Kevin's Watch

I've been thinking about this over and over since I have read FR, and since I found out we really haven't gotten to know this character at all, no time with him, to come to like him and empathize with him.

I really don't know what his future is, but in my opinion, we'll have to see more of him, without the croyel, in the next book; because right now, I really couldn't care less what happens to Jeremiah, I don't know him, had to time to empathize or come to love him; therefore why would I care for what outcome he has? I know I'm not the only reader who feels this way; so it's my opinion that SRD has to bring Jeremiah back into the story early, and without the croyel, so he can begin to build a relationship between the readers and Jeremiah.

Also I feel inclined to comment on the relationship between Linden and Jeremiah; which is one of the most unhealthy relationships in a donaldson book. I know she supposedly loves the boy, but honestly, why? Linden went through years of legal hassle, and for the better part of ten years trailing after and wiping the bum of what is a vegetable. There is something seriously unhealthly about wanting that kind of child; now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the same sentiment applies to real people who look after children with any difficulties, I'm talking fiction here people; I just consider it unhealthy that the only person Linden chose to splash her love onafter all she went through learning to love is a person who cannot respond, is totally in her power.

And yet she seems to love Jeremiah so much, but obsessed is the better term, obsessed with somebody who for all she knows doesn't even notices her existence in his life. Love is a recipitating, I think it speaks volumes that linden chose a person who can't speak at all the person she wants to adopt.

So my theories, we'll have to see more of this character in the next book, early as well, in order for us to be engaged by him. What do you think? And regarding Linden's relationship to her son, though its been discussed before, is it really love? Or was it all about power from the start?[/list]

Well, I agree mostly with what you say.

I, too, have little invested interest in Jeremiah, mainly because he's been given so little prevalence in the story. I also think that SRD should show this character more for me to like him or become invested in him more.

At the same time, I think that the character is being shown to us through Linden mainly. Through her love for him, or as you said, her obsession. It does smack more of an obsession than love.

It could be that Linden chose this boy as a means to exert some sort of power. Could be her way of fighting against despite in her own world, as his maiming was done by Foul essentially. She learned to love by way of fighting with TC, so maybe she felt a need to continue to love by doing the same thing, exerting some sort of power over despite. But she's proven herself quite inadequate to make any real progress with the boy's affliction.

Her definition of love seems to be skewed in some way, not surprisingly ("You never loved me anyway.").

However you slice it, Jeremiah's future is inextricably tied up with Linden's, and I suspect the Land's as well. What becomes of her will be a reflection of what becomes of him, and vice versa. And the Land will either suffer or be redeemed based on the outcome of that relationship, methinks.

But don't forget about TC; this is still his chronicles, after all.

I feel exactly the same way, even a bit more so, perhaps. To me, every time I see "Jeremiah" I just cringe. I am so sick of seeing his name, and hearing about "Linden's son" that it's not even funny. Ya know what Lady, he's NOT your son. He's basically the equivalent of Roger, the by result of a young child with a F*&%ed up mother, who chose to do her tithing at the denomination of despite.

There is no reason why Linden should love this kid. And the fact that she does shows you that she's got some real problems....

Hellfire, I've got more sympathy for the children's miracle network than I do for the bullfrog....

I don't think Linden really loves Jeremiah at all, despite her obsession with him. She just feels guilty for not saving him in 2nd chrons, and is trying to make up for it now. She also is trying to make up for being unable to help anyone else in a significant way. Not that it's working any more with Jeremiah than with anyone else.
I also need to see more of Jeremiah sans croyel before I can give a d*mn about him. I don't want to hear any more about him unless it actually helps me get to know him. I don't need to hear Linden obsess about needing to save Jeremiah any more. I figured out after the first sixteen or seventeen mentions of "I have to save Jeremiah" that that was Linden's goal. Now I need to know why he's worth saving...

well, I think some of it may have to do with being a parent or not. As a father, I can immediately feel for Linden and her plight to get her son back. As for Jeremiah the character, I also feel for him... partially beause he is 'helpless' in a way ... an innocent being terribly manipulated and hurt. I cannot abide that in any sense, so emotinally I am both feet in to this story line.
Yes, I do hope we will learn more about him and have him grow as a character, and I have no doubt we will ... take a look ar the Gap series and Morn's son... started out the same way ... (in a sense).

