The Illearth War Chapters 3 & 4

[Cord Hurn]

"So it is that we have called you, ur-Lord Covenant, Unbeliever and white gold wielder. You are our hope at the last. We summoned you, though we knew it might carry a hard cost for you to bear. We have sworn our service to the Land, and could not do otherwise. Thomas Covenant! Will you not help us?"

During her speech, her voice had grown in power and eloquence until she was almost singing. Covenant could not refuse to listen. Her tone reached into him, and made vivid all his memories of the Land's beauty. He recalled the bewitching Dance of the Celebration of Spring, and the lush, heart-soothing health of the Andelanian Hills, the uneasy eldritch gleaming of Morinmoss, the stern swift Plains of Ra and the rampant Ranyhyn, the great horses. And he remembered what it was like to feel, to have lively nerves in his fingers, capable of touching grass and stone. The poignancy of it made his heart ache.

"Your hope misleads you," he groaned into the stillness after Elena's appeal. "I don't know anything about power. It has something to do with life, and I'm as good as dead. Or what do you think life is? Life is feeling. I've lost that. I'm a leper."

He might have started to rage again, but a new voice cut sharply through his protest. "Then why don't you throw away your ring?"

He turned, and found himself confronting the warrior who had been sitting at the end of the Lords' table. The man had come down to the bottom of the Close, where he faced Covenant with his hands on his hips. To Covenant's surprise, the man's eyes were covered with dark, wraparound sunglasses. Behind the glasses, his head moved alertly, as if he were studying everything. He seemed to possess a secret. Without the support of his eyes, the slight smile on his lips looked private and unfathomable, like an utterance in an alien tongue.

Covenant grasped the inconsistency of the sunglasses--they were oddly out of place in the Close--but he was too stung by the speaker's question to stop for discrepancies. Stiffly, he answered, "It's my wedding ring."

The man shrugged away this reply. "You talk about your wife in the past tense. You're separated--or divorced. You can't have your life both ways now. Either get rid of the ring and stick to whatever it is you seem to think is real, or get rid of her and do your duty here."

Troy's got a point, I feel.. If all this isn't real to Covenant, why doesn't he get rid of the ring by giving it to someone in the Land? When he wakes up in the "real world", it will be back again on his finger. I think Tom believes the Land is real deep down inside, and if he loses something here, he'll lose it in his original world, as well. Otherwise, what has he got to lose by giving the ring away?

[wayfriend]

I think it's because, to Covenant, it isn't just a dream. It's a seduction - it's a delusion that is trying to break Covenant by seducing him into suicide.

It's necessary for him to avoid being seduced by responsibility. Therefore, it's necessary to believe that he has no power. Therefore, it's necessary to believe that his ring doesn't have the meaning that everyone says it does. On the other hand, that ring is about the only evidence he has left that he had ever been in a normal life, that he had had worth to someone. The needs of the Land don't yet matter enough to him for him to part with that symbol. And parting with it would be, in his mind, being seduced ... a step on the road to suicide.

When Covenant says, "It's my wedding ring," imagine him saying it slowly, emphasizing, with a tinge of tried patience, like "duh, who gives away his wedding ring."

Covenant did try to give his ring away once, in LFB, at the very end.

"Damnation!" Fumbling furiously for his ring, Covenant shouted, "Do it yourself!" He wrenched the band from his finger and tried to throw it at Mhoram. But he was shaking madly; his fingers slipped. The ring dropped to the stone, rolled away.

It should be noted that this is Covenant when he is pushed into a crisis that he cannot handle. He was choosing giving the ring away as an escape from the dilemma of either wielding power or letting his companions die. He couldn't face either of those options. So he chose a third, out of fear for himself - fear of being seduced into suicide.

The fact that he failed at this probably underscored for him that it was the wrong answer. He probably regretted being sucked into the terms of the dream, and girded himself against it all the more.

[Cord Hurn]

On the other hand, that ring is about the only evidence he has left that he had ever been in a normal life, that he had had worth to someone.

This is probably why he usually can't give it away. Anyway, it's the reason that bears the most resonance with me.

[JIkj fjds j]

Covenant did try to give his ring away once, in LFB, at the very end.

"Damnation!" Fumbling furiously for his ring, Covenant shouted, "Do it yourself!" He wrenched the band from his finger and tried to throw it at Mhoram. But he was shaking madly; his fingers slipped. The ring dropped to the stone, rolled away.

Twice, if you include Covenant dropping the ring into the old begger man's bowl.
In the final analysis you have to accept that Covenant is and always will be the White Gold Ring. He is the key that fits every lock.

(One example: Drool Rockworm - Drool Rockworm - Drool Rockworm ... where Covenant is the key to those idiosyncratic locks.)

As much as Covenant might wish to give away the ring, he cannot. At the end he knows that the ring is his only hope of salvation. The key to the door out.