Covenants life pre summoning,and the history of The Land

[Revenant]

But what are we to make of those juxtapositions, notwhitstanding SRD's GI?
Was the Land created totally independant of TC? Was the Land's world made with TC as substrate?
Was TC the best choice for the Creator as a champion for his World, or was he simply the only choice?
This reminds me of the exchange in the 2nd chapter of LFB:

TC: "We didn't make the world. All we have to do is live in it. We're all in the same boat -- one way or another."
Creator: "Did we not?"

"Did we not?", referring to "We didn't make the world." How literal should we take this?
Is Covenant talking to himself (like it was suggested somewhere else on this board)?

[wayfriend]

He flees-The scene on mount thunder I think is directly linked to the scene in the leprosarium where Covenant vomits at the sight/stench of the old Leper and decides to live.

Of course! The Fire Lions represent Covenant's vomit! Why didn't I see this before?
(Sorry, that was a 'had to'. I actually admired your post.)

Covenant's marriage to Joan needs to be here somewhere ... perhaps this is people coming to the Land. They start dismantling the One Forest ... Covenant is laying the groundwork for the eventual disintegration of his marriage ("Riding boots! Does my impotence surprise you?!") His divorce would then be the dessication of Doriendor Corishev.

[Sunbaneglasses]

Why are we never told what kind of novel Covenant had written? The description of his writing really intrigues me.

It was the act of pure CREATION which ignighted his imagination;and the warm spell of her pride and eagerness kept him burninglike a bolt of lightening,not for a second or for fraction of seconds,but for five months in one wild discharge of energy that seemed to CREATE the LANDSCAPES of the EARTH out of nothingness by the sheer force of its brilliance-HILLS and CRAGS,TREES bent by the PASSIONATE WIND,NIGHT-RIDDEN PEOPLE,all RENDERED INTO BEING by that WHITE BOLT striking into the heavens from the lightning rod of his writing.

Does time in the Land move at the pace at which Covenant wrote his novel?Did he create a world in his novel that was created with so much passion that in some way,either literally or figurativly it continued to move on after his writing and by the time of his summons had changed so much that he did not recognize it as his own creation.His creativity was inspired by Joan-and his marriage to Joan was symbolized by his white gold wedding ring,thus I make the connection of The World being sealed by by the arch of time, the power of the white gold,as being the keystone to the arch of time,and the concept that Thomas Covenant was the white gold.Perhaps Covenants refusal to give up the ring (and Love for Joan)made the Lands continued existance possible,and his Newfound love for Linden-and the passage of the ring to her after his death made its existance possible after his death?I'm just rambling now,too tired,must recharge batteries.Be True.

[Avatar]

Is Covenant's ring the Arch itself?

--Avatar

[Revenant]

Ok, just some of my own ramblings in the very early morning of an insomniacal night.


1) This [Sunbaneglasses' musings] comes back to the inner-Covenant theory, which might work well with the First Chronicles, but is more difficult when comes the Second ones.

"I think the Land represents Covenants body, and various figures The Creator, Foul, Berek etc represent various parts of Covenants mind."

After the First Chrons., he's sent back to the leprosarium, and comes back for ten years of relative sanity -- even publishes seven books. [Berenford: "For ten years now he's been stable."].
While back in the Land, little by little, the Land is corrupted, eventually being stricken by the Sunbane.
So how then to explain this in light of an inner-Covenant theory? Or is the Sunbane caused by Joan's decent into madness -- rather than the other way around -- since she's the other side of their covenant/alliance bound by their wedding ring

/edited [spoilered in view of current Runes novel]:

Spoiler

(did she throw away her own wedding ring when they divorced? these come in pairs... )

2) Another of Berenford's comment (WGW, Ch.2): "He's right about the first one [i.e. first novel]. It's fluff - self-indulgent melodrama."
That can throw some light on the quality of the content of TC's first novel.
Then why was it a best-seller? Popular common-base fiction? (whatever that means) Rosy fairy-tale fantasy novel?

And when TC hears the tale of Berek, with the Queen and King and all, there doesn't seem to be any recollection of his stories into those early legends. So if the Land is some extension of his own stories, it must have drastically changed quite early on -- even before the Land was populated by men, before the axing of the One Forest, heck, even before the One Forest.


3) Would it be possible that the Creator -- a being that would be independant of TC essentially -- searched for a 'champion' whose life struggles and mentality would be similar and adequate for the Land?
So rather than try to see the Land as an extension of TC by some sort of creative connection, one could 'explain' these juxtapositions not as accidental, neither as a direct causation, but as a choice after the facts, by which I mean something akin to someone placing side by side two stories independently made but with similar themes, for comparison or other purposes.
The Creator then would have chosen someone who might understand the Land's needs, at least for the present urgent problem; and who better to understand than someone whose inner- and outer-problems reflected the Land's plight along its historical development -- loss, despair, law, oath, with the ever constant threat of despair/despite, be it in the form of Foul or that of people who don't want you to come to town to pay your phone bills.
(And of course, that person would have a white gold ring.)

This is of course a very 'down-to-earth' 'in-your-face' interpretation -- not a personal favorite by any means -- devoid of that fantastic metaphorical connection between Land and Covenant that I personally love so much, in spite of problems. But nevertheless one can wonder if that is all that SRD wanted us to read.

4) About white gold/ring/Covenant: reading the above, one might say that it doesn't fit with the 'fact' that Thomas Covenant is the white gold.

