Sorry I haven't posted the last few days. I'll try not to let that happen again.
Last post I don't think I made it clear what it was that drew me to this chapter and made it so great for me.
I should note that the first and second chapters worked really well together.
II-1: Those Who Endure--
I said in the last post that in this chapter Covenant is a
father. That seems strange on the face of it because he is now a mortal like the rest of the company, with most of his superhuman knowledge slipping from him and having very little power compared to others: He hasn't used his ring in the last chapter, doesn't see it as belonging to him, and can't hold the krill without burning his hands away or use it beyond the most crude and mundane level possible. What's more, he is Linden's love, not her father and his two children Roger and Elena are gone from him and had very little fathering from him until now. Roger Wasn't someone Covenant has yearned for. It was his wife Joan that was important to him. If he gave him anything it was his absence. As for Elena, she was more a (sinful) romantic interest to him than a daughter.
So why a father figure now? And yet from the very beginning we get (in second paragraph):
His mind was still full of shrieks and fire and torrents: his heart was woe. Whenever he looked at Linden's slack face, he saw Elena's unassoiled horror, pursued by She Who Must Not Be Named. He did not know how to lament for his daughter.
Linden is superimposed on Elena. Elena whom he failed on so many levels. And we should note that Covenant's care for Linden is pretty platonic. Two paragraphs further along we are reminded of his leprosy and the resulting lack of bodily sensations:
It was filthy, soiled with sweat and grime and dust. [...] But the state of her hair made no difference to him. His hand were too numb to feel it.
Linden is held in his arms like his child.
And then a confrontation with Mahrtir occurs. Mahrtir accuses him about his relationship with Elena and Covenant accepts all the responsibility on himself. And after that Mahrtir accepts him and draws close to him. Is it that he sees a similarities of roles between them? The role of father?
The landscape in this chapter is an obvious example of the theme Zarathustra's mentioned where the surroundings reflect the inner world of the character. Here (first paragraph)
Holding Linden against him, Thomas Covenant sat leaning on a boulder half buried in the sandy bottom of a shallow gully. Most of the terrain around him looked barren, stripped of vegetation by thirst and ancient misuse. But a few stunted trees, twisted as cripples, still gripped the edges of the gully. Here and there, tufts of bitter grass clung to some scant source of moisture. He hoped for aliantha, but he had not seen any.
Covenant is numb and with little hope. Scarred by the horrors he experienced under Mount Thunder and does not expect any miracles to save him now.
If water is hope and renewal (and Linden who is those things is repeatedly symbolized and connected to water) finding the stream and washing in it represents the return of those things after the travails and despair of the recent past.
There is an interesting contrasting of Covenant and his son Roger's motivations. Roger desires (according to Covenant) to become like a God and uses the supernatural powers he received with his fire-hand whenever he can. croyel-Jeremiah's powers are his key to achieving this goal.
Covenant on the other hand muses in page 253 (I'm using the American Putnam edition) that
Hellfire, he muttered in silence. No wonder only people like Roger and creatures like croyel wanted to be gods. The sheer impotence of that state would appall a chunk of basalt--if the basalt happened to care about anything except itself. Absolute power was as bad as powerlessness for anybody who valued someone else's peace or happiness or even survival. The Creator would only make or destroy worlds: he could not rule them, nurture them, assist them. He was simply too strong to express himself within the constraints of Time.
By that standard, forgetfulness was Covenant's only real hope. No matter how badly he wanted to remember, he needed his specific form of ignorance; absolutely required it. Nothing less would prevent him from violating the necessity of freedom
He spurns great power and knowledge because they would interfere with his ability to help others. He spurns the use of his Wild Magic powers. He doesn't want to be a leader. He wants to be a parent.
And when he confesses his feelings to Linden (page 255) he is very human.
II-2: Trying to Start Again
This chapter is told from Linden's perspective, newly awakened after her experience in the pool. The way she was shaken out of her catatonia wasn't exactly the way I expected it. Being submerged underwater was about creating a similar situation to her inner sensations of drowning within SWMNBN and the waters she inhabits and reminding her of her body's existence (through air deprivation). The baptism-like ritual I spoke about in my previous post was off the mark, or at least partial.
The joy at the return of health and life was well written. To live again! Not everyone knows the feeling but Linden brimming with it here and now.
And it seems Covenant's confession in the previous chapter has indeed been heard by her because she immediately embraces Covenant. If I said His love to her is platonic her definitely isn't.
(pages 283-284)
"She would have clung to him if she could [...] Her rescued heart ached to throw her arms around him. Hugging him would not fill Jeremiah's place in her clasp, or in her love. But she was a woman who needed to touch and embrace. She yearned for the comfort of contact. And Covenant had saved her: she believed that. In his arms, she might begin to recover from her participation in She Who Must Not Be Named.
In a burst of grief and longing, Linden pitched forward. As she fell onto Covenant, she wrapped her arms around him. Her embrace closed as though she had been starving for the touch of his body on hers; and her weight drove both of them underwater.
[...]
His vacancy hurt her. Of course it hurt her. Lost as he was, he could not reply to her clasp. Parts of him were too numb to recognize her. Nevertheless she clung to him as though he were the rock to which she had anchored her own life, and Jeremiah's, and the Land's.
And as she held him, a spark of silver fire gleamed briefly where her breasts met his chest. It seemed to shine through her damaged shirt until it filled his face, and hers, with argent possibilities. Then it vanished.
Wild magic. Only a hint, but--wild magic
With a palpable wrench that nearly drove the breath from her lungs, Covenant returned to himself and began to struggle.
And does this last part means that Wild Magic is motivated and powered by love? Mhoram's thoughts about it in TPtP come to mind.
But Covenant rejects her embraces
Before she moved, however, she saw a quick flaring of alarm in his eyes. He raised his hands to ward her away; stumbled backward. "Don't touch me." Some private conflict undermined hum: she felt its emanations He was barely able to make himself heard over the fretted susurration of the current. Linden, please. I'm not ready. I've lost too much of myself. I'm afraid of what I'm becoming. Or what I might have to be. I need to find that out before--" His voice faded. Pain burred his gaze. The muscles of his jaw clenched. Obviously forcing himself, he finished, "Just don't touch me. There's too much at stake.
Is it that the loss of Elena is too raw for him? It doesn't really fit his words. Or that he considers himself too disfigured? Or appalled at what he caused? Or maybe I was right about his platonic feelings or he's simply still too unused to having a physical body.
Whatever it is, Linden sees it as rejection. And it devastates her. She lost too much of her confidence in herself and her feelings of self worth to handle it.
I was hoping her companions would tell her about what happened to Elena so she would ascribe Covenant's rejection of her to his pain over that but they decide not to tell her and she founders on as she is.
She gathers the tatters of her pride and sends Covenant and Stave away keeping only Pahni with her. Because she s female? Or is driven by her love for Liand?
<I'll post the rest tomorrow morning.>
II-3: --Whatever the Cost
An optimistic song about about imperfections, parenthood and possibilities.
