Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 3:40 pm
I'm certainly in the too-thick category ![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
Re: the thing about "providence would be the Creator intervening, which in this story is something he axiomatically doesn't do." And chalking it up to the necessities-of-metaphor when transcendent forces manifest in the tale... Against the second contention, firstly, the appearance of the ochre-robed man in the "real" world is itself providential, in a way. In fact any manifestation from the Land, in "reality," adjusts the story's overall representation of the relationship between physical and metaphorical information/description/etc.
But so re: the first contention, well, I argued elsewhere that Covenant's resurrection is equivalent to the Creator intervening inside the Arch. That is, the breaking of the Arch by the Creator's intervention, would not be a separate event apart from something like the rousing of the Worm. This is because the Creator is not just another character in the internal game of magic power in the story, but has a power that arches (Arches!) over the magic world of the story, so rather than his intervention having a single point of entry into history, it rather assumes the form of a broad pattern in history that culminated in Linden Avery, harried by confusion and dread, unleashing the maximum power of creation in the wrong way.
The manifestations of providential random solutions to story problems is most pronounced, I think, in the Last Chronicles. Esmer even endangers the fourth wall when claiming that he has come up with a strategy (this is in AATE, during the underground pursuit by SWMNBN) that no "impossible" twist of fate can counter. (Of course, the paradox of free will and providence appears here in that it is not a miraculous source of power that helps out, but a purely reasoned argument leading to the vacating of a sort of power, Esmer's, from the premises.) So if the Creator is intervening in the LC, and this is behind-the-scenes destroying the world (kinda like Father Time in the final Narnia book??? I need to reread that...), then...
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
Re: the thing about "providence would be the Creator intervening, which in this story is something he axiomatically doesn't do." And chalking it up to the necessities-of-metaphor when transcendent forces manifest in the tale... Against the second contention, firstly, the appearance of the ochre-robed man in the "real" world is itself providential, in a way. In fact any manifestation from the Land, in "reality," adjusts the story's overall representation of the relationship between physical and metaphorical information/description/etc.
But so re: the first contention, well, I argued elsewhere that Covenant's resurrection is equivalent to the Creator intervening inside the Arch. That is, the breaking of the Arch by the Creator's intervention, would not be a separate event apart from something like the rousing of the Worm. This is because the Creator is not just another character in the internal game of magic power in the story, but has a power that arches (Arches!) over the magic world of the story, so rather than his intervention having a single point of entry into history, it rather assumes the form of a broad pattern in history that culminated in Linden Avery, harried by confusion and dread, unleashing the maximum power of creation in the wrong way.
The manifestations of providential random solutions to story problems is most pronounced, I think, in the Last Chronicles. Esmer even endangers the fourth wall when claiming that he has come up with a strategy (this is in AATE, during the underground pursuit by SWMNBN) that no "impossible" twist of fate can counter. (Of course, the paradox of free will and providence appears here in that it is not a miraculous source of power that helps out, but a purely reasoned argument leading to the vacating of a sort of power, Esmer's, from the premises.) So if the Creator is intervening in the LC, and this is behind-the-scenes destroying the world (kinda like Father Time in the final Narnia book??? I need to reread that...), then...