Ignorance as motivation/plot device

Book 3 of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

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Zarathustra
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Post by Zarathustra »

Shadowslance wrote:If those with information had told Linden everything that she wanted to know would she be capable of doing what was necessary for the world to survive? Had she known that TC and Jeremiah were Roger and Jeremiah with a Croyel she wouldn't have gone through the caesure and met Carreroil Wildwood and had the staff of the law engraved with the Runes of Life and Death.
If the reason for keeping her ignorant was in order to produce a certain outcome--and not because her freedom is necessary in itself--then it was just manipulation, plain and simple. That would be fine by me. You could still have a good story that way. But it would mean that all this "absolute necessity of freedom" stuff is just B.S. (Which is kind of my point.) It would mean that she wasn't kept ignorant for her own sake, but because those who were withholding the knowledge wanted to manipulate her choices in order for her to get the Staff and the Runes ... which has nothing to do with freedom.
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Post by aliantha »

The "necessity of freedom" doesn't, then, cover the freedom to evaluate whether you're being manipulated?
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Post by chaplainchris »

Z - I agree, in part, that the necessity of freedom stuff does seem to vary in how "absolute" it must be. Some of that may be due to Covenant, though - he's operating under different rules with Linden than his friends did with him, or than the Creator did with him (in the first Chronicles), or with Linden (in the second). That could explain some discrepancies.

Also, I'll note that Linden overstates how much help the Dead gave Covenant. They gave him some encouragement, and they urged him to take Vain. But they didn't tell him why or what he was for, and they didn't tell him the location of the One Tree (just locked the info in there for him to have the Elohim extract, if he chose to), or to seek the Staff of Law - which he decided to do based on the info he earned by sacrificing his blood through the soothtell.

Did Linden earn info from the Ranhyn, by choosing to leave the Land, choosing to join up with Ramen and Ranhyn, choosing to trust them in the horserite, choosing to drink of the Tarn and run with them, etc.?

The (very unclear) distinction Donaldson is making is not between any knowledge and no knowledge, but between earned and unearned knowledge.

Still, I agree (despite my earlier post about voting) that someone sharing their opinion should not equate to violating freedom. Or as aliantha says, freedom ought to include the freedom to decide you're being manipulated and to make your own choices.
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Post by Zarathustra »

chaplainchris, good points. I had the feeling that Linden was overstating the help TC had received, too. Whining a bit. But they did help him, while they're not helping her. That complaint remains.
Or as aliantha says, freedom ought to include the freedom to decide you're being manipulated and to make your own choices.
If you have intrepretted aliantha's meaning correctly, then I suppose I agree. People should be able to decide for themselves whether or not they're being manipulated. But then that makes my case that it wouldn't hurt Linden to be told more, since she can always decide whether or not the people telling her are trying to manipulate her (which is what I think you're saying, right?).

I think you hit the nail on the head with the "earned vs unearned." I acknowledge that this is Donaldson's intention. Maybe my misgivings would be assuaged if he spent more time in the book justifying that concept. For instance, he could state explictly how Linden earned the horserite revelation, as you point out. And then state explicitly how she hasn't earned the right to know who Roger really was. Or what would happen if she tried to bring Covenant back. Does "earn" only mean that you discover it yourself? Well, then the Seven Words of power weren't earned, nor the horserite, nor the Runes. Those were given to her. Actually, that goes for the ring, too. So "earned" can't simply mean that you make it or discover it yourself. But if we allow "you've earned it girl, therefore now I'm going to give it to you" to be included in this concept, then I don't see how she hasn't earned the right to know about the Worm.

Of course, there's still plenty of time for Donaldson to explain these things to us.
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Post by Orlion »

I think the main people guilty here for using ignorance and then complaining about it are the Elohim. Though at the same time, their thoughts extend throughout time, and would be alien to us. Maybe to another Elohim, saying "'Ware the half-hand" clearly means, "Hey, don't use the staff and the krill to resurrect the TimeWarden, or the Worm will devour us all!"

I also think the Elohim feel like they're talking to retarded children when they try to explain themselves.
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Post by aliantha »

Orlion wrote:I also think the Elohim feel like they're talking to retarded children when they try to explain themselves.
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Post by starkllr »

This is Donaldson justifying his rules, his narrative choices. He's trying to say that it makes sense, that there's a difference between Linden and Covenant, one that justifies giving TC help back then (when it was necessary to the plot), but not giving Linden help now (when it is necessary to the plot). But at the same time, Donaldson is saying that these differences don't matter, that Covenant was still free despite the (unearned) help and info he was given. He's trying to have it both ways: it's okay to give one character help from the Creator and the Dead, but not another character. Ultimately, all that matters is there wouldn't have been a 2nd Chrons story if Covenant wasn't given his Quest and the means to achieve it, and there wouldn't have been a Last Chrons Linden's Terrible Mistake if she had been warned in clear terms. Everything else is just rationalization.
I can *sort of* buy the distinction between Covenant's gifts from his Dead in the 2nd Chronicles, and Linden's lack of help from them in the 3rd.

