Kevin's Watch

don't think your poll leaves any room for possible "middle ground" solutions. The eye of the paradox. So I didn't vote

paradox wrote:

don't think your poll leaves any room for possible "middle ground" solutions. The eye of the paradox. So I didn't vote

i was wondering about that.. i added another option that said:

It doesn't really matter, the demand for absolute answers is dangerous... and i have none...

but it didn't appear.... how can i edit this?

Put simply, fantasy is a form of fiction in which the internal crises or conflicts or processes of the characters are dramatized as if they were external individuals or events. Crudely stated, this means that in fantasy the characters meet themselves - or parts of themselves, their own needs/problems/exigencies - as actors on the stage of the story, and so the internal struggle to deal with those needs/problems/exigencies is played out as an external struggle in the action of the story. A somewhat oversimplified way to make the same point is by comparing fantasy to realistic, mainstream fiction. In realistic fiction, the characters are expressions of their world, whereas in fantasy the world is an expressions of the characters. Even if you argue that realistic fiction is about the characters, and that the world they live in is just one tool to express them, it remains true that the details which make up their world come from a recognized body of reality – tables, chairs, jobs, stresses which we all acknowledge as being external and real, forceful on their own terms. In fantasy, however, the ultimate justification for all the external details arises from the characters themselves. The characters confer reality on their surroundings.

This is obviously true in "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant." The villain of the piece, Lord Foul, is a personified evil whose importance hinges explicitly on the fact that he is a part of Thomas Covenant. On some level, Covenant despises himself for his leprosy - so in the fantasy he meets that Despite from the outside; he meets Lord Foul and wrestles with him as an external enemy

sgtnull wrote:when TC is there the Land is real.

DukkhaWaynhim wrote: First Hile Troy, then Linden, and now Jeremiah & Joan complicate this solipsistic explanation, but I don't think they rule it out.

DW

Gil galad wrote:I think one of the main points is that in the end it doesn't matter whether the land is real or not, covenant still has to deal with the consequences of his actions in either case.

To his blurred gaze, the comrades of the company grew slowly harder and solider - took on the texture of native rock. And the mountain itself became increasingly adamantine. It seemed as immutable as the cornerstone of the world. He felt veils drop from his perception; he saw the unclouded fact of Gravin Threndor in all its unanswerable power. He paled beside it; his flesh grew thin, transient. Air as thick as smoke blew through him, chilling his bones.

...

Everything around him - Prothall and the company and the Ranyhin and the Fire-Lions and the mountain - became too solid for him. They overwhelmed his perceptions, passed beyond his senses into gray mist. He clutched about him and felt nothing. He could not see; the Land left the range of his eyes. It was too much for him, and he lost it.

The concussion threw him on his face in the dirt. Blackness filled the remains of his sight as if it were flooding from the barren Howe.

... People moved, voices called back and forth. But Covenant could not hear them clearly. His ears were deluged by tumult, a yammering, multitudinous yell of glee. And the sound came closer. It became louder and more immediate until it overwhelmed his eardrums, passed beyond the range of physical perception and shrieked directly into his brain.

After that, voices reached him obscurely, registered somehow through his overdriven hearing.

Bannor said, "Rivenrock bursts. There will be a great flood."

Lord Callindrill said, "Some good will come out of it. It will do much to cleanse the Wightwarrens under Mount Thunder."

Lord Mhoram said, "Behold - the Unbeliever departs. The High Lord has fallen."

But these things surpassed him; he could not hold onto them. The black dirt of Gallows Howe loomed in his face like an incarnation of midnight. And around it, encompassing it, consuming both him and it, the fiendish scream scaled upward, filling his skull and chest and limbs as if it were grinding his very bones to powder.

The weight of mortality which entombed Covenant seemed to press him deeper and deeper into the obdurate stuff of the ground. He felt that he had given up breathing - that the rock and soil through which he sank sealed him from all respiration - but the lack of air gave him no distress; he had no more need for the sweaty labor of breathing. He was plunging irresistibly, motionlessly downward, like a man falling into his fate.

Around him, the black earth changed slowly to mist and cold. It lost none of its solidity, none of its airless weight, but its substance altered, becoming by gradual increments a pitch-dark fog as massive and unanswerable as the pith of granite. With it, the cold increased. Cold and winter and mist wound about him like cerements.

He had no sense of duration, but at some point he became aware of a chill breeze in the mist. It eased some of the pressure on him, loosened his cerements. Then an abrupt rift appeared some distance away. Through the gap, he saw a fathomless night sky, unredeemed by any stars.

...

Now the cold stiffened under him, so that he felt he was descending on a slab, with the breeze blowing over him.

But the fire had a voice. At first, it was too loud to be understood. It reverberated in his ears like the crushing of boulders. He inhaled it with every failing breath; it echoed along the conflagration in his chest. But gradually it became clear.

paradox wrote:My first topic here guys... I was just wondering how many here actually think that the Land is real and How many think that it is just a dream?

Reasons concerning Gilden-fire are out since it wasn't really included in the actual chronicles....

Before you use Hile Troy, think about the fact that Covenant never really talked to him in the "real" world. And just because the Department of Defense could not find him does not mean that he didn't really exist.. It is the Government after all...