Linden gets off the phone with Megan, who has just informed her that Roger knows she has a son. It's questionable how much culpability she really has, however, since Roger seems to know a few things already. Immediately, with Rowan still speaking on the phone, she takes off out of the hospital, making a beeline for her house. The only thing remotely slowing her down is the wind, making her drop her keys, keys she cuts herself with on her right hand when she punches the dash.
When she arrives at the house, the lock is shot off, the door open, all the lights are on, and nobody is home. They say houses in literature most often represent minds. If so, I think this one is Jeremiah's. Literally between one second and the next, Linden goes from panicky mother to calm, focused Linden Avery the Chosen. She changes into sensible clothes (including 'sturdy boots' since she lost her sandals in her rush to the house. Strangely enough, she decides not to wear a jacket), grabs her medical bag, leaves a message for Lytton, and heads to Haven Farm.
On the way to the farm, all the lights go out, including the street lights. The town is empty. Driving through downtown, Linden passes the courthouse and the phone company office, the former eerily lighted by a lightning strike.
She arrives at Haven Farm to find Roger's car left out front, the trunk open. Covenant's old house is in serious disrepair. Fading, almost non-existant paint, broken windows, warped boards. The inside is in no better shape. Following a trail of blood, she find's Sara Clint bound to Covenant's old bed with duct tape, her throat slit. Before she can do anything, she notices the house is on fire, ignited by a lightning strike. With no other avenues of escape, she breaks the rest of the glass out of the window and climbs out, cutting her hand again in the process. The house soon collapses in on itself in smoldering ruin. An abandoned house, falling apart, containing an atrocity, which then burns down. I would think this house would symbolize
There's only one other place to go; the hollow from the ritual where Jeremiah's mother and the others offered their pain to Lord Foul. And that's where she finds Roger, Sandy, Joan, and Jeremiah. Roger pistol whips Sandy for talking, offers to trade Jeremiah for Linden cutting off her right hand. Lytton shows up unarmed, trying to talk Roger into giving himself up. Roger shoots Lytton, almost shoots Sandy, but Linden makes him miss by throwing first her flashlight then her bag at him. Lightning immolates Joan. Then Lytton's men let loose a barrage of gunfire, splattering Roger and then Linden, who falls into darkness.
So back to the central themes. The first is the play between light and dark. It would be simpler if it were so easy as good and evil. There is very little to support this, except for Roger calling Linden 'the good doctor.' If it's more than an expression, it's rendered useless by Roger possibly mockingly calling Lytton a brave man.
No, I think it's more of reality vs unreality, and the mercurial nature of the two."…"You're a brave man." The ease with which he made himself heard through the wind's outcry mocked Lytton.
Some examples:
The wind seemed to snatch them out of her fingers: they dropped to the pavement in a buffeted ar through the false illumination from the light poles.
The sheer intensity of the wind seemed to dim the streetlamps, truncate their illumination
Abruptly, every lamp along the steet let out an incandescent blare and went dark. Midnight seemed to tumble out of the sky… The beams of her headlights appeared to sag to the ground… unable to penetrate the sudden blackness.
Its interior light gave off a faint glow that seemed to efface the rest of the vehicle, so that only the trunk retained any rality in this world.
For an instant, fierce white filled the hall as though it shone straight through the walls into her eyes; as though in that moment the hallway and Linden herself had been ripped into another reality… darkness recoiled over her, stifling her flashlight
If light represents reality, it's a fragile one. What light there is seems to be false and feeble, perhaps no surprise, as Foul's eyes appear in the lightning strikes.An instant later, gunfire and Lord Foul's blasts burned all light away (ironic), and she fell into the bottomless night
As for blood and knowledge, I have an even less clear understanding as to what is meant by it. The main thing drawing me to this is Roger's remark to Linden about her cut hand:
Blood pleased Pietten, fueled the banefire, gives Joan relief and strength, and now dooms Linden Avery. Strangely enough, her bleeding hand is the one Roger tells her to cut off for her son (which of course would create more blood)."Your hand is bleeding, Doctor." His tone betrayed a hint of eagerness. "Why do you suppose that is?"
She gaped at him, momentarily silenced. How had he--?
But he gripped her son by the wrist; pointed his gun at Sandy's head. For their sake, Linden retorted, "Because I cut myself."
"No." Again he shook his head. "It's because you're already doomed. You can't get out of it now."
It seems unlikely that Roger would let her go, however. He's gone to great lengths, apparently to bring this very situation about. Every step of the way, Linden has felt like Roger was welcoming her to this ordeal (welcoming to betrayal?), leaving the lights on in her house, the trail of blood in Covenant's house. And where she's being welcomed, Linden will follow.
As far as knowledge, Roger appears to not know Jeremiah's name, yet he knows he's been vacant for ten years.Before he butchered Sandy as he had Sara, to open the way for the Land's destruction, and Jeremiah's.
She would go. She would.
So was whoever in there just blasted out, or has he been somewhere else for ten years… easy enough to calculate for someone who knows the time differential between the real world and The Land?He's just meat. Don't you know that? An empty carcass. There's nothing you could do to save him. There hasn't been anyone in there for ten years.
Wherever Roger's knowledge comes from, he seems to think it stems from his parentage.
I believe he's saying his knowledge comes from being born into despair. That would explain why it's such a Foul-tinted kind. If so, he's painting himself as a victim of his upbringing, and we all know how much Foul loves the self-victimized. Funny, though, I think most of us would consider Covenant the 'victim,' and in some ways, Joan the leper."You said I haven't earned the knowledge. But you don't know anything about me.
"How did you earn it?"
…
"By being her son," he replied without a glance at Joan. "And Thomas Covenant's. My parents were a leper and a victim. Really, Doctor. You could at least try to imagine who I am."
Finally, there are a few random items I'd like to touch upon. They all relate to Covenant, perhaps in the way Roger relates to Covenant.
I imagine that's how Covenant would've had to open the door.Shifting the flashlight in her grasp, she used to fingers and the tip of her thumb to test the doorknob.
She had not returned to the woods since the night of Covenant's murder, but she was sure of them. Where else could Roger go, if he wished to undo his father's self-sacrifice.
How does she know so much about him (yet so little)? How would Roger know of the event, much less the location, except intuitively? If she understood Roger so well… is he just an unloved child, seeking Covenant's attention?Standing somewhere else in these woods, on a hillside above Righters Creek, Thomas Covenant had once seen a young girl threatened by a timber rattler…
Roger would avoid such a place. The ground itself might retain too much of his father's courage.
"Jeremiah had no worth in himself; no power, no ring." Oh, how I hope that this is irony.
Certainly agree on that one. The trick is sifting out what are actual clues, and what is window-dressing. 
) ... other than that, it just occurred to me after listening to Ch 5 again and reading the posts here. I didn't look at the Ch 4 post yet, I'll be interested to see what Avy said about Elena.