We do need to have story that includes Jeremiah if Donaldson expects us to empathise with Jeremiah, I agree.

As far as the comments about Linden's love of Jeremiah and if it's healthy: this is not something that's written in the story, it's something readers add all on their own. I could never love Jeremiah, therefore Linden can't, therefore Linden has other motives, etc.

Donaldson wrote that she loved him, and he wrote why, and he wrote nothing to the contrary. Maybe he needed to spend more time at it to make it believable, as apparently it is hard for some people to believe. I'd sign up to that opinion.

But at some point you aren't interpreting what Donaldson wrote, you're projecting your own ideas into what Donaldson wrote. Making stuff up and adding it so that it fits your world view. And that is where this "unhealthy" and "obsession" stuff comes from.

If you "can't believe" that Linden loves her son, then this means that Donaldson didn't make his case -- it doesn't mean that we should imagine additional, unsavory elements to make it fit.

While the man's an amazing storyteller, I know SRD isn't perfect. At the same time, I'm not sure I buy that all of what's being said here about Linden's love for Jeremiah is sheer projection on the part of some of us readers. I think there are elements in the story that can lead us to make this inference.

Linden was introduced as a character who couldn't love, who had walled herself off to that possibility due to the way her parents treated her. Her father forced her to helplessly witness his own suicide. This experience gave her an intimate relationship with death and despair, which ultimately led to her essentially killing her mother. Once that line was crossed, her ability to love was essentially destroyed. Reviving it would take an experience so extreme that our world could scarcely conceive of it. Which is what her time in the Land with TC gave her.

She had already acted on her own inner despiser in her own world, so Foul clearly thought that she was prime to be forged for a new desecration. However, the Creator had different ideas. There is also love in the world. If anyone could lead her to find it, it was TC. And their travels, efforts against, and ultimate victory over despite taught her to love again. TC and his ability to transcend his own persistent self-loathing for his perceived inadequacy to the constant seemingly insurmountable odds was the perfect example for her to overcome her own limitations with regards to love.

Once they had become victorious, and Linden had fashioned a new Staff of Law, healing the Land of the Sunbane before her final translation; once that final act was done, what was she left with? Her love was lost. Covenant was dead, his spirit trapped inside the Land. She was left with the memory and his ring. And the transformation that she had undergone as a result of the totality of her experiences in the Land.

She had resurrected her ability to love, but had no object to focus it on. Time passed. She sought out a new object to focus her love on in the form of Jeremiah. She adopts him, of all people, I feel because of what was done to him by the Despiser. She got it twisted up in her mind that love for another involved efforts against despite. After all, that was how she had developed the ability to love again: by fighting against despair.

But opposing despair and despite is not love. It may not be obsession either, but love cannot be equivalent to fighting against hate.

I say all of this only as a means to show that seeing Linden's relationship with her son as an obsession, or something other than love, is not just a projection. I see what you're saying, but there's another way to look at it too.

In fact, this thinking might go a ways to explaining why Linden was so desperate to get TC back. She needs that source of love; she needs her teacher back.

That was a good post. But you lost me towards the end.

She didn't adopt Jeremiah because she loved him. Love came later. And that's okay as far as it goes.

What I think is very close to what you think, but that little bit makes all the difference.

Linden did learn how to love. But she is not a new person -- she's the same person she always was, with something added and something changed. It's not as if those first thirty years of her life did not happen. She's not miraculously cured.

She's now a person who can surmount the obstacles of her childhood. But that doesn't make the obstacles gone, and it's still an effort to surmount them.

So it's actually more implausible to think that she's going to become "normal" in the sense we're talking about here. She's not going to start hanging out in bars, or speed dating. She's still who she is, and she still has plenty of limitations.

