Reading Covenant 20 years on

[SleeplessOne]

my empathy for TC has only increased after re-reading the 1st chronicles 16 years after first discovering LFB ..

If anything, his heinous crime against Lena seems more brutal, more callous to me now than it did back then; I have a child of my own (a boy admittedly, but still..) and reading about such crimes practiced against the young and innocent disturbs me ...
*but* in many ways I was more aware of TC's unique vulnerabilities in the lead-up to the infamous scene; the warning signs were starkly posted very early in the book .. the impotence, the resentment of the "hips and breasts of the girls - curves for other men's caresses, not his", the loss of his wife and a total lack of intimacy in his life .. Suddenly thrust into an apparent fantasy-land, his health and potency is remarkably restored to him; a man who can't afford to hope for miracles and magic if he wants to survive his bleak condition.
It's a pressure-cooker situation for someone that has lost so much .. Lena's innocent flirting doesn't help matters, leading to TC's loss dual of control and his moral compass ..
Whilst I'd obviously never condone rape in any form, I also find it hard to judge a man in such a bizzare and confronting situation - TC's renewed vitality *would* seem like the sick nightmare he think's he's in after the grim reality of learning to live with leprosy ..
On one level, the rape scene paints Covenant as a man unable to cope when suddenly restored to his old pre-Leprosy self; he has learnt to live without good health and positive interaction with people, and a taste of what he had lost overwhelms him.
Also, on another level, he is actively striking back at this percieved psychological affront to the fundamental beliefs that he is forced to adhere to .. he defiles Lena in part to reject the 'false' hope that she and the Land represents.