I read the chrons all the way through probably once every 2-3 years.( And, as an aside, it's amazing how much difference just a couple of years makes in your perceptions of this story. Does that ever stop? God I hope not!) But that has nothing to do with what I was going to say, which was this: The last time I read them, two things really struck me as they never had before. One was how fundamentally compassionate Covenant is, toward everyone but himself. He is a passionate man, and one of his greatest passions is the victimhood of others. He blindly (and endearingly) leaps to the defense of anyone he sees as helpless. He actually accuses
Mhoram of torturing Dhukka,
because Dhukka's pain cried out so loudly to him that logic fled, and he became angry at the nearest and therefore most likely source of the creature's torment. Over and over, you see him bleed for anyone and everyone he meets that suffers because he is powerless to help them. Funny. The first time I read the books, (when I was 14) I came away with the impression that Covenant was kind of an emotionless bastard when it came to anyone's circumstances but his own.
Now I see that he is exactly the opposite. His heart breaks
every time there is some innocent bystander he can't save.
He bleeds. And his compassion is far reaching. It's breadth covers everyone from the murdered children at Soaring Woodhelvin, to the very ur-viles that killed them. From poor lost Lena, to mad Pietten. We see this even in his own world, when first he offers the beggar his wedding ring, all that remains of his former self:
It was an icon of himself. It reminded him of where he had been and where he was - of promises made and broken, companionship lost, helplessness - and of his vestigial humanity.
And he gives it to a stranger on the street!
And then, even that's not enough for him. He offers the man even more:
"Look, is there anything I can do for you? Food? a place to stay? You can have what I've got."
Okay. I'll stop there. I said there were two things, so I better be gettin' on to my other point, if I have one.
The other thing that struck me is kind of tangential to the compassion thing. I was amazed this time, at how I never realized how physically, foolishly, straight up
brave the crazy SOB can be. He has a bad habit of flinging himself into the midst of battle pretty much unarmed that somehow escaped me in previous readings. At Soaring, he jumps out of the pit into the middle of a hoard of ur-viles to defend the old Lords, armed with nothing but a knife. Sure, he has the ring, but what good is it to him at that point? He does the same at the Celebration of Spring. He attacks the Lurker of the Sarangrave single-handedly, just running at it and yelling at first. He leaps into
space with no idea how he plans to help Elena, only that he has to follow her if she is to have any hope. Mostly I'm referring to instances in the first trilogy, before he was able to use the Wild Magic on any kind of consistent basis. He doesn't know how to fight, he's a scrawny guy, and you would, given his general attitude, expect him to let others do his physical fighting for him. But he cannot just sit by and let innocent lives be lost, just because he doesn't know how to use his ring. Instead he leaps unarmed into the fray, seeking to protect by waving his arms and yelling, if that's all he can do. And then Bannor has to work like hell to save his silly, noble hide.
Hero? Fits the description in my book admirably.
umm....did I go off topic? I've been rambling so long I'm not sure what topic this is anymore.
BTW: In the revised edition of Stephen King's The Gunslinger, King makes reference to TCTC on the very first page of the introduction.
