all." - Saltheart Foamfollower

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"Can it be used to defeat the Despiser?"
"Power is power. Its uses are in the hands of the user."
"Amok," Amatin said, then hesitated. She seemed almost afraid of her next question. But she clenched her resolve, and spoke it. "Does the Seventh Ward contain knowledge of the Ritual of Desecration?"
"Lord, Desecration requires no knowledge. It comes freely to any willing hand."
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"The Seventh Ward may ignore white gold, and the master of white gold may have no use for the Seventh Ward - yet both are power, forms and faces of the one Power of life." - Amok
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"White gold is brought into use like any other power - through passion and mystery, the honest subterfuge of the heart." - Amok
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"Thus it is known to you that the bestowal of our gifts is not done freely. We possess much which is greatly perilous, not to be given without care. And knowledge or power which is not truly purchased swiftly tarnishes. If it does not turn against the hand that holds it, it loses all value whatsoever." - Infelice, Queen of the Elohim
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"Sun-Sage. I see this venom of which you speak. It is plain in him – as is the wrong which you name leprosy. But we have no unction for this hurt. It is power – apt for good or ill – and too deeply entwined in his being for any disentanglement. Would you have us rip out the roots of his life? Power is life, and for him its roots are venom and leprosy. The price of such aid would be the loss of all power forever." - Infelice
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"Sun-Sage, this thing which you name Earthpower is our Würd. You believe it to be a thing of suzerain might. In sooth, your belief is just. But have you come so far across the Earth without comprehending the helplessness of power? We are what we are - and what we are not, we can never become. He whom you name the Despiser is a being of another kind entirely. We are effectless against him. That is our Würd." - Infelice
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"Is that more of your pitch? How do you make it?"

At that, he laughed, and his mirth came more easily. "Yes, Chosen. In all good sooth, this is my pitch. The vat is formed of dolomite, that it may not be fused as would the stone of Starfare's Gem. But as to the making of pitch - ah, that it skills nothing for me to relate. You are neither Giant nor wiver. And the power of pitch arises as does any other, from the essence of the adept who wields it. All power is an articulation of its wielder. There is no other source than life - and the desire of that life to express itself. But there must also be a means of articulation. I can say little but that this pitch is my chosen means. Having said that, I have left you scarce wiser than before."

Linden shrugged away his disclaimer. "Then what you're saying," she murmured slowly, "is that the power of wild magic comes from Covenant himself? The ring is just his - his means of articulation?"

He nodded. "I believe that to be sooth. But the means controls intimately the nature of what may be expressed. By my pitch I may accomplish nothing for the knitting of broken limbs, just as no theurgy of the flesh may seal stone as I do."

(and moments later)


"Be not so hasty in your appraisal of these Elohim. They are who they are - a high and curious people - and their might is matched and conflicted and saddened by their limitations."
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"You have seen that I possess an ocular of gold. Purest gold - a rare and puissant metal in such hands as mine. With such aids, my arts work great wonders, of which Sandgorgons Doom is not the greatest. But my arts are also pure, as a circle is pure, and in a flawed world purity cannot endure. Thus within each of my works I must perforce place one small flaw, else there would be no work at all." - Kasreyn of the Gyre
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Linden roused herself to ask, "They why are they so cryptic? They haven't given you anything except hints and mystification. Why don't they come right out and tell you what you need to know?"

"Ah, that is plain to me," Pitchwife replied on Covenant's behalf. "Unearned knowledge is perilous. Only by the seeking and gaining of it may its uses be understood, its true worth measured. Had Gossamer Glowlimn my wife been mystically granted the skill and power of her blade without training or test or experience, by what means could she then choose where to strike her blows, how extremely to put forth her strength? Unearned knowledge rules its wielder, to the cost of both."

[SGuilfoyle1966]

That goes a lot farther than I intended. Interesting.

[Fist and Faith]

Sorry. Can't help myself.

[SGuilfoyle1966]

Having just finished FR, with a much more thorough reading than the first time, I think I want to also throw into this discussion what happens before Linden does what she does.
The Old High Lords appear.
Loric, creator of the krill, has an approving smile on his face. And they make it pretty clear the Dead have SOME idea what Linden is up to.
And I'm trying to be a bit socratic here, provoke thoughts along a line of discussion, but I'm having to go in whole hog here.
What use is power, Foamfollower asks, if it is not power over death?
And we see that with the wild magic, krill and Law, Linden overcomes Death, for Thomas Covenant.
In the Land.
But what power, what hope was TC holding out for in White Gold Wielder?
When Sunder has slain Caer-Caveral and bent the Law of Life, Covenant holds out a brief, flirting hope that he can perhaps overcome death.
In the REAL WORLD.
So it prompts the question again, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"
Has she surpassed Covenant, in the Land? Undoubtedly. But does that have implications for the real world.
Someone quoted Donaldson as saying the book must be told from the point of view of a character WHO SURVIVES the story.
And Linden keeps telling us she is dead in the real world.
SRD has also said this is the final chronicles of TC. So it's a safe bet that we'll get some of his POV.

