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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 4:39 pm
by Zarathustra
TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote: Covenant has an extreme sense of personal responsibility.
The rape scene and his unwillingness to act in the Land makes
him appear irresponsible, but this is not true. On many
occasions Covenant takes responsibility for things that
have happened there. And at the end of the first trilogy,
he makes a decision which shows the depths of his
commitment and sense of moral responsibility. But
Covenant is also human, so there is inner conflict and
inner turmoil. In the end, however, he resolves it.
I don't know about the rape, but his stance regarding the Land is certainly a moral stance. A quote from a recent post I made describes this much better than I could.
In the GI, Donaldson wrote:
. . . if a man rejects a "fantasy world," he should be someone for whom fantasy is infinitely preferrable to reality. A man with a good life who experiences a horrible fantasy is only too grateful to label it a nightmare: that is mere self-interest. But if a man with a horrible life experiences a wonderful fantasy and *still* rejects it, that is not self-interest: it is a statement of principle; a rigorous and expensive and even self-sacrificing conviction about the nature of both "reality" and "importance"; a--in effect--religious affirmation. And *whose* "real life," I suddenly asked myself, could possibly be worse than a leper's?
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:55 am
by thewormoftheworld'send
Donaldson made sure that Covenant paid for that act
of rape throughout the trilogy. This payment was not so
much inflicted on Covenant as a physical punishment
but as an emotional one - the emotional cost of seeing
the damage he caused to the people of the Land,
for example Lena, Atarian, and Elena who was
a damaged product of that rape. Donaldson set out to
make sure that Covenant felt bad, really bad, in
terms of having a bad conscience. In the end, this
feeling of guilt, which is due to Covenant's sense of
moral responsibility, breaks down Covenant's resolve
not to act.
The Donaldson quote implies that Covenant's unbelief
was due to some principle, he does not say it was any
moral principle, he says "religious." Still, morality and
religion often require self-sacrifice, as he said. That's
really a Christian statement Donaldson is making
in that quote, it reflects the dictum of Jesus which states
that "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it:
and whosoever shall lose it shall preserve it."
So what really is the
Power that preserves?
White gold, or some deeper principle Covenant hung
onto until the end? You can see Covenant's motives
in the Jesus quote: he spent most of the trilogy seeking
to preserve his life,
and in the end he lost his
life in the Land, rejecting the Creator's gift, in order to
preserve it in his real world.
Malik23 wrote:TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote: Covenant has an extreme sense of personal responsibility.
The rape scene and his unwillingness to act in the Land makes
him appear irresponsible, but this is not true. On many
occasions Covenant takes responsibility for things that
have happened there. And at the end of the first trilogy,
he makes a decision which shows the depths of his
commitment and sense of moral responsibility. But
Covenant is also human, so there is inner conflict and
inner turmoil. In the end, however, he resolves it.
I don't know about the rape, but his stance regarding the Land is certainly a moral stance. A quote from a recent post I made describes this much better than I could.
In the GI, Donaldson wrote:
. . . if a man rejects a "fantasy world," he should be someone for whom fantasy is infinitely preferrable to reality. A man with a good life who experiences a horrible fantasy is only too grateful to label it a nightmare: that is mere self-interest. But if a man with a horrible life experiences a wonderful fantasy and *still* rejects it, that is not self-interest: it is a statement of principle; a rigorous and expensive and even self-sacrificing conviction about the nature of both "reality" and "importance"; a--in effect--religious affirmation. And *whose* "real life," I suddenly asked myself, could possibly be worse than a leper's?
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 6:02 pm
by Zarathustra
That's
really a Christian statement Donaldson is making
in that quote,
The statement Donaldson is making isn't unique to Christianity. There are many religions that praise self-sacrifice over self-interest. If your Christian background helps you to relate to this story, that's great! But I think it's a mistake to claim Donaldson is making a "Christian" statement. I don't want to speak for him, but he has some very critical things to say about Christianity in the Gradual Interview.
I don't think he means words like "religion" the same way many religious people mean them. For instance, I think there are few Christians who would agree with this: "Fiction is the only valid form of spiritual inquiry." Surely Christians don't think their only tool for exploring spiritual issues is reading works of fiction . . . unless you've got a completely different view of the Bible than most Christians.
Another interesting Donaldson quote:
So: when I say I'm not a religious person, I mean I don't adhere to--or even listen to--anyone or anything who thinks that he/she/it can tell me THE TRUTH ABOUT LIFE. On the other hand, I'm *very* interested in the efforts of my characters to discover and name their particular versions of THE TRUTH ABOUT LIFE. And I'm so interested, of course, because I'm trying to do the same thing they are. In my view, therefore, I'm a spiritual rather than a religious person; and I write stories about spiritual questions rather than about religious answers.