For one thing, Covenant doesn't really get anything in the way of clear guidance or direct aid.

Yes, he's given Vain, but with no information whatosever about what his purpose is, or how it might be accomplished. So that's a fairly ambiguous bit of help, at best.

He's given the location of the thing he seeks, but not what it *is*, or how to get at the information.

He's told by Mhoram thre things: that he must leave the land, that that "the thing he seeks is not what it seems", and that "in the end, you must return to the Land". The first one he would have figured out on his own after the Soothtell, so it's really not all that helpful. The second only makes sense after it's come to pass, so, again, not real helpful. And the third was a given anyway, so it didn't really do him any good to hear it.

All the advice and help given to Covenant either is cryptic to the point of uselessness, so giving it to him isn't really impacting his freedom or his choices. The most you could say is that his Dead give him hope that there at least *is* a way to defeat Foul and save/heal the Land, which enables him to go on and actually do it.

In Linden's case, she's already got her goal clearly in mind, and she's got in her hands the means to achieve it. And she's been warned, repeatedly - by the Ranyhyn, by the Elohim, by the Insequent - and one of her Dead, Sunder, flat-out tells her that her "deeds [will] come to doom".

So I don't think Donaldson is really having it both ways here. He's pushing things, but I think he's (mostly) playing by the rules he set up.
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Post by Zarathustra »

starkllr, good points. You make a compelling argument.

I remember reading in the Gradual Interview Donaldson's justifications for the plotting of the 2nd Chrons, specifically how everything was set up in Andelain with the Dead. I was satisfied with his explanations then. Maybe if I dug those up and reread, I'd feel better about what he's doing now.
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Post by Aleksandr »

In WGW TC withholds his intentions from Linden and the Giants as they travel to Mount Thunder. All he tells them is that he's going there to explain something to Lord Foul-- not "I'm going to give him my Ring and goad him into killing me so I can merge with the Arch of Time and protect it from him."
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Post by Mighara Sovmadhi »

How many people warned Linden, directly or indirectly, that she was on course to absolute disaster?

1. Lord Foul
2. The Ranyhyn
3. The Viles
4. The Harrow & the Wraith-song
5. Infelice
6. Liand and Stave saw vast darkness in her
7. The Giants warned her that she was striving for too much power
8. The Humbled compared her plans to prior pre-Desecration scenarios
9. The Mahdoubt warned her about herself
10. Esmer
11. Hollian and Sunder, of the Dead, told her to foreswear her purpose in Andelain. Since she knew what her purpose was, she knew they were telling her that she would threaten the world with destruction by resurrecting Covenant. Besides breaking the Arch, waking the Worm was the only way known to Linden for the Earth to be destroyed. Since she knew she wasn't going to be able to break the Arch, she could have by process of elimination concluded that by resurrecting Covenant, she would rouse the Worm.

When Covenant met the Dead, he was not yet in a position to ruin the Earth. He didn't even get to make use of the information about what he was seeking not being what he thought it was to be. In fact, Vain mostly affected Linden's choices, not Covenant's. Bannor's request is for something Covenant would've done anyway. Elena's advice is too general to act on (of course Covenant will protect Linden, but Covenant will not be able to determine how Linden can "heal us all"). Mhoram tells him to keep track of something he already knows.

Suppose, then, that the Dead told Linden something besides what Hollian and Sunder already did. What would they say that she couldn't figure out on her own? What mystical gibber-jabber would they phrase their warning in?

EDIT: Also, it was possible to figure out that Linden was going to resurrect Covenant.

