Kevin's Watch

Why isn't Lena mortified by the oozing sickness of leprosy that she would perceive immediately when encountering Cov on KW? This would probably be the first time she'd ever encountered anything even remotely close to this level of sickness.

She does address it and gives Cov hurtloam, but it doesn't seem to appaul her...or anyone else in subsequent novels the way I would think it would...

Is this a clue that the Land is indeed a figment of Cov's imagination - a dream - and that's why the surrounding cast doesn't question him/it?

Remember that TC is "closed", unreadable by health-sense, to the people of the Land.

Even if it were not so, his leprosy was dormant. There were no "oozings", just a slow nerve death, to detect.

deer of the dawn wrote:Remember that TC is "closed", unreadable by health-sense, to the people of the Land.

Even if it were not so, his leprosy was dormant. There were no "oozings", just a slow nerve death, to detect.

REally? I guess I always imagined his face somewhat like McDowell's character in Braveheart without questioning it...hmmmm...

You also have to take into account what leprosy actually is.
A very strong bacterium that KILLS nerves. The bacteria can't be completely killed, but it can be arrested, so the nerve damage starts at the extremities and works its way in.
The oozing and falling off limbs results not from leprosy itself but from the complications of injurying yourself when you don't realize it. It is a lot like diabetes in that regard.
Remember what his initial injury was. A cut to his hand. Looked a little nasty, but it was just a cut. But he lost two fingers as a result.
If she could indeed see the condition, she would see dead nerves. Not pus and pustulence. Those are potential when he shows up. Not actual.

That is why he was doing VSE every so often.

The pus and pustulence would be a result of gangrene because he didn't take care of any injuries. TC keep a regiment of checking himself for any damage. He would attend to those injuries when needed.

Man. Lol. It would be a difficult thing to get his leprosy across in a film, huh?

Indeed. His numbness would be difficult to convey, as it is a bodily numbness as well as an emotional one. Maybe with some voiceover, film noir-style, but that may become tedious and didactic.

Maybe a more see-through/blue hued skin tone?

I'm not seeing a big need to convey his leprosy physically on screen. If you show, just for a moment, how he is a pariah in his own town, and then connect it to his bitter outlook which he then carries to the land, this seems sufficient. People still know what leprosy is, they still feel the instinctual revulsion of lepers, leprosy hasn't been romanticised as other diseases.

true...a flashback in the Leprosarium would connect the venom.

wayfriend wrote:I'm not seeing a big need to convey his leprosy physically on screen. If you show, just for a moment, how he is a pariah in his own town, and then connect it to his bitter outlook which he then carries to the land, this seems sufficient. People still know what leprosy is, they still feel the instinctual revulsion of lepers, leprosy hasn't been romanticised as other diseases.

We should do something about this..."Leperosy Awarness Week," a few fundraising walks, get Bob Dole to do some commercials [boy, I thought ED was bad...imagine if you didn't even HAVE one to dysfunction?]
We'd need a little ribbon pin...but what color? All the good colors are taken.

Vraith wrote:

wayfriend wrote:I'm not seeing a big need to convey his leprosy physically on screen. If you show, just for a moment, how he is a pariah in his own town, and then connect it to his bitter outlook which he then carries to the land, this seems sufficient. People still know what leprosy is, they still feel the instinctual revulsion of lepers, leprosy hasn't been romanticised as other diseases.

We should do something about this..."Leperosy Awarness Week," a few fundraising walks, get Bob Dole to do some commercials [boy, I thought ED was bad...imagine if you didn't even HAVE one to dysfunction?]
We'd need a little ribbon pin...but what color? All the good colors are taken.

How bout Roynish Black?

In a film I could see them exaggerating the condition of his hands, make them a beat up and scared show a few quick examples of accidents and burns...
That way showing the Hurtloam healing effects would be obvious.

Conveying his impotence on film will be trickier though. And I wonder if it's worth it to mention it at all.
If they can show his exhilaration of being fully alive after the hurtloam heals him they could pass over that tidbit.

It would probably help to show the progression from "normal" to really scarred of another leper in the Leprosarium flashback...too

High Lord Tolkien wrote:In a film I could see them exaggerating the condition of his hands, make them a beat up and scared show a few quick examples of accidents and burns...
That way showing the Hurtloam healing effects would be obvious.

Conveying his impotence on film will be trickier though. And I wonder if it's worth it to mention it at all.
If they can show his exhilaration of being fully alive after the hurtloam heals him they could pass over that tidbit.

If Lena's rape is to be in there (and it should, somehow, as it's vital) then there should be an allusion to the impotence, too, since the rape is a direct response to the sudden and unimaginable curing of TC's impotence by hurtloam.

As far as an interpretation to cinema.. I think it could all be represented so much better in the Anime style..

I respectfully disagree. The primary colours of an anime and the stylized characters do not fit the rich and lush language and imagery of Donaldson in my opinion.