And, I was very proud to have coaxed this answer out of him myself:
So you could--if you were so inclined--say that my stance as a story-teller is one of "existential humanism."
Though he qualified that response with:
But that is not at all the same thing as saying that my stories are *about* existential humanism. My stories are not *about* anything except my characters and their emotions; their dilemmas and their responses to those dilemmas.
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:13 pm
by thewormoftheworld'send
I agree that Donaldson doesn't mean "religon" in the same way as Christians do. However, in his GI Donaldson has stated that his religious upbringing is so ingrained that he can't help but include concepts
such as "Redemption" in his novels. So while I don't think Donaldson was promoting Christianity, unlike C.S. Lewis and Narnia, the influence
shows, and he admits it. I also recall him saying in his GI that his parents (especially, he said, his mother) would be "horrified" to see the uses he made with those Christian concepts.
I'm not sure we can discuss this unless someone is willing to hazard a defintion of "innocence"--or of "purity". I'm aware that my thinking on the subject is skewed by my childhood immersion in judgmental theology. "Original sin" is only one of the many distortions that I was programmed to accept without question. Since then, I've learned to think in ways that would doubtless horrify my parents (or at least my mother)...
There are other good quotes about Donaldson's Christian influence
buried within the GI:
"Fundamentalist Christianity" is "bred in the bone" for me; so deeply ingrained that it can never be extirpated, no matter how hard I may try...My conscious mind no longer lives in that world: my unconscious does what it wills.
Still, one can hardly look back on Donaldson books--*any* Donaldson books--without becoming aware that they're about redemption. My protagonists *always* have to "work out their own salvation with fear and trembling." Clearly this is a Humanist--or even an Existentialist--view of "redemption". Yet the stuff in the marrow of my bones never goes away. To the idea that "nobody [in the GAP books] seems worth redeeming," my instinctive reaction is: Would Christ have said that? Who needs redemption more than those who appear least worthy?
And this:
If anything, the tradition I was drawing on was Christian (because of my background in fundamentalist Christianity, not because I am in any useful sense a believer)...
And this:
My background--the stuff that's bred in my bones--is in Christian archetypes: Good and Evil, redemption and damnation, the "covenant of Law" and the "covenant of Grace," sin, forgiveness, despair. Anthropomorphic interpretations of "the Divine". Creation. Armageddon. That sort of thing. As much as possible, I bring my whole mind to bear on what I'm writing.
The very meaning behind the name Thomas Covenant has a biblical reference:
But I also had double meanings for Thomas Covenant. "Thomas" was, of course, the "doubting" Apostle. But in the Bible there are *two* "covenants," "the covenant of law" and "the covenant of grace". If you think of "law" as the restrictions (commandments) imposed by Covenant's leprosy, and "grace" as his eventual ability to become more humane (to sacrifice himself for people and causes other than himself), you'll see what I mean.
But then:
I did not intend to present Covenant "as [a] character with deep religious beliefs or values": I intended to present him as a character whose struggles are *about* "deep religious beliefs and values".
So I'm not trying to contradict you. However, Donaldson is not drawing primarily on any one philosophy in his writing, which is what you seem to be implying in your response. And the Christian upbringing, while not necessarily brought to conscious attention, is a powerful influence, even if Donaldson has given it a Humanist or Existentialist slant. Consciously, Donaldson is drawing on as many sources as he finds useful for his task; and unconsciously, there are other forces at work which he himself probably doesn't understand.
Malik23 wrote:That's
really a Christian statement Donaldson is making
in that quote,
The statement Donaldson is making isn't unique to Christianity. There are many religions that praise self-sacrifice over self-interest. If your Christian background helps you to relate to this story, that's great! But I think it's a mistake to claim Donaldson is making a "Christian" statement. I don't want to speak for him, but he has some very critical things to say about Christianity in the Gradual Interview.
I don't think he means words like "religion" the same way many religious people mean them. For instance, I think there are few Christians who would agree with this: "Fiction is the only valid form of spiritual inquiry." Surely Christians don't think their only tool for exploring spiritual issues is reading works of fiction . . . unless you've got a completely different view of the Bible than most Christians.
Another interesting Donaldson quote:
So: when I say I'm not a religious person, I mean I don't adhere to--or even listen to--anyone or anything who thinks that he/she/it can tell me THE TRUTH ABOUT LIFE. On the other hand, I'm *very* interested in the efforts of my characters to discover and name their particular versions of THE TRUTH ABOUT LIFE. And I'm so interested, of course, because I'm trying to do the same thing they are. In my view, therefore, I'm a spiritual rather than a religious person; and I write stories about spiritual questions rather than about religious answers.
