Who among you can really relate to Thomas Covenant?

[SGuilfoyle1966]

I cut off two fingers on both my hands, killed a horse and raped my sister before I finished the end of the Illearth War just be be like TC.

Me too.
Only I got mixed up, raped a horse, killed my sister and started the finger cutting thing at the wrist instad of the knuckle. When I lost the first hand, started over on the other.
Same thing happened (YOU try carving two fingers off with a knife gripped between your toes!)
Anyway. What was the question.

[SGuilfoyle1966]

Does anyone relate to Kevin?

I do. My mom's cousin is Kevin, only we call him Uncle Kevin.

[matrixman]

I got mixed up, raped a horse, killed my sister and started the finger cutting thing at the wrist instad of the knuckle. When I lost the first hand, started over on the other.
Same thing happened

I'm not sure I want to know how you're able to type your posts now...

[SGuilfoyle1966]

OK, serious answer. I voted yes.
I'm no good at heights.

I think the question did NOT say are you an outcast rapist with a soul full of vertigo and an ability to transcend paradoxes.

Just, can I relate to him? Yes. I'm no good at heights.

Also, I have diabetes and honestly, if not controlled better, some of the side effects can be horrifically like the side effects of leprosy.

[SGuilfoyle1966]

I got mixed up, raped a horse, killed my sister and started the finger cutting thing at the wrist instad of the knuckle. When I lost the first hand, started over on the other.
Same thing happened

I'm not sure I want to know how you're able to type your posts now...

Well, let's just say typing is reminscent of a famous Brady Bunch episode featuring Marsha.

"Ooh my nose. Ooh my nose. Ooh my nose."

[transient]

can I relate?...of course. Does not the human condition mean we all could relate at some level or other? 59 winters thus far and I am mainly harmless but like all blokes, capable of acts of gross stupidity at the drop of a hat! I can relate.

[matrixman]

Mainly because I'm annoyed that some would presume that I'm incapable of empathy as a reader, I want to flip the topic question around and ask in general terms: if you can't relate to a character in TCTC, then why do you read it?

Even more broadly, if you can't relate to any fictional character, then why do you bother reading books or watching movies at all?

[hpty603]

I don't have to relate to anybody to enjoy a good story =/

[matrixman]

I'll accept your answer. That's all I can do. I'll just have to accept that my needs as a reader are different from yours.

[Kalkin]

I can't honestly say that I relate to Covenant. I've never even been close to isolated that much, or damaged that much by doctors. I do sympathize with him.

SRD did a great job screwing with our feelings about Covenant. First we see him destroyed by everyone around him, dipped into a cesspool of despair. Who couldn't feel sorry for him, feel compassion for his struggle to survive? Don't we love survivors?

Then he smacks us with the rape of Lena.

Trying to work the emotional math around this act requires a Hawking. Is there a crime more hated in western society than the rape of an innocent?

But was Covenant's crime worse than the crimes committed against him? Is it suprising that after being utterly stripped of power and hope that he would abuse his power in the same way the people in the real world abused thiers?

I don't think Covenant is an jerk. The guy was thoroughly mind-effed by society. I think it's amazing that he was able to redeem himself at all.

[hyarmion]

Can I relate to Thomas Covenant? Definitely not. If I ever get around to writing the fantasy I would like to write, there will not be a character even remotely resembling Covenant in it. (P.S. Any suggestions as to how I could bring the Bloodguard into it, without looking too much like a plagiarist).

[Kalkin]

Call them Bloodwatchers and have 'em be vampires.

[peter]

Any suggestions as to how I could bring the Bloodguard into it, without looking too much like a plagiarist.

putting an attribution in parentheses after every mention of thier name should do it.

[BellTelephoneCompany]

Call them the GuardBlood.

Or the Bloodtroth Guardians.

I relate to Covenant quite heavily, and have done since a scarily young age, now that I look back on it. God help me, I'd even call him a formative influence on my life!

I can relate to Linden and her problems too. I haven't killed anybody or raped anybody, but I've been helpless and cowardly and undecided while people suffered and died, and that's plenty to give you an understanding of the thought processes and reactions these characters have to events around them.

But you don't even need those experiences to relate. I bet none of us have held a ring of infinite power that could shatter the heavens, or been able to predict the changes of the sun and heal the sick with our minds, but we can all relate to those things too, somehow. In fact, it's easy.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

...speak for yourself!

[Wheelwash Whitecap]

I think that everyone, at sometime or another, has felt that they were being outcasted and isolated. Times when everything is horrible and bad, when you think the whole world is against you. This is why I think people relate with TC.

SRD sets TC's condition up to draw the reader into the story. For a reader to continue reading, the author gives you background information so you form a mental picture of who and what the character is. If no one can relate to the character, then the book does not get read.

[BellTelephoneCompany]

I bet none of us have held a ring of infinite power that could shatter the heavens, or been able to predict the changes of the sun and heal the sick with our minds...

...speak for yourself!

Ah, but I bet you only had access to the White Gold and Health Sense through possessing Linden! You are a Raver, after all...

Speaking of which, I wonder if a Raver suffers when it posesses someone with Health Sense, because it can suddenly see all the goodness and the power of the Earth around itself, which it would hate...?

That's something to think about.

[LaRocca]

You don't have to have leprosy to be an outcast.

You don't have to go to the Land to be powerless.

Anyone who can't relate to Thomas Covenant is dead.

[LaRocca]

Oh, and we've all had terrible experiences shopping and paying bills.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

well i'll tell ya, the rape of lena has never made much sense to me.
yeah yeah i've read all the "he was impotent for so long" explanations.
that still just doesn't fly to me.
it's a justification to say that he didn't believe the world was real.
rape is rape. its preditory, it's control issues, it's angry and cruel.
the man is transformed (if thats what you can call it) to another
place and time, another world, and the first thing he does right off
the bat is rape a defenseless girl?
yeah, no, there's nothing i can even understand in that, much less
relate to.

Does Covenant know he's been translated into another world? Are such things commonplace? And who has been defending the rape of Lena? Nobody I know of. It's not a matter of justifying the act so much as justifying Donaldson's need to put it in his book. The same could be said for many incidents in the Gap novels.