[Endymion9]

Being a sentimentalist, I always expected TC to somehow survive in the real world and him and LA to ride off into the happily ever after sunset at the end of WGW.

Then when that didn't happen and I heard of the Last Chronicles expected to find that somehow TC and LA's affair in the Land had translated to the real world and she would have TCs baby. And that the Last Chronicles would be his adventures in the land 30 years later.

It is hard to imagine SRD going with the happily ever after ending of TC/LA surviving in the real world and being together.

[SGuilfoyle1966]

Being a sentimentalist, I always expected TC to somehow survive in the real world and him and LA to ride off into the happily ever after sunset at the end of WGW.

Then when that didn't happen and I heard of the Last Chronicles expected to find that somehow TC and LA's affair in the Land had translated to the real world and she would have TCs baby. And that the Last Chronicles would be his adventures in the land 30 years later.

It is hard to imagine SRD going with the happily ever after ending of TC/LA surviving in the real world and being together.

I don't think I expected Covenant to survive the second Chronicles. I wasn't surprised by that, let's say. he has such a knack for surprises, but he's so dark. Why not throw us for a REAL loop?

But I'm not talking about this in terms of a happy ending, per se. Just that it would be a BIG surprise.

Big surprise when I read the plot description before reading Runes and saw that Linden had a son. I knew that the Creator had offered to "save" Covenant in the real world, beyond just giving him life. But if he was somehow to preserve a little bit of T.C. after WGW, he should have shown up?

What would happen, I wonder, if they "did" it enough in the land to get her pregnant there, but she was translated back. Jeremiah was a surprise in that he was adopted, then in WHO he was in Wounded Land. Nothing gets wasted by SRD.

If Covenant could somehow survive in the real world after this, it wouldn't be all pleasant. He'd probably have to move away. But then, there can't be much of Haven farm left, right?

[ninjaboy]

As far as resurrecting people in the Real world.. No. Even if TC's body was revived there is no way he could survive - especially as he's be in a wooden box beneath the ground.
The idea that his mind would 'awaken' in the body of someone else.. Anyone watched Being John Malkovich??? - So many dilemmas with that - esp. as that would definately end the conscious life of the person whose body he wakes up in..

SD said that generally, when you chose characters to write perspectives of, the guidelines are to go for 1) Stories should be told from the POV of the person who has the most at stake. 2) Stories should be told from the POV of the person who serves as the best surrogate for the reader, either because the character needs to know the same things the reader needs to know, or because the character can tell the reader the things the reader needs to know. 3) Stories should be told from the POV of someone who *survives* the story. By all three standards, Linden's role as a POV character is, has been, and will continue to be essential.

So my interpretation of that doesn't make me convinced that anyone is going to survive these Chronichles..

[Cshaw71]

No one can really believe the Last Chronicals are going to end with warm fuzzies. Think about the names of the final two books.

Against All Things Ending
The Last Dark

Doesn't actually make you think of a ride into the sunset ending. Besides SRD isn't capable of an ending like that.

Roger, Joan, Jeremy, Covenant, and Linden all come back to the real world and all live happily ever after

[Relayer]

Doesn't actually make you think of a ride into the sunset ending. Besides SRD isn't capable of an ending like that.

Actually, he is capable of it... but he's already done it once

[wayfriend]

If there is any one thing that I am sure of -- that I believe with a religous fanatic obstinacy -- it's that the Final C's will end with a triumph. And it'll be a bigger one than the previous two.

In the Second Cs, Covenant died -- but he triumphed. In the Final Cs, the Land will end -- but he'll triumph.

The fun is not knowing how he'll do it. We only know that it's rediculously complicated and hard to write.

[Cshaw71]

I have never been successful in determining the outcome of SRD's books. He is the King of twist and turn.

[Seppi2112]

The beauty is that he tells you exactly what is going to happen, but he does so in such subtle ways that you don't even realize until a re-read.