And, I was very proud to have coaxed this answer out of him myself:
So you could--if you were so inclined--say that my stance as a story-teller is one of "existential humanism."
Though he qualified that response with:
But that is not at all the same thing as saying that my stories are *about* existential humanism. My stories are not *about* anything except my characters and their emotions; their dilemmas and their responses to those dilemmas.
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:23 pm
by Menolly
Um guys...
I love the points you all are making.
But, this is in a thread started by someone who has barely begun The Illearth War at this point...
I know the series is old, and we aren't spoilering things anymore regarding it, but perhaps some of the concepts that come later in the series than where Bruiser has stated he's at should be weighed possibly spoiling the series for him, or discussing in another thread?
...just a suggestion, don't mind me...
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:58 pm
by thewormoftheworld'send
The only issue I see here might be "thread drift," but I don't think so. I have mentioned Redemption only in the same vein as someone else who mentioned in this thread that Covenant "gets better" in the long run.
I'm all for starting another thread if anybody cares to. From my own point-of-view however, it would have been nice to know which concepts were involved in the creation of this series at my very first reading. And in the end, I
still did not understand them. That is why the GI is such an amazing tool. I don't think it would spoil anything for Bruiser to know what he's getting in to. And I am still obliquely responding to his comments. Covenant acts like a dick because of his principles - which are not exactly Christian but are principles nevertheless in a "religious" sense. And the ultimate source of these principles is Covenant's creator, Stephen R. Donaldson, along with all those things which make him a unique individual: his education, his religious upbringing, his life experiences, his personal philosophy, whatever wild-cards are tossed in by subconscious impulses which (in Donaldson's own words) have "a will of their own," and buried parts of himself which only come out through his novels as with the character Angus Thermopyle. All of this can be used to explain why Donaldson created a character who acts the way Covenant does, or in other words, simply why Covenant acts the way he does.
Menolly wrote:Um guys...
I love the points you all are making.
But, this is in a thread started by someone who has barely begun The Illearth War at this point...
I know the series is old, and we aren't spoilering things anymore regarding it, but perhaps some of the concepts that come later in the series than where Bruiser has stated he's at should be weighed possibly spoiling the series for him, or discussing in another thread?
...just a suggestion, don't mind me...
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:01 pm
by Zarathustra
WATWE, good points. I didn't mean to imply that he was drawing on only one particular philosophy, or that there weren't Christian influences. I guess I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that his point was specifically Christian. My bad.
Menolly, if Bruiser can infer any plot points from what we've said regarding religion and philosophy, he's a better man than I am!
Yeah, we've thread-jacked. But I'm trying to be careful not to give anything away in this thread.
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:14 pm
by thewormoftheworld'send
Malik23 wrote:
I don't think he means words like "religion" the same way many religious people mean them.
I think he means something like this: extremely scrupulous and conscientious; "religious in observing the rules of health."
as200l.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=religious
The "health" part of the example is extremely relevant in Covenant's case. Covenant is not a religious type of person in the normal sense, only in the broadest sense of the word as indicated by the definition I gave; a strict and "religious" lifestyle has been forced upon him by his leprosy in terms of the rituals he must perform just to stay alive, such as VSE.
Leprosy has become a sort of personal religion for him. And yes, I'm still responding to Bruiser's comment
The biased towards leperacy is annoying as crap. Of course when the book was written the bias was a normal thing.
Of course Covenant is biased (religious) toward leprosy, he is the Unbeliever after all, leprosy and Unbelief are inextricably entertwined; and when he wakes up from what he believes is a dream he does not want to allow its psychologically powerful influence (his desire to return to the beauty of the Land in particular) to disrupt his religious lifestyle, his routine, his VSE ritual (which is a ritual in a broadly religious sense). I'm afraid Covenant is just going to be annoying, and unlikable, up until the very end. His only hope is found in certain tacitly held religious concepts, such as redemption and forgiveness, concepts which are nevertheless quite beyond Covenant's way of thinking. Mhoram's forgiveness of Covenant at one point is particularly telling.
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:18 pm
by thewormoftheworld'send
I thought you were implying that Donaldson was coming at this series from an existentialist humanist point-of-view, although in his response to you on the GI he did say that he was not attempting to purvey any philosophy whatsoever. And his ultimate goal at any rate seems to be entertainment. I guess if readers wants to glean more than that from his novels then that's up to them.