A) She was after the krill, which was used in a resurrection scenario before.
B) She was always saying to herself from mid-FR onward, "Everything came back to Thomas Covenant," or, "In Andelain, she would find rest, the krill--and Covenant," or something along those lines.
C) To bring the character back into the story, that was perhaps the most effective method. Well, in fact, SRD's ending to TLD must depend on Covenant having been alive at some time again during the Last Chronicles, so resurrecting him was essential to the story. We can only know that last sentence now that Covenant is incarnate again, though.
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Post by Lambolt »

kind of related to this but one of the things I find annoying (I still love the series) is that so much of it includes stuff like vague wishy washy predictions and riddles by characters that seem to be there just to frustrate you as a reader, I mean, it's overdone, there are too many of them IMO. The Elohim became overbearing in that regard but the 3rd series in general seems more and more crammed with this kind of thing.
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Post by dlbpharmd »

Lambolt wrote:kind of related to this but one of the things I find annoying (I still love the series) is that so much of it includes stuff like vague wishy washy predictions and riddles by characters that seem to be there just to frustrate you as a reader, I mean, it's overdone, there are too many of them IMO. The Elohim became overbearing in that regard but the 3rd series in general seems more and more crammed with this kind of thing.
Agreed. Anele and Esmer come to mind as primary culprits for this.
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Post by ussusimiel »

dlbpharmd wrote:
Lambolt wrote:kind of related to this but one of the things I find annoying (I still love the series) is that so much of it includes stuff like vague wishy washy predictions and riddles by characters that seem to be there just to frustrate you as a reader, I mean, it's overdone, there are too many of them IMO. The Elohim became overbearing in that regard but the 3rd series in general seems more and more crammed with this kind of thing.
Agreed. Anele and Esmer come to mind as primary culprits for this.
+1

This is one of my biggest problems with the Last Chrons; its almost infinite complexity. There are so many characters, so many powers, so many mysteries, so much intrigue that it becomes nigh on impossible to keep it all in my head (I gave up trying half way through FR) and, IMO, it doesn't add to the story. The 2nd Chrons had a subtly balanced complexity to its plot; summed up by Mhoram, 'It boots nothing to avoid his snares for they are ever beset with other snares'. I didn't necessarily follow all the threads of the plot but I felt that if I put my mind to it that I could.

Not so with the Last Chrons. There are just too many forces at play for my puny mind to hold. And the result of this is that I can't care about any of the characters (good or bad) involved. In the 1st and 2nd Chrons I could really get up a good level of hatred for the Ravers. Remember what they did to the Unfettered One in TPTP, or the Giants or Verement or Linden. Simple, straight-forward evil acts. I could care less about Roger, Kastenessen, or the croyel (are the croyel even individuals?). IMO, this is due to the complexity of the plot and the crowding of the story with too many characters.


On the topic of this thread: I thought that the 'necessity of freedom' related only to the Creator and Foul. The danger in both cases was that a person would become a 'tool' of these foes, and so a danger to the Arch in the case of the Creator, and unable to threaten the arch in the case of Foul. After that it was a case of desired outcomes on the part of the Dead or the ur-viles in the 2nd Chrons. Unearned knowledge would lead to disaster as the attempt to skip steps would leave the main participants without the skills or experience they would need when the crunch came. Those skills being garnered as the knowledge was won the hard way.

It may be that SRD has moved the idea of the 'necessity of freedom' to something else. It's not about freedom but about being able to bear the consequences of decisions and action. To quote SRD (from the GI, I think) quoting Esmer:
[Keep] Esmer's Law in mind: "That which appears evil need not have been so from the beginning, and need not remain so until the end."
I think that this is about decisions. The important thing is to make a decision when a decision needs to be made and then deal with the outcomes. Linden decided to resurrect Covenant in spite of all the information that she had (and didn't have). That decision had to be made one way or the other. It looks like an evil decision (as everyone told her it was), but Esmer's Law says different. Linden's decision was made with her heart, but maybe if the Dead or Covenant had told her it was the right decision to make she would not have had to place so much trust in herself and in her heartfelt decision. By making that decision in contradiction to all the information she had, she has been altered as a person, she has learned (earned?) something that she could not otherwise have learned.

u.

P.S. Those who know me know that I am ever loathe to credit Linden with anything in the Last Chrons. This is still the case. Be quite clear that here I am crediting SRD not Linden :lol:

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Post by Zarathustra »

Mighara, you're right about all the people who warned Linden. My question is, if it's okay for these people to warn Linden, then why wouldn't it have been okay for them to warn her explicitly? Why not tell her exactly what would happen and then let her make up her mind? It's like telling your kids not to smoke cigarettes because something horrible will happen, but then not telling them that this something' is cancer and death. Why would anyone do that? That fact that she could have guessed it on her own means there's even less reason for not telling her. If it's obvious, why the secrecy? Well, that's for us. There's no plot or character reason. Just reader manipulation.

