Kevin's Watch

I don't think the point is to justify the rape of Lena. It simply isn't justifiable.

I do think, however, that it is easily explainable. Convenant starts out physically (and mentally) impotent, in an unendurable amount of emotional pain, which he survives by pushing it all down into a contained rage.

When he meets Lena in his "dream" she, the Land, and his sudden health are a taunting cruelty. When his nerves suddenly heal, and his long denied potence washes over him, it's too much. He rapes Lena in an act of denial, desperation, rage, and a desire to create an external shame to match the internal shame he has barely let himself feel since he became a leper.

Again, the act doesn't have to be justified. Even the atonements Covenant later pushes himself through can't do that.

But the rape provides the justification for all of Covenant's actions after it. Think about it - how else could a man be motivated to save a Land he can't afford to believe is real? The amount of shame he feels about Lena keeps prodding him forward, just in case he's wrong, and the Land IS real, even as it makes it even more important that the reality of the Land - and the rape - be denied.

Plissken, I do have to agree with you, the more i have thought about it, I didn't want to justify it, i just wanted to understand it. What you have said is almost verbatim of what Edge had to say, all i can do is read on.

Here is my personal view on the rape of Lena:

Thomas lives in a real world in which he is impotent...not just in a sexual way but socially and professionally. When he reaches the Land he begins to feel "alive" which is totally against everything he has learned in the leprosarium. He is overcome with the passion of life and ends up violating an innocent. He is immediately shamed by the act, not only because of it's violence but because of what it means to him as a leper. As a leper his whole universe is concerned with personal preservation, anything other than that equals death.

Lorelei, that is hands down the best explaiation I've heard.

I was always impressed with how realistic the supression of thought that Thomas had was... he totally put it out of his mind, and it exploded back into it when he was with the Ramen, which led to the calling of the Ranyhyn. What a scene that was.