I only heard it recently myself, in a couple of the GI questions. Do I remember him talking about it at the Elohimfest interview? Spoiler
I think the gist of it is that what happened to Vain at the One Tree was necessary to start the transformation that he eventually underwent. Perhaps he couldn't have transformed if that first step wasn't taken, or he would have been transformed in a different way. I don't remember anything like that being explained in the books, so perhaps this is something that was in his head, but never quite made it onto paper (or perhaps he thought he explained it, but it's not as clear to us as it was to him).
Mhoram hinted that what Covenant needs from outside the Land isn't what he thinks he needs. I always took that to mean that he didn't really need the One Tree. Except for SRD hinting at this twice, I would have remained sure that this was correct.
I'm completely convinced that there is nothing in the story that relates to this. Has anyone found one passage, one phrase? Could it be that something was indeed written but was edited away (perhaps without the author's recollection)?
The only other thing that we know is that Vain 'would be in pain if he were alive'. This to me implies that it's not something that Vain would have chosen to have occur, or that his makers would have planned for. But it's not out of the question, either.
And why did the One Tree effect him at all? Those motes were pure power. Perhaps pure Earthpower, but that's unclear. Power, strangely similar to the Grim, in that it detonated on whatever it touched. (Vain was immune to the Grim, and transformed by the One Tree. Hmmm...)
Okay, here's the only workable theory I have. (And it's not too much different in the end than my "One Sap" theory.)
Vain was transformed because he { chose to / was built to / was impelled to } absorb the essense of the One Tree. The transformation of his forearm into something like a branch was more than a hint of what he was to become, it actually reflected the essense of the One Tree which he had absorbed into himself. Which then leads us to this essense. The One Tree wasn't just used to build the Staff of Law, it was chosen by Berek/Creator to be the official wood of Earthpower, Inc. Let's assume that there is a good reason for that. So there's something about the One Tree that makes it condusive as a medium of Law. Perhaps because it partakes of the self-destruction which is built into the Earth, yeah, that's it. Or maybe it's a conduit that allows the creator to reach into the Earth in some way. So Vain needed to get some of this stuff, and the only place to get it was the Well of the One Tree. Structure and Earthpower were not enough - the structure had to first be tweaked for Earthpower-readiness.
The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story (a great book, worth reading even if you don't read the rest)
The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge
The Gap into Power: A Dark And Hungry God Arises
The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order
The Gap into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die
Whereas I thought book one of the GAP was the worst Donaldson book ever!!
I love how different our opinions are.
And on another note:
But I will never EVER forgive the world for abandoning DOS in favor of GUI-based applications. DOS made sense to me: it involved words I could understand, like "format" and "chkdsk," and DOS word processors also relied on language. (I used WordStar 2000, and I'm very bitter that I had to give it up because it become obsolete.) "Icons" never make sense to me; so these days I always have to hunt through the menus until I find words I can understand. All these years of "progress," and we're reduced to cave drawings just like our (very) early ancestors.
LOL! Maybe we should introduce SRD to the lovely world of FreeBSD and Emacs or *shudder* vi!!
The way I always saw The One Tree and Lord Mhoram's prophesies was that Spoiler
TC thought that he needed to leave the Land to find the One Tree and directly replace the lost Staff. That is, cut off another limb as Berek did. But although that was not what he needed to do, he still needed to leave the Land. First of all, he needed to pick up Findail. But I thought that this was it for the trip out of the Land, and that the events at the Isle of the One Tree were meant to give us a hint (Vain's arm), and provide a "what the heck are they going to do now?!" cliffhanger for the last book. But SRD's comments regarding Vain and the One Tree suggest that there was something additional intended. That perhaps Vain needed to go there and start his transformation. It was never specifically quoted in the books, but I get the impression that inside SRD's mind, he sent them to the Isle for that reason. It just never made it into the book. I doubt that it was something that was added and then cut out by the editors. Although it is possible that it was in an original draft, and was trimmed out later by SRD himself - and that little gap in the plot was overlooked during the final readings before going to press. It only needed to be a single line at the end of WGW, where Linden realizes that the trip to the One Tree really was necessary - she could complete the transformation but could not have started it. Something like that. And after pounding away at that book for a year or two, I'm sure it's an easy thing to happen - all the lines between the various drafts blurring in one's mind, and something slipping through.