As for thread-jacking, I like to think that this is all still relevant to Bruiser's comments. We've simply moved beyond Covenant's motivations to the author's possible motivations for creating Covenant's motivations.
Malik23 wrote:WATWE, good points. I didn't mean to imply that he was drawing on only one particular philosophy, or that there weren't Christian influences. I guess I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that his point was specifically Christian. My bad.
Menolly, if Bruiser can infer any plot points from what we've said regarding religion and philosophy, he's a better man than I am!
Yeah, we've thread-jacked. But I'm trying to be careful not to give anything away in this thread.
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 8:22 pm
by thewormoftheworld'send
TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:I thought you were implying that Donaldson was coming at this series from an existentialist humanist point-of-view, although in his response to you on the GI he did say that he was not attempting to purvey any philosophy whatsoever. And his ultimate goal at any rate seems to be entertainment.
And, I should add, to make some money so he can eat. I believe he made such a comment either on the GI or somewhere else.
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:43 am
by Menolly
Malik23 wrote:Menolly, if Bruiser can infer any plot points from what we've said regarding religion and philosophy, he's a better man than I am!
Yeah, we've thread-jacked. But I'm trying to be careful not to give anything away in this thread.
Point taken, Malik. I guess I just have a different perspective of spoilering.
It has been a long time since I read the first two chrons, but if I am remembering correctly, at the point Bruiser said he was at, the issue of redemption and such is still very much in question. That is one of the main themes of
The Illearth War. To me, saying the series deals with these issues is a spoiler.
But again, that's just me.
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 4:18 pm
by thewormoftheworld'send
If talking about redemption is spoiling, then to say Covenant "gets better" is also spoiling.
Menolly wrote:Malik23 wrote:Menolly, if Bruiser can infer any plot points from what we've said regarding religion and philosophy, he's a better man than I am!
Yeah, we've thread-jacked. But I'm trying to be careful not to give anything away in this thread.
Point taken, Malik. I guess I just have a different perspective of spoilering.
It has been a long time since I read the first two chrons, but if I am remembering correctly, at the point Bruiser said he was at, the issue of redemption and such is still very much in question. That is one of the main themes of
The Illearth War. To me, saying the series deals with these issues is a spoiler.
But again, that's just me.
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 5:40 pm
by wayfriend
TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:If talking about redemption is spoiling, then to say Covenant "gets better" is also spoiling.
IMHO, "Covenant gets better"
IS spoiling.
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 5:53 pm
by Menolly
wayfriend wrote:TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:If talking about redemption is spoiling, then to say Covenant "gets better" is also spoiling.
IMHO, "Covenant gets better"
IS spoiling.
For what it's worth, I agree.
..but...
*shrug*
(thanks wayfriend)
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:19 pm
by thewormoftheworld'send
Ahh, but there is no anti-spoiling rule involving the first chronicles, second chronicles, and I believe some of the last chronicles now are also spoiler-free.
Menolly wrote:wayfriend wrote:TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:If talking about redemption is spoiling, then to say Covenant "gets better" is also spoiling.
IMHO, "Covenant gets better"
IS spoiling.
For what it's worth, I agree.
..but...
*shrug*
(thanks wayfriend)
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:22 pm
by wayfriend
Yeah, but if you're writing an answer to be read by a guy who told you he only read as far as LFB, you can give him spoilers, despite the fact that it's within the general forum rules (which presume everyone has read through WGW).
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:35 pm
by Menolly
TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:Ahh, but there is no anti-spoiling rule involving the first chronicles, second chronicles, and I believe some of the last chronicles now are also spoiler-free.
*nodding*
Which why I said what I said when I first brought this up...
Menolly wrote:Um guys...
I love the points you all are making.
But, this is in a thread started by someone who has barely begun The Illearth War at this point...
I know the series is old, and we aren't spoilering things anymore regarding it, but perhaps some of the concepts that come later in the series than where Bruiser has stated he's at should be weighed possibly spoiling the series for him, or discussing in another thread?
...just a suggestion, don't mind me...
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 7:29 pm
by thewormoftheworld'send
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:12 pm
by kevinswatch
Yes...let us all please be considerate of people who are currently reading the Chronicles for the first time and not put spoilers in their own topics...(I don't see how mine really is, though...)-jay
Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:20 pm
by [Syl]
Split because I'm bored.
If I'm in the middle of a movie and go out to the lobby and read the reviews on a fan-site, I have no one to blame for spoilers but myself. I really think this concept of spoilers is being taken way too far. AFAIAC, spoilers are only major plot points from unreleased material. Certain allowances can be made, but as the word seems to be being used, half of the forum's thread titles are spoilers.
