breaking of the arch

[illender]

ok, a friend of mine who just finished the book was debating this with me. He seems to think that the arch was not in danger of being completely destroyed and that the worm basically just put a crack per say in it. He says only the world was going to be destroyed but time would remain. I interpreted that both the arch and time were going by by if tc and friends hadnt rebuilt as it was going. thoughts?

[DrPaul]

Yes, that's definitely my reading of it as well. In both the Second and Last Chronicles it is made very clear in numerous places that the destruction of the Arch of Time would mean an end to Time and the possibility of life.

[ussusimiel]

Like many others I'm waiting for wayfriend's final update on his previous thread: Reading Runes: A Tale of Two Cosmologies.

In the mean time, just a couple points:

• - I used to think that the Worm and the Arch were separate, but in TLD it seems clear that they are intimately connected. This leaves my brain in a twisted knot when I try to think about it (wayfriend, help! ) as I no longer have a cosmos within which to fit the world of the Land, the stars etc.
  
  - After the Worm drinks Earthblood and begins to break free of the world, Time and the Arch both start to disintegrate. It's as if the Worm itself is also the Arch and its presence is absolutely essential to the existence of the world (it is a creation myth made real after all! ).

As I'm contemplating this now I am coming to realise that there is a sort of steady contraction of the cosmos of the world of the Land, to the point in TLD where it becomes possible for the three new Creators to remake the world from within their own selves. This would maybe fit with SRD's more allegorical intentions (see TheFallen's thread: TLD. Fusing the psychological alloy - an allegory unravelled) that seemed to have become more overt as The Last Chrons reached its climax.

u.

[lurch]

..At one level ,,it all works..The Arch of Time is TCoTC.

Fascinating how the author plays with Time, all the way to the end. The past, present and future blur as the mountain around them reduces to rubble. It is " NOW" that they rise to glory. With the complete blur of Time and Space , there is nothing left to be taken literally .

The TCoTC are over,fini...Now,,its our turn to live the message.

[SGuilfoyle1966]

I am thinking that this is one big issue I have with the resolution. We have been told that the Worm was going to destroy the world, if roused, from the time of the One Tree at least. It was roused, fed, went unopposed, but the world survived.

[lurch]

I am thinking that this is one big issue I have with the resolution. We have been told that the Worm was going to destroy the world, if roused, from the time of the One Tree at least. It was roused, fed, went unopposed, but the world survived.

That suggests that some one or thing was full of it..Infelice ,the Elohim seemed hook line and sinker on the chicken little act..The Worm, Jeremiah, Linden etc..InFelice saw doom and gloom in all of them...So,,these elite, the comfortably Ideal and Pure,,can be full of pretense, just as any other . Yea, the Elohim seem to have got it all wrong..and to give them some credit, Infelice kinda admits to it at end....imho...

[SkurjMaster]

I am thinking that this is one big issue I have with the resolution. We have been told that the Worm was going to destroy the world, if roused, from the time of the One Tree at least. It was roused, fed, went unopposed, but the world survived.

That suggests that some one or thing was full of it..Infelice ,the Elohim seemed hook line and sinker on the chicken little act..The Worm, Jeremiah, Linden etc..InFelice saw doom and gloom in all of them...So,,these elite, the comfortably Ideal and Pure,,can be full of pretense, just as any other . Yea, the Elohim seem to have got it all wrong..and to give them some credit, Infelice kinda admits to it at end....imho...

See. This is where I have problems with the LC and this is what contributes to the LC sometimes looking like a hodgepodge of just-in-time literary choices. A sometimes inorganic contrivance of someone who let the story get away from them and could not come up with a satisfactory conclusion. If you are going to be consistent, then these types of things (i.e. your characters being seen as being full of it) don't happen, unless being wrong is integral to the story. Especially a set of characters like the Elohim.

[lurch]

..Being wrong is integral to the story......TC raped Lena cuz he didn't believe what he felt was real or had any consequence..etc..thats just for starters. Wrong?..just about everything leading up to the ghastly hollow scene is wrong..the first half of Fatal is all about wrongness..illusion..lies..

The deal is tho..the wrongness may not be exactly as you have in mind..As Donaldson likes to put it..' our weaknesses, make us stronger..' ..being wrong, eventually makes us right, and that includes , all the way down to our imagination and creativity. If it doesn't stick, no big deal, let it go and try something else you may find interesting. ..

