The Wounded Land, Chapter 2: Something Broken

[Furls Fire]

Well, I don't know if it's real or not. But, the 2nd Chrons make it really hard for it to be a dream. We've kicked this around alot in other threads.

I think, the only thing that matters now is that Covenant himself is willing to accept that it is real. He's not going to deny it, or bargain with it, or try to disprove its existance. None of that matters to him anymore. The only thing that DOES matter to him is that Foul is back, and he's doing something to it again. And Covenant is not going to let him get away with it.

[caamora]

Danlo, my answer to your questions about why Berenford chose Linden. I think it was simply because she was a newcomer to the town. No one else would go near TC. Berenford was taking a chance when he asked her and was visibly relieved when she accepted. After all, Berenford was surrounded by small-minded people who wanted nothing to do with the leper who lived down the lane. An outsider was just what he needed.

One of the things I found interesting in this chapter is the observation that Berenford makes of Covenant

He hates that novel - calls it inane - but his wife and son he still loves. Or thinks he does. Personally, I doubt it. He's an intensely loyal man. What he calls love, I call being loyal to his own pain.

I find this very insightful and I believe that Covenant does not love Joan anymore. I think that this is what makes his loving Linden possible.

[Cloudberry]

The light cast a tinge of red over the house, as if it were in the process of being transformed into something else.

This reminds me of the symbolism that was found in the Sixth Sense. Red being used only to indicate that the dead were around. Here it seems to be an obvious reference to Blood.

When I read about the red tinge I took it for some kind of foreshadowing.

Spoiler

The fire = red and the fact that they are taken to the Land = transformation.

I haven't seen the Sixth Sense but now I think I have to! Sounds interesting.

[Seafoam Understone]

I can't believe that there are still folks out there who miss such great movies ... Cloudberry... be prepared to be creeped out by the 6th Sense. A great flick.
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danlo: I seemed to have gone right past your request(?) on the topic of Covenant's acceptance and my own experiences and the 12 steps.
I must've avoided it the first time because of prinicpal but I think I can step back to it and make a few related comments. BTW... how was I on your case homey?

Anyway. Covenant's overall acceptance was at best minimal by the time Linden meets him. His leprosy he's taken it with acceptance to a degree. He knows that he has it and what it can do to him. But he's still angry inside. He's still largely shunned by the world around him. The world he knows it being the town he lives in. His lawyer works for him but you get the impression that it's done over the phone or by mail.
Berenford goes to see him and that's it. Doctors... know better.
But since Covenant is still largely angry deep down inside about his leprosy but has accepted it to deal with it.
My own alcoholism (and other isms) I had to deal with and yeah accept it but it took about the first six months of my own soberiety to finally come to terms that Yes, I have a problem with it. Am I happy about it? You mean am I happy that I accepted it? I had to or die. Same with Covenant he knew that he he had to accept his leprosy or die. It's an internal thing that goes on I think with all of us in things that we must accept.
Think upon a couple who's baby they looked forward to is born with Downs Syndrome. Not the doctor or nobel prize winner they dreamed it to be. So they have to deal with the kid. Accept it and choose to love it and care for it. Or deny it and put it up for adoption.
Acceptance I think is a choice; a take it or leave it proposition, and take the consenquences.
Covenant's time at the leprosarium taught him much about his disease, thus educated him enough where he being the educated man in the first place made an informed decision to accept it.
Me with my alcoholism and being an educated man (can't you tell? ...I ramble like a Giant) spent six months in a half-way house learning about my disease and thus I was able to make my informed decision to accept it. When I did... it made all the difference in the world.
As we read in the second chronicles we can see the differences it made for TC.
Notice though... LA seemed to accept it more readily than TC on his first time around. Yeah she had issues with possession and evil and bla bla bla... but she went through it fairly ok... my observation at least.

[danlo]

I was only joking-both you and Fist were teasing me about my spelling!

I would like to assume that TC has managed and has come to some terms with his anger over the past 10 years. The Joan situation stirred up alot of frustration and foreboding. Another reason why he appears to be angry is probably due to stress and sheer exhaustion.

[Kinslaughterer]

You really have to think about how much stress Covenant has been under in the last 10 years. He was a seemingly happily married, successful, young author with a child THEN boom! Leprosy, abandonment, ostracized from society, Covenant seems to live simply out of spite. He's thrown into an impossible world. He comes to terms with that world and returns to the real world with some answers. He finds a bit of happiness, real happiness, in his real world when the impossible world calls him back again...
poor bastard...