We are so certain of this, but where does this come from? Lord Mhoram told TC that he was the white gold. And TC somehow also came to interpret what Mhoram said, taking some force (for lack of a better word right now) from this 'knowledge', not only in the resolution of the First Chronicles, but also in the Second.

BUT: this was only Mhoram's understanding, and eventually Covenant's, and they are limited beings who's opinions might well be wrong, or rather not altogether truthfull/right/adequate, notwithstanding the success this realisation had on both Mhoram and Covenant.
Did the Creator ever confirm that Covenant was the white gold? (And if so, did TC really need to have a white gold ring literaly??)
Is there any indication, other than from mortal limited fallible beings, that Covenant is the white gold itself?


Anyway, sorry if all these have been considered before, too lazy for now to read all that has been said in the Land Dissection years before us newbies came
/edited: and also some of these questions might be moot in view of the Runes novel which I haven't read yet.

[dlbpharmd]

Before I make any replies, Revenant - have you read "Runes" yet?

[Revenant]

No. Waiting for paperback, or second-hand.
I did browse through it at the store, read the WHGB.
And browse sometimes through the Runes section here (not afraid of spoilers ).

Is there in Runes a non-fallible trustable being that explains it all?

[dlbpharmd]

Let me just say this for now: (I'll spoiler it anyway)

Spoiler

Joan didn't throw her ring away.

[Revenant]

Hehe...
Well, I'll have to read how this complexify -- or completes -- things.

Anyways, I'll spoiler my post above as to not create problems, just in case.

[Sunbaneglasses]

I would like to follow up my last post with this theory:Covenant,as the creator being inspired by his love for Joan,his ring would be the most potent/powerful.

Spoiler

But Joans ring,being held by the person who inspired his imagination,and being the other ring in a set I believe would have power,but not as much as TC's.This would explain why Joan's ring is not sufficient to break the AOT,but powerful enough to damage,alter time.THis would also explain why(as has been pondered in other posts)Foul could not have just had Roger go out to any corner jewlery store,pick up some white gold and bring it to the land.

[dlbpharmd]

Spoiler

I agree with much of what you had to say SBG but the reason that Joan's ring cannot break the AoT is because she is Foul's tool.

[Sunbaneglasses]

Bump!

[KAY1]

In response to Revanants question about TC BEING the White Gold, is the question not answered in WGW when TC becomes the 'block' against Foul trying to destroy the Arch? I can't remember exactly but does he not BECOME the Arch in a sense?

[Luke The Unbeliever]

Here's where TC says it:

WGW page 471:

"Caer-Caveral made it all possible.Hile Troy."An old longing suffused his tone."That was the 'necessity' he talked about.Why he had to give his life.It was the only way to open that particular door.So that Hollian could be brought back. And so that I wouldn't be like the rest of the Dead-unable to act. He broke the Law that would've kept me from opposing Foul.Otherwise, I would've been just a spectator.

"And Foul didn't understand. Maybe he was just too far gone. Or maybe he just refused to believe it. But he tried to ignore the paradox. The paradox of white gold. And the paradox of himself. He wanted the white gold-the ring. But I'm the white gold too. He couldn't change that by killing me. When he hit me with my own fire, He did the one thing I couldn't do for myself. He burned the venom away.After that, I was free."

[Caer Bombadil]

Let me chime in at this point with a little theory that occurred to me years ago.

So far I'd not tried to come up with a rigorous, consistent Covenant/Land chronology, nor have I studied Freudian (or any other) psychology formally. But reading the history of the Land as an analogy for Covenant's own life, something jumped out at me like an ur-vile on crack.

The story of the early Land's King and Queen to me powerfully suggested an analogy to Covenant's parents, and that period as being Covenant's childhood. The royal couple lacks real names; they're practically mythic or archetypical figures, more so than Berek himself.

We are told Berek, who represents Covenant, found himself championing the Queen against the Raver-possessed King, and eventually defeated (slaying?) him by the agency of the Fire-Lions, after which Berek came into his own as the first of the Old Lords, establishing the original milieu of the Land. Now, suppose the King represent's Covenant's father, and the Queen is Covenant's mother.

Is anyone else muttering the phrase "Oedipus Complex" about now?

Given the previous conjectures about Covenant's family, it's tempting to read the Berek legend as implying Covenant's father fell prey to some "demon" and destroyed the family, out of which turmoil young Covenant grew to manhood and discovered his own place in the world.

Maybe the Fire-Lions climax did not represent Covenant physically vanquishing his father, mind you, or even necessarily confronting him, but rather subjectively mentally displacing him as "father" and emancipating himself of his dysfunctional family, by attaining adulthood.

Obviously there are some problems here, such as the fact Berek lost half his hand at this point rather than later (i.e. one might think Kevin would have been the half-hand), but it always seemed like an intriguing possible interpretation.

[firelion]

Interesting stuff!Hope the last crons shed some light on the old lords.

[Sunbaneglasses]

I think TC's parentage/childhood will continue to be a non-factor.The fact that it has never been touched upon puts emphisis on how normal his life had been pre leprosy/divorce.Perhaps his parents are dead,or at least not important to the story,but I believe for the most part he had a fairly healthy upbringing.

[burgs]

I agree. It *has* to be a non-factor because SRD doesn't think backwards. He probably doesn't even know what Covenant's life was like prior to our introduction to him - with the notable exception of his divorce, the leprosarium, etc. But other than that, zippo.

I don't think there are any correlations whatsoever between Covenants past life and events of the Land.