The wrong of the Elohim is..their self perceived perfection,,their kno-it-all superiority. I can not say I have ever Liked the Elohim and Infelice was intentionally made to be a focus of all the wrong things about the Elohim...imho.. They believed their own BS.

Perfection is death. One stops exploring when one believes Perfection has been achieved. That is what was wrong with the Enlightenment. Those of the Times thought their poop didn't stink, they had achieved some sort of Enlightened Perfection. Nice try, but wrong. The Elohim are the embodiment or metaphor of Pretense..putting forth BS as the Truth..

Wrong? yea..anti-hero = wrong. Am I right?..I mean, you can't have redemption without a wrong...yes? The Last Chrons are based on Linden having it all wrong. Her life was that of un-reciprocated Love..

Hodge podge jit choices..yeeeeaaaa..I can understand that perception but disagree with it. I've said it over and over,,the message is in the metaphor..A consequence of that,,and its not just Donaldson's work here, but a trait of a lot of Surreal works..is at the plot level, things seem " disconnected" or hodge podge.. Alls I can say is,,you have to go to where the message is..in the metaphor(s) and there you may find a connectivity. Plot becomes secondary to the Metaphor. I reference the TV show LOST in comparisons to the LC..Lost use to drive some fans crazy with it " hodge podge"...and just like some of the most classical Surreal works,,really didn't tie things together until the very end..a classic Andre Breton " gimmick"..or way of establishing a ..State of Mind...rather than a nice linear plot.

The Hodge Podge sensation you got is intentional. ..imho.. Linear progression is built on the preceding and I don't believe Donaldson respected linear Time, linear progression and even linear thought in LC, and by the time he got to TLD..the dislocating, uncomfortable, bewildering, juxtaposition of the in-congruent,,was at the surface of the story. Its on purpose. The intent is to push you out of the comfort zone and open your mind to another way of perceiving and " thinking"..One example mite be..spherical rather than linear. Another,,intuition and instinct rather than logic and reason..

So,,if you got a Hodge Podge sensation out of LC and TLD...thats a good thing. theres nothing wrong with that..imho.....embrace it.

[Zarathustra]

I agree that mistakes are a big theme of the story, but I don't think we can resolve this just by chalking it up to Elohim mistake. If that were the case, then it does feel like mere author contrivance and misleading the audience, rather than character development of the Elohim. After all, where did they confront this mistake? What did they learn from it? What was its worth, other than creating tension for readers?

However, I don't think we have to go this direction to answer these questions. The way I read it, the Arch was in flux--breaking but perhaps not entirely broken. And the world itself was destroyed, but put back together nearly as fast as it was destroyed. TC/JA/LA were picking up the pieces, reassembling them as the Worm did its thing. Or perhaps the Arch was broken, and it was that breaking that enabled causality to be suspended, and entropy reversed.

If the destruction had been stressed more in the story, and not sacrificed for the sake of the recreation, then perhaps it would have cleared up some of this confusion. I think the Worm was indeed a real threat, but it was one our protagonists were able to overcome.

[SGuilfoyle1966]

I am thinking that this is one big issue I have with the resolution. We have been told that the Worm was going to destroy the world, if roused, from the time of the One Tree at least. It was roused, fed, went unopposed, but the world survived.

That suggests that some one or thing was full of it..Infelice ,the Elohim seemed hook line and sinker on the chicken little act..The Worm, Jeremiah, Linden etc..InFelice saw doom and gloom in all of them...So,,these elite, the comfortably Ideal and Pure,,can be full of pretense, just as any other . Yea, the Elohim seem to have got it all wrong..and to give them some credit, Infelice kinda admits to it at end....imho...

See. This is where I have problems with the LC and this is what contributes to the LC sometimes looking like a hodgepodge of just-in-time literary choices. A sometimes inorganic contrivance of someone who let the story get away from them and could not come up with a satisfactory conclusion. If you are going to be consistent, then these types of things (i.e. your characters being seen as being full of it) don't happen, unless being wrong is integral to the story. Especially a set of characters like the Elohim.

In the case of the Elohim, in the Chronicles of thomas Covenant, it is not a new thing for the Elohim to be full of it. Was there ever a more full of it character than Findail? But I take your point.

