Kevin's Watch

I found this tiny but interesting detail about Sheriff Lytton:

Typically he wore mirrored aviator sunglasses, but now they were shoved into the breat pocket of his khaki shirt opposite his badge.

As someone who thinks we are going to see quite a few things from the Land's past return (with a twist, of course), I think Sheriff Lytton will be our new Hile Troy. Those sunglasses sound remarkably like the ones Hile wore to hide his eyelessness. In fact I think we can say both men suffer from blindness and, going on a limb, that both are using sunglasses to hide it. In Lytton's case the blindness is metaphorical and the sunglasses may well be there to make him seem more "Sheriffy". Both men also weren't on the greatest terms with Thomas Covenant, or Linden Avery if they had met her.

He was a blunt, fleshy man with a gift of seeming bigger than he was. In fact, he stood no taller than Linden herself; yet he seemed to loom over her. No doubt that contributed to his incessant re-election: people thought of him as dominant, effective despite his real stature.

Hile Troy had received a training in warfare, even though he didn't make good use of it (as has been proved on the net). I wonder if Lytton is a Civil War buff or a Vietnam vet or something or if he's going to play by the ear and learn on the job. We know though that Lytton has both charisma (ability to get elected on a consistent basis) and courage (trying to talk sense into Roger the armed murderer). So had Hile Troy...

Anyway, I think Sheriff Lytton is a character with great potential, comedic and otherwise.

Wayfriend wrote:Maybe Linden was the only one summoned. Everyone assumes Jeremiah was also summoned, but, despite the last page of Runes, this is an arguable issue. It's very unclear if Joan was, or is, in the Land. And Roger is as complete a mystery as Lytton or Sally.

It depends on if you trust Anele's reading of the Close. He spoke quite clearly of Roger and Joan when he read the stone, though I can't quite remember if he mentioned Jeremiah.

This should really be on the "name" thread but perhaps he's Sherriff "light on"

Well, SRD told us he's an efficient writer and he never creates anything more than he needs for his story... from this point of view, Sheriff Lytton dates all the way back to the First Chronicles, where he embodied the response of the "common people" to Covenant's plight - he was there to show us what Covenant had to go through every day of his life.

He was reprised in the Second Chronicles in a marginal role, but I think it could well be that his appearance in the Last Chronicles be needed for two reasons: first, because he is the reason why Joan, who had seemingly become sane after Covenant's sacrifice in the SC, went catatonic afterwards (nobody knows what Lytton told her in the car...). Second, because of course no one in his right mind deals with a murderer without at least calling for the police - even if the police arrives late, they can always catch the murderer.

It could well be that Lytton's presence in the LC is entirely justified by those two reasons. Arguably, a much stronger case would exist for Sally, since she is apparently fledged out quite nicely, which would not exactly fit SRD's "efficiency" as a writer if all she was supposed to do was to be Jeremiah's sitter for several pages in the first book and then die.

I have a feeling that both Sandy and Lytton are in the Land and we will meet them eventually. I think it potentially very significant that Lytton stepped through the circle of lightnings that Lord Foul had erected to keep extra people at bay and/or Linden from escaping. Perhaps the circle marks the distance at which the summoning is operative.

(nobody knows what Lytton told her in the car...).

Actually, we do know, don't we?

Well, we don't know the exact argument.. we know the topics and what they said in general, but not the gruesome details