Thinking aloud here... maybe Vain couldn't become something he wasn't already. If he could've been made whole to serve his purpose, he probably would have been. Like Pitchwife's wiving, he needed contact to set.
"It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
-George Steiner
Covenant does indeed need a branch of the One Tree to make a new Staff of Law with. But he can't get it from the Tree because it's too well-defended.
But he does in fact come out of that cavern accompanied by a piece of wood that becomes the new Staff of Law (eventually) -- I mean, isn't it _obvious_? Vain's wooden forearm _is_ the piece of wood that Covenant needed. The Quest _succeeded_ -- it just doesn't realize it. High irony, there.
As far as Linden's possession of Covenant, it achieves several things...
It exposes Linden and Covenant intimately to each other -- she ends up exposing the root of her being to him afterwards -- which finally gives him a reason to keep on going after the Isle of the One Tree, and lets her expose her hidden dangers so their healing can begin.
It gets her used to using power -- and for healing. She may, indeed, be possessing him -- but she's not doing it to possess him; she's robbing him of choice only so she can grant him choice. And that power -- to absorb and accept the pain of others -- will be what she needs later on to acheive what she achieves (do I really need a spoiler warning here?).
Choiceless, you were given the power of choice. I elected you for the Land but did not compel you to serve my purpose in the Land... Only thus could I preserve the integrity of my creation.
SRD wrote:Well, the real reason may be that I'm not a pet person myself. But my meticulously-rationalized, yet spur-of-the-moment, explanation is that the whole notion of "domestication" sort of violates the spirit of Land (at least as it existed in the first "Chronicles"). Sure, ordinary survival depends to some extent on having things like herds, transportation (e.g. horses), etc.. And the people who originally ventured into the Land don't have a particularly attractive history. But once Berek got that whole "reverence for life" thing going, people probably stopped thinking of animals as potential pets.
Quite obviously he’s not a pet person. If he were, he would know that animals are family members. Or, people are members of the animal pack. It’s not an exploitation thing, as he seems to feel.
SRD wrote:If I accepted a small enough advance (possibly too small to live on), I could probably get published by anybody. (After all, the sales of the GAP books are still better than most of the sf out there. Bantam was only disappointed because their expectatons were so high.) So, no, I wouldn't necessarily have had difficulty, but, yes, I might have had to get a day job. Which at my age would have been "difficulty" on a whole new order of magnitude.
This I can’t understand. Is it conceivable that any college would turn down the chance to have Stephen R. Donaldson teaching their literature classes?
I agree that owning a pet in the Land does not automatically make the owner an exploiter of animals. But neither does the lack of pets in the Land invalidate the "reality" of that world. Is the internal logic of SRD's fantasy world violated by the absence of cute furry companions at Trell's side? I think it must be easy to use "reality vs. fantasy" arguments to point out the cracks and flaws of any imaginative fictional world. SRD's fantastical world stands up fairly well to scrutiny, but I don't think he was trying to compete with the minutiae of the real world when he conceived the Land; he was creating a general sense of verisimilitude. The Land doesn't have to be real real, but "truthful." Pets had no role in the story SRD chose to tell, so he did not waste his time (or the reader's) on creating them. If a microscopically detailed fantasy world is hungered for, well...isn't that why we have Tolkien? Hobbits apparently have pets. Tolkien possibly even wrote a background history for each pet.