Similarly, its also implausible to think that she's going to "seek out" someone or something to love. Because she is still who she is. She's capable of love, but it is too fundamentally at odds with her makeup to go that far.

Her love for Jeremiah is something she found, and it fit into the kind of person she is, and it worked. Sometimes that happens.

It's not fabricated out of a desire to fight despite. Because the one doesn't preclude the other. What started out as such a desire can have love added to it. (If you meet someone at the bowling alley, and you fall in love, do you then say, it's not love, it's a need to bowl masquerading as love?)

It's not something to focus on. She works at a mental hospital. She has more work to do there than she can do. She needs nothing more to focus on, if she wants to focus on something.

great posts you guys....

I'll admit that my understanding of how Linden came to love Jeremiah seems to be lacking (and I just reread TROTE again not long ago; what's wrong with my memory???) What, then, was her motivation to adopt Jeremiah? I know this must be explained in TROTE, but I haven't the time to go searching right now for textual corroboration.

My contention was, actually, that her seeking to adopt this boy was born of a need to continue to fight against despite as that was the context of her learning to love. I'll grant that her relationship may well have turned to love in the process.

However, I will also say this: Yes, she had plenty to focus on after returning to her world. She didn't need something else. However, she returned with a different energy than when she left. She had something new, and needed an outlet for it. Work was no longer enough. Perhaps I chose a poor word in "focus", but the idea still stands (in my head at least). She still had the fundamental need to help people, to heal them: she's a doctor. However, she also had a new need to love someone, and love needs an object just like any longing or urge we have. If Covenant were still around, do you think she would have adopted this boy?

You know, I happen to like Jeremiah, and I think he's a good character that fits perfectly into an SRD book. He actually reminds me a little bit like Morn's son ( I can't remember his name at the moment), though I'm not sure why. However, I can state why Jeremiah intrigues me.

Jeremiah is the ONLY character in the LC that can defeat Lord Foul for good without necesarily destroying time in the process. I'm assuming that his power to make traps to attract certain beings could be applied to Foul, an assumption which may prove false later on.

Now, even though he has this great power, he doesn't do anything (not helping the case for liking Jeremiah, but bare with me) probably out of fear and wanting to hide, to be safe. For whatever reason, I find this dynamic fascinating.

Also, I don't think Foul has finished torturing Linden by using Jeremiah, in fact, I have a feeling that maybe, just maybe, after all we went through, Foul will bring despair to us all by having Jeremiah trap Thomas Covenant in one of his traps, effectivly removing him as a threat to his plans to destroy the Arch of Time. So sorry, THOOLAH, it's gonna have to be Linden who saves or damns (very likely) the day. She will also probably keep the White Gold too (after all, Foul wants to be given white gold, not trap it beyond his reach forever.)

I pretty much agree with Orlion and I wish I could remember the quote from Runes, but it sort of said that her love for Jeremiah filled the void left by losing TC...

danlo wrote:I pretty much agree with Orlion and I wish I could remember the quote from Runes, but it sort of said that her love for Jeremiah filled the void left by losing TC...

In [u]The Runes of the Earth[/u] was wrote:In addition, her gratitude for Jeremiah was too great to be contained in words. He was the center of her life. He gave her a use for the capacity for love which she had learned from Covenant; from Sunder and Hollian, the First and Pitchwife; and from the Land.

On that point, I agree.

What I don't agree to is that Linden manufactured or forced a love out of a situation that otherwise contained none. Or sought or grasped blindly for anything to love and Jeremiah was in easy reach.

She does love him. I don't doubt it. But her choice of loved ones is notable and shouldn't be glossed over.

She chooses to gift her love on people who can't refuse it, twist it or otherwise fail her like her parents did. In other words she's willing to give her love only where there are no risks.

A dead man and a practical vegetable.

A normal woman would have been expected to find a new man, maybe the sainted Doctor Berenford and start a family with normal children but Linden doesn't go this way. She doesn't even choose someone that is damaged but has a chance to recover (like her). She chooses a hopeless case. Someone that will always be absolutely dependent on her. Someone that is more object than person.

shadowbinding shoe wrote:She chooses to gift her love on people who can't refuse it, twist it or otherwise fail her like her parents did.