[SGuilfoyle1966]

..Being wrong is integral to the story......TC raped Lena cuz he didn't believe what he felt was real or had any consequence..etc..thats just for starters. Wrong?..just about everything leading up to the ghastly hollow scene is wrong..the first half of Fatal is all about wrongness..illusion..lies..

The deal is tho..the wrongness may not be exactly as you have in mind..As Donaldson likes to put it..' our weaknesses, make us stronger..' ..being wrong, eventually makes us right, and that includes , all the way down to our imagination and creativity. If it doesn't stick, no big deal, let it go and try something else you may find interesting. ..

The wrong of the Elohim is..their self perceived perfection,,their kno-it-all superiority. I can not say I have ever Liked the Elohim and Infelice was intentionally made to be a focus of all the wrong things about the Elohim...imho.. They believed their own BS.

Perfection is death. One stops exploring when one believes Perfection has been achieved. That is what was wrong with the Enlightenment. Those of the Times thought their poop didn't stink, they had achieved some sort of Enlightened Perfection. Nice try, but wrong. The Elohim are the embodiment or metaphor of Pretense..putting forth BS as the Truth..

Wrong? yea..anti-hero = wrong. Am I right?..I mean, you can't have redemption without a wrong...yes? The Last Chrons are based on Linden having it all wrong. Her life was that of un-reciprocated Love..

Hodge podge jit choices..yeeeeaaaa..I can understand that perception but disagree with it. I've said it over and over,,the message is in the metaphor..A consequence of that,,and its not just Donaldson's work here, but a trait of a lot of Surreal works..is at the plot level, things seem " disconnected" or hodge podge.. Alls I can say is,,you have to go to where the message is..in the metaphor(s) and there you may find a connectivity. Plot becomes secondary to the Metaphor. I reference the TV show LOST in comparisons to the LC..Lost use to drive some fans crazy with it " hodge podge"...and just like some of the most classical Surreal works,,really didn't tie things together until the very end..a classic Andre Breton " gimmick"..or way of establishing a ..State of Mind...rather than a nice linear plot.

The Hodge Podge sensation you got is intentional. ..imho.. Linear progression is built on the preceding and I don't believe Donaldson respected linear Time, linear progression and even linear thought in LC, and by the time he got to TLD..the dislocating, uncomfortable, bewildering, juxtaposition of the in-congruent,,was at the surface of the story. Its on purpose. The intent is to push you out of the comfort zone and open your mind to another way of perceiving and " thinking"..One example mite be..spherical rather than linear. Another,,intuition and instinct rather than logic and reason..

So,,if you got a Hodge Podge sensation out of LC and TLD...thats a good thing. theres nothing wrong with that..imho.....embrace it.

I am sorry, but I can handle time travel in a story without causing the story to feel cluttered and a hodge podge. Not my term here, but a good one. No, as much as I have respected SRD over the years, this one wasn't up to his usual excellence.

[wayfriend]

I think we need to examine the premise, that the world wasn't destroyed, that the Arch wasn't destroyed.

One thing is certain, and that is that SWMNBN escaped the Earth and the Arch. She Who Must Not Be Named is gone. And that just isn't possible when the Arch is intact and whole. That's the premise of everything.

We also know that Foul might have fled. He had a chance to.

A moment later, the former Master whispered, “I do not comprehend, Timewarden. Time comes unbound. Soon it will unravel entirely. Why does Corruption remain?”

... The Despiser must have believed that he would still be able to claim Jeremiah before Time collapsed in on itself.

But Foul cannot escape if Time and the Arch haven't been destroyed.

What we have here, to my mind, is a world and an Arch and an Earth and Time all crumbling.

Instants were fraying. Moments bled into each other. Causes and sequences were becoming confused.

They have shattered .... but the pieces have not yet fallen from the place where they stood. It's like that one frame in a high-speed video where something has exploded but the pieces have not yet been scattered, and the basic shape is still present, although in tiny pieces. Destroying realities takes time...

Reality was coming undone around him ... Covenant felt the Earth’s foundations failing.

It's in this moment, when everything is shattered, but things still retain their basic shape for a fraction of time longer, when SWMNBN can escape. When Foul might have escaped. Through those cracks.

At this time, I believe all of the prophecies about the Worm, and about She, and all the promises of Foul, have all become true. The world was destroyed.

What happens next is that the Covenant Family does something with the pieces.

“This is our chance. We can’t stop what’s happening, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to save the Earth. I know that sounds impossible, but maybe it isn’t."