I think it is sadly conceivable that a college would turn down SRD for a position. I think it depends on the mentality of the professional academics who control any given educational institution. Those who reject the romantic epic fantasy of Tolkien in favor of, say, the intellectual modernism of Joyce would probably not be much interested in hiring an author like SRD who so clearly and staunchly defends the value of fantasy.
tonyz wrote:As far as <i>The One Tree</i>, I see it this way:
Covenant does indeed need a branch of the One Tree to make a new Staff of Law with. But he can't get it from the Tree because it's too well-defended.
But he does in fact come out of that cavern accompanied by a piece of wood that becomes the new Staff of Law (eventually) -- I mean, isn't it _obvious_? Vain's wooden forearm _is_ the piece of wood that Covenant needed. The Quest _succeeded_ -- it just doesn't realize it. High irony, there.
As far as Linden's possession of Covenant, it achieves several things...
It exposes Linden and Covenant intimately to each other -- she ends up exposing the root of her being to him afterwards -- which finally gives him a reason to keep on going after the Isle of the One Tree, and lets her expose her hidden dangers so their healing can begin.
It gets her used to using power -- and for healing. She may, indeed, be possessing him -- but she's not doing it to possess him; she's robbing him of choice only so she can grant him choice. And that power -- to absorb and accept the pain of others -- will be what she needs later on to acheive what she achieves (do I really need a spoiler warning here?).
I just got done reading Ch7 of TOT, "Elemesedene". The possession of TC by Linden undoes the major flaw and limitation seen by the Elohim in the dichotomy between the "wing wielder" and the "sun sage" being seperate entities. Once posessed, they become one.
Also, IMO her assetrtion that all posession is evil is an assertion/choice made out of a lack of faith. Linden could have used some quality time with Mhoram to overcome this lacking of faith.
The possession of TC by Linden undoes the major flaw and limitation seen by the Elohim in the dichotomy between the "wing wielder" and the "sun sage" being seperate entities. Once posessed, they become one.
Also, IMO her assetrtion that all posession is evil is an assertion/choice made out of a lack of faith. Linden could have used some quality time with Mhoram to overcome this lacking of faith.
Ain't it the truth!
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks SRD left something out at the end of TOT. I had no idea what, if anything, of any value they took away from the tree's cavern, other than proof of Mhoram's prediction that the One Tree wouldn't supply what they really needed.
I very much like the theory that those spangles of light were Earthpower "pods", which Vain needed as a catalyst to start his transformation into the Staff. Vain's partial transformation seemed to me to be: a) a mockery of Covenant and Linden's intent, and b) a gigantic hint about Vain's purpose. And I want to think some more about how the Elohim didn't faze Vain, but the One Tree's motes of light transformed him....
I do like the idea of this being a subtle victory wrapped in defeat.
EZ Board Survivor
"Dreaming isn't good for you unless you do the things it tells you to." -- Three Dog Night (via the GI)
Fist: We've been debating ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol's origin. Any chance you're willing to help us out? I don't know if it would be a spoiler to do so. Some think the Guardian was not aHKA until Brinn "conceived" of him that way. Some think aHKA was not originally a Haruchai. Some (me think aHKA was always Haruchai, and took on the job as the Guardian after Berek met him somewhere or other, and explained how important the job was.
And, again, THANK YOU for meeting with us at our Elohimfest!!!
More interesting, I think, is the question of how the Haruchai even know of Kenaustin Ardenol's existence. Nothing in the record (i.e. the first six "Covenant" books) suggests that the Haruchai were aware of the Lords in the Land prior to Kevin's time--and if they had ever had any dealings with, say, Berek, they certainly *would* have been aware of the Lords. So we can probably assume: a) Kenaustin Ardenol him/her/itself was not Haruchai; b) the Haruchai know of the existence of this being (which, by the way, is not the same as knowing of the existence of the Guardian of the One Tree) through some interaction outside the known history of the Land; and c) this interaction gave rise to the supreme Haruchai honorific "ak-Haru". More than that I can't say at the moment. The Earth is a whole lot bigger than the Land, and (like the Land) it's full of stories. I can't possibly tell them all.
Ain't it the truth!