[duchess of malfi]

For a moment, she considered simply abondoning the favor she had promised Dr. Berenford. She started the engine, began to turn the wheel. But the exigency of the old man's eyes held her. That blue would not approve of the breaking of promises. And she had saved him. She had set a precedent for herself which was more important than any question of difficulty or mortification. When she put the sedan into motion, she sent it straight down the dirt road toward the white frame house, with the dust and the sunset at her back.
The light cast a tinge of red over the house, as if it were in the process of being transformed into something else.

Again, we see Linden's stubbornness and dedication to her patients and to her duty here...

For the second time in the course of the sunset, she was held by eyes that were too potent for her.

A scream like a mouthful of broken glass snatched her to a halt. It oierced the mutter of her sedan. Slivers of sound cut at her hearing. A woman screaming in agony or madness.

For a lone woman, the sensible thing to do at this point is to leave to get help. If this unknown man really has another woman in there, one being hurt, it would be very easy for an unarmed woman (who doesn't even have a cell phone) acting alone to also become a possible victim at his hands...Linden leaves to go get further information about the situation and about Covenant...

But her musing raised Coevenant's visage before her in the darkness. Gradually, that needy face became more real to her. She saw the lines of lonliness and gall on his mien. She responded to the strictness of his countenance as if she had recognized a comrade. After all, she was familiar with bitterness, loss, isolation.
But the doctor's speech also filled her with questions. She wanted to know where Covenant had learned his stability. What had changed him? Where had he found an answer potent enough to preserve him against the poverty of his life? And what had happened recently to take it away from him?

Linden was squirming. She understood at least one kind of relationship between guilt and effectiveness. She had committed murder, and had become a doctor because she had committed murder. She knew that people like herself were driven to power by the need to assoil their guilt. But she had found nothing - no anodyne orrestitution - to verify the claim that the damned could be saved. perhaps Covenant had fooled Dr. berenford; perhaps he was crazy, a madman wearing a clever mask of stability. Or perhaps he knew something she did not.
Something she needed.

Be true.
She did not know how.

Spoiler

Perhaps that very knowledge, of how to be true, is the answer that Covenant has, which she so desperately needs in her own life...

[matrixman]

It's a bit of a jolt to see Joan re-appear here; seemed to me like she belonged to a part of Covenant's life that was over. Truth is, at the back of my mind, I resented her return. Joan had disgraced herself in the first Chronicles, so it was mildly upsetting to see her suddenly take the spotlight again. It was like, hey, I screwed his life before and--hello--I'm back to prove I can screw his life once more. That's possibly an unfair view of Joan, but her character has always seemed one-dimensional compared to the others, so that is how I see her--more caricature than real human being. She serves a specific purpose (leaving Covenant in a mess, coming back to put him in another mess) but we really don't get to know what makes her tick. What are Joan's hopes and dreams? A brief description of her in Lord Foul's Bane is really all the hard information we have on her. She remains "closed to me", to use Atiaran Trell-mate's words.

I'd also like to mention this quip from Dr. Berenford, talking about Covenant:

He's a leper who doesn't go to church, and he's got money. Some of our evangelicals consider that an insult to the Almighty.

That line might be inconsequential (what? nothing in SRD is inconsequential!) but it's a wonderfully deadpan observation that sums up Covenant's lot in the community. It would be funny, if it weren't so tragic.

[shadowbinding shoe]

How has Covenant dealt with his situation since last we saw him? Seafoam Understone, I don't really get your opinion on this. He seems to have accepted his situation, even embraced it (he refused the miracle cure for his leprosy at the end of TPTP. He believes that getting it would be cheating on who he were). But why should that stop him from feeling angry at the community that ostracizes him? They do him an injustice and he should be entitled for some bitterness over it.

In any case I think his experience in the Land made him content to live outside the society in his world. As of before he was hanging on the edges of his community starving for human touch and compassion now he is content with the memories he gained of the Land and doesn't seek any contact with people.

The books he write express the insights he learned on how Despite could be dealt with. How he became strong through the power of his guilt. The number 7 (the books he wrote) is interesting in that light. They are the seven words of power that the Lords used to fight the Despiser and uphold the Law.

What he has left to learn in this second chronicle is

Spoiler

humility. To be passive and supportive of others. That there is strength in doing that and not just in fighting might with might as he did before. (assuming Foamfollower role.)