Using wild magic, times two, and Law, and with pure will, times three, they put all the pieces together again.

We don’t have to create an entire reality from scratch. We just have to put the pieces of this one back together.

What they did was less than building an entire world anew. But what the did was also far more than merely preventing All Things from Ending. They took the fragments of the world that was destroyed, and built a new world.

“If we follow the Worm—and if we pick up the pieces fast enough—and if we know where they belong—”

Perhaps the Arch and the world could be rebuilt from the fragments of their destruction.

Rebuilt. Built again. They create a new world which has been built from the fragments of the old -- a tired cliche, but here it's meant literally. But, importantly, the world is not repaired or healed, the destruction was not undone or mitigated. Built. With everything that a Creator does implied. Again.

Anway, I see here all the prophesies about the end of the world coming to pass here. There were no "mistakes" or errors in knowledge. Just the kind of ambiguity we are all fond of from this author. I also see Covenant embracing his Creator as well as his Despiser here, although

However, what I think is also very poignant is the final resolution of the dream/reality dichotomy. If you build a new world, from your heart and your guts and your thoughts and your desires ... how is it indistinguishable from your dreams?

And if Covenant created a world indistinguishable from his dreams ... and this creation spans all of time ... then is there really a distinction between building and re-building? Did Covenant in fact make the world into which Drool summoned him on that fateful day 20 years and 7000 years ago? Can solipsism yield a result that it was real and also his own dream, both?

[ussusimiel]

Thanks for weighing in, wayfriend (pun noted )!

Just one point: how come SWMNBN can escape the Arch without any problem, yet Foul seems to need something to survive during his escape (a white gold ring, or Jeremiah)?

u.

[Vraith]

Thanks for weighing in, wayfriend (pun noted )!

Just one point: how come SWMNBN can escape the Arch without any problem, yet Foul seems to need something to survive during his escape (a white gold ring, or Jeremiah)?

u.

LF doesn't NEED those things to survive...he WANTS them to punish the Creator [and ravage all possible realities] after he does escape.

[wayfriend]

... or perhaps the fact that the Earth/Arch wasn't TOTALLY destroyed allowed Her to escape unscathed.

[ussusimiel]

LF doesn't NEED those things to survive...he WANTS them to punish the Creator [and ravage all possible realities] after he does escape.

I understand that, but if he could have survived the breaking of the Arch and escaped why would he not choose to do that rather than be absorbed by TC?

u.

P.S. BTW, Vraith, is this your first TLD-related-post post-TLD-reading?

[wayfriend]

At the onset, he was gambling on grabbing Jeremiah. But once the forbidding was in place, he lost the option.

[Vraith]

LF doesn't NEED those things to survive...he WANTS them to punish the Creator [and ravage all possible realities] after he does escape.

I understand that, but if he could have survived the breaking of the Arch and escaped why would he not choose to do that rather than be absorbed by TC?

u.

P.S. BTW, Vraith, is this your first TLD-related-post post-TLD-reading?

To your p.s.---no, it is my second, or maybe third. I did one or two in one of peter's threads. But, they will be limited extremely. I wasn't going to do any, pretty much...but decided I will do those that are purely textual/factual. [if/when I run across one I'm interested in.]
But WF is right. LF took a risk due to his obsession, and missed his chance.

[OhYeah]

I am thinking that this is one big issue I have with the resolution. We have been told that the Worm was going to destroy the world, if roused, from the time of the One Tree at least. It was roused, fed, went unopposed, but the world survived.

That suggests that some one or thing was full of it..Infelice ,the Elohim seemed hook line and sinker on the chicken little act..The Worm, Jeremiah, Linden etc..InFelice saw doom and gloom in all of them...So,,these elite, the comfortably Ideal and Pure,,can be full of pretense, just as any other . Yea, the Elohim seem to have got it all wrong..and to give them some credit, Infelice kinda admits to it at end....imho...

The Elohim remind me of immortal super-models, male and female, not wanting anything to change. Why would they? Never aging, flying around, doing whatever they want. Not sure why The Insequent hate them so much.

The Elohim always getting all hyper if 'The Worm is Roused!' The Worm will drink the Earthblood! You name it, they envisioned it.

And you know what? When the worm drank his full of Skyweir, it didnt really seem to be that much of a big deal. Maybe it really wasnt.