Now I feel you're being unfair, and are projecting rather than interpreting what is written.

Linden didn't wake up one day and say, "I need to find someone to love who can't refuse my love. Where can I go? Oh yeah, I remember this mute kid at the orphanage, I can so take advantage of him. Where's my keys?"

You're taking a circumstance and claiming it's a motive.

Linden doesn't love Jeremiah because he's broken. She loves Jeremiah even though he is broken.

she chose him knowing what his condition was. He hadn't became mentally 'broken' after she chose to adopt him but before.

Consider: I bought my truck knowing that it didn't have heated seats. Does that mean that I bought it *because* it didn't have heated seats? No, of course not. Does it mean that I can't buy a truck *unless* the seats are unheated? No, of course not.

So: Linden knew Jeremiah's condition when she adopted him. Does that mean she adopted him because of his condition?

No. Not in and of itself.

Does it mean she could not adopt someone *unless* they had Jeremiah's considition?

No. Not in and of itself.

You have to find something else in the book that shows what you're suggesting. This is not enough to make a case.

In [u]The Runes of the Earth[/u] was wrote:When at last she tracked him down and arranged to meet him, she recognized immediately the missing piece of her heart, the part which might make her whole.

So. Linden didn't know that Jeremiah would complete her until *after* she decided to find him and adopt him.

In [u]The Runes of the Earth[/u] was wrote:She knew what it was like to be a conscious prisoner inside her own skull, defeated by power and malice. The Clave and Ravers had victimized her in that way. Indirectly the Elohim had done the same. The thought that Jeremiah might be in a comparable state, knowing and alone within his mental cell, wrung her utterly.

And to Linden, Jeremiah's condition doesn't represent an inability to resist her, nor a condition for love. No, to Linden, Jeremiah is just like her, as she once was. What she might have ended up being. He's her, but beaten by circumstance rather than surpassing it.

He is her child in a true way.

Consider: I bought my truck knowing that it didn't have heated seats. Does that mean that I bought it *because* it didn't have heated seats? No, of course not. Does it mean that I can't buy a truck *unless* the seats are unheated? No, of course not.

Is this comparison serious??? If you want to talk cars I'd say she bought a car that had been gutted of its engine and most inner parts and was missing a front wheel as well. So out of all the cars in the lot why did she pick this wreck? Because she liked the windshield?

You show nicely that she sees something of herself in him. A 'beaten' version of herself. She is attracted to him because of his disabilities.

Now ask yourself another question. Suppose her choice to love Jeremiah doesn't indicate she can't love a normal person in a normal reciprocal relationship. Why is there no one in her life that qualifies for this? She never reached out for it and I'd say even discouraged it in everyone. She has acquaintances she talks business with but she is not very close to any of them.

shadowbinding shoe wrote:Is this comparison serious???

If you think I am comparing Jeremiah to a car, you are being disingenous. In fact, I did not even make a comparison. I demonstrated the difference between motive and coincidence. Which I've exhaused the ways of explaining now.

shadowbinding shoe wrote:She is attracted to him because of his disabilities.

That's absolutely positively NOT what the text I quoted says. Sorry you see it that way.

shadowbinding shoe wrote:Now ask yourself another question. Suppose her choice to love Jeremiah doesn't indicate she can't love a normal person in a normal reciprocal relationship. Why is there no one in her life that qualifies for this?

Because being capable of it and wanting it doesn't bring it. See the Valentines Day threads in this forum, for example. A woman who works long hours at her job, and is a single mom, has a hard time finding a man. Ask around.

Re: A normal woman would have been expected to find a new man, maybe the sainted Doctor Berenford


Besides being quite a bit older than Linden (he was older even than Covenant) Dr Berenford is already married. TC mentions that his wife is disabled and hence the doctor had some sympathy for his own attempt to care for Joan.