Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:13 pm
Covenant Jr said unto me:
First, I shall disclaim: I've read with interest all the admirable posts treating of Troy's military strategy, but they're outside my field, and I can't argue for Troy on that ground. I think it's evident Troy made blunders; I maintain that they were understandable, forgiveable, even meritorious blunders, and leave it at that.
But as to berkhood: NOT, and here's why.
A berk is a static being. A berk is frozen forever in berkdom, like an insect in amber, but Hile Troy never stopped evolving. He starts out as an uncertain, blind stranger in the Land, and boom, suddenly he's Warmark. Almost as suddenly, he's a tree stump. When next we see him, he's a collection of helpful green gleams. By the time of the Second Chronicles, he has assumed a human appearance again, but is unquestionably a being of awesome and uncanny power. And he passes from the story as a tree stump once more, immolated in a last act of heroic self-donation.
You may say: Hold! Okay, that's a lot of changes, but most of what you cite was Caer-Caveral being cool, and nobody is debating the coolness of Caer-Caveral. But I submit that Hile Troy and Caer-Caveral are the same being. Many of Hile Troy's defining traits lived on in Caer-Caveral. Troy's dogged subbornness kept him at his post in Andelain long after his master Caerroil Wildwood handed in his lunch pail and passed away. Troy's human heart remained vulnerable to Andelain's plight, and he loved it with a poignant, mortal love. And it was Troy, in the end, who appealed to Thomas Covenant, man to man, when a Forestal's power would have been helpless to compell him.
Ultimately, Troy's story is a tale of spiritual evolution: sad and lovely with all the poignance of the soul's journey. Yes, Hile Troy started off as a proud man with too much faith in his own smarts. But that's the glory of it. He was humbled by adversity, and it made him stronger. He fell and he rose. He learned, and he persevered. He stood alone on the burning deck, when all about him fled -- and that is not berkiness, I say, but the very definition of Tragic Woobiehood.
Bold, impulsive, generous, brave and resourceful, Hile Troy could easily have been victorious as Warmark if the cards of Despite had not been stacked so overwhelmingly against him. I note that when people slag off Hile Troy they rarely mention how the Lords kept the whole summoning story under wraps, or how he reacted when he discovered the ugly truth. "As far as you know, I'm just a substitute." Troy grasped the implications of Atarian's tainted summoning, but at that point the momentum of the war was irreversible and he very creditably carried on as he had begun, for to do otherwise would have not only been craven but nonsensical.
And so the inexorable tide of tragedy swept him forward, as it swept all the characters forward, and ultimately Troy paid the noble price of his human fallibility on Gallow's Howe. Whatever his sins of omission, arrogance or faulty planning, he fully expiated them with his desperate offer to Caerroil Wildwood: he fell, but he had fought for his adopted Land with all the flawed tools at his disposal, and his faithfulness bore fruit for millennia to follow.
A berk? Oh, say not so. Say, rather: a woobie for the ages, and a hero of shining parts.
Many thanks! At long last, my deranged love shall be heard!TOPIC BUMP for that deranged Troy-lover jwaneeta.
First, I shall disclaim: I've read with interest all the admirable posts treating of Troy's military strategy, but they're outside my field, and I can't argue for Troy on that ground. I think it's evident Troy made blunders; I maintain that they were understandable, forgiveable, even meritorious blunders, and leave it at that.
But as to berkhood: NOT, and here's why.
A berk is a static being. A berk is frozen forever in berkdom, like an insect in amber, but Hile Troy never stopped evolving. He starts out as an uncertain, blind stranger in the Land, and boom, suddenly he's Warmark. Almost as suddenly, he's a tree stump. When next we see him, he's a collection of helpful green gleams. By the time of the Second Chronicles, he has assumed a human appearance again, but is unquestionably a being of awesome and uncanny power. And he passes from the story as a tree stump once more, immolated in a last act of heroic self-donation.
You may say: Hold! Okay, that's a lot of changes, but most of what you cite was Caer-Caveral being cool, and nobody is debating the coolness of Caer-Caveral. But I submit that Hile Troy and Caer-Caveral are the same being. Many of Hile Troy's defining traits lived on in Caer-Caveral. Troy's dogged subbornness kept him at his post in Andelain long after his master Caerroil Wildwood handed in his lunch pail and passed away. Troy's human heart remained vulnerable to Andelain's plight, and he loved it with a poignant, mortal love. And it was Troy, in the end, who appealed to Thomas Covenant, man to man, when a Forestal's power would have been helpless to compell him.
Ultimately, Troy's story is a tale of spiritual evolution: sad and lovely with all the poignance of the soul's journey. Yes, Hile Troy started off as a proud man with too much faith in his own smarts. But that's the glory of it. He was humbled by adversity, and it made him stronger. He fell and he rose. He learned, and he persevered. He stood alone on the burning deck, when all about him fled -- and that is not berkiness, I say, but the very definition of Tragic Woobiehood.
Bold, impulsive, generous, brave and resourceful, Hile Troy could easily have been victorious as Warmark if the cards of Despite had not been stacked so overwhelmingly against him. I note that when people slag off Hile Troy they rarely mention how the Lords kept the whole summoning story under wraps, or how he reacted when he discovered the ugly truth. "As far as you know, I'm just a substitute." Troy grasped the implications of Atarian's tainted summoning, but at that point the momentum of the war was irreversible and he very creditably carried on as he had begun, for to do otherwise would have not only been craven but nonsensical.
And so the inexorable tide of tragedy swept him forward, as it swept all the characters forward, and ultimately Troy paid the noble price of his human fallibility on Gallow's Howe. Whatever his sins of omission, arrogance or faulty planning, he fully expiated them with his desperate offer to Caerroil Wildwood: he fell, but he had fought for his adopted Land with all the flawed tools at his disposal, and his faithfulness bore fruit for millennia to follow.
A berk? Oh, say not so. Say, rather: a woobie for the ages, and a hero of shining parts.
)
I thought I was alone in the world.