The same could be said of Findail and the One Tree. Why was it okay for him to plead for Covenant not to go to the One Tree--to try to stop him and change his mind--but not tell him the reason why? When Covenant asked this very question in WGW, Findail admits that he may have erred in that. May?? Ya think? He said that he'd hoped some "access of wisdom" would have occurred to Covenant to change his mind. But how could he have expected Covenant to access some wisdom when he was purposely withholding crucial knowledge? And doing so for apparently no other reason besides the slim hope that Covenant would guess it all by himself? Ridiculous. If there was no danger in telling Covenant about rousing the Worm--which clearly there was not, or Findail would have justified himself by saying so instead of admitting error--then it's just moronic for Findail to withhold the reasons why touching the Tree is dangerous.

In the end, as I've been saying, it's just a way to manufacture narrative tension. Findail didn't tell Covenant because Donaldson wanted us to wonder what the big damn deal was, and if Findail told Covenant before it happened, we wouldn't have been as shocked. (This is also the reason for Seadreamer's pointless silence.) I wouldn't say it's a cheap ploy, because used effectively it can keep us turning pages. Learning what happens next is a basic part of the mystery of all story-telling. But when used for no good reason, I feel just as manipulated as Covenant.
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Post by Mighara Sovmadhi »

Zarathustra wrote:... if it's okay for these people to warn Linden, then why wouldn't it have been okay for them to warn her explicitly? Why not tell her exactly what would happen and then let her make up her mind? It's like telling your kids not to smoke cigarettes because something horrible will happen, but then not telling them that this something' is cancer and death. Why would anyone do that? That fact that she could have guessed it on her own means there's even less reason for not telling her. If it's obvious, why the secrecy? Well, that's for us. There's no plot or character reason. Just reader manipulation.
I don't know if it's reader manipulation if we could have figured it out ourselves just as well as Linden could've (I knew for almost all of FR that Linden would bring Covenant back to life, and that's not because I skipped to the last chapter first; I should've known that this would invoke disaster, but I just wanted desperately to see Linden proven totally right so that I clouded my judgment on this very question). I would even go further and claim that Linden on some level knew that she was being warned about rousing the Worm but came up with some questionable way around this warning, thinking that the purity of her intention (to resurrect Covenant) would miraculously cancel out the fact that her intention required overwhelmingly dangerous might.

(Actually, for her to have to reason out the threat instead of being plainly just told it outright might be the necessity of freedom in itself. If she doesn't use her ability to reason, she's not free (this is a Kantian idea, not that I know SRD to self-consciously employ Kantian ideas in his work, though through Jung there's a more or less guaranteed synchronicity (pun intended)), and if she comes to know something without logically inferring it, then her knowledge is not free.)
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Post by Zarathustra »

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm glad you've found a way to make peace with these issues. I wish I could.
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Post by Krilly »

I never really thought of ignorance as a theme before... But it does seem important, particularly in the third series of books.

In fact, even Linden remarks at one point in AATE how frustrating it is that all the "species" she encounters speak in riddles, and the few that don't (ur-viles) she can't understand. And even when Esmer is gone, she STILL can't quite fully understand the ur-viles.

I wouldn't quite say "ignorance" is the device, but that's it's a small piece of the innocence/guilt philosophy of the books. Only the damned can be saved and the ignorant are always damned to some degree. Omniscient beings such as Elohim will definitely not be saved. Worm food. With TC displaced and Linden's future writ in water, her freedom of choice is exceptionally pure... No other beings can influence her with foreknowledge. It almost seems like the heroes need to strive for the guilt of hyper-ignorance before they can obtain the necessary power.
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Post by Zarathustra »

Krilly, I'm using the word "device" to mean a writer's tool, like his repeating of key phrases or sentences is a device. Without a doubt, ignorance is necessary to move this story forward. If the characters had the all the different instances of knowledge that could have easily been given to them--without any of the consequences Donaldson implies would happen, as I've shown in detail throughout this thread--then this story would not have happened. That goes for both the 2nd and Last Chronicles.

Now, I realize that he justifies these choices with his innocence, freedom, earned knowledge philosophies. If that works, and if that's used consistently, then it's a successful device. I'm still open to that possibility, but not convinced. You're welcome to try to make a convincing argument, but I recommend reading through my posts on the first page to see the examples from the text I used to make my case before doing so.
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Post by Krilly »

Sorry, didn't mean to eschew your argument. I'm aware of your intention of pointing out the literary device. I actually agree with you on that front, especially in this series. I just kinda had a thought-spark from reading your posts and felt the need to blurt it out.

I'm wondering that since these devices are so heavily piled on that TLD will, like a pendulum with built up potential energy, swing far the other way and we'll find ourselves buried in loose-end-tying as all the previous ignorances are swept away. Information over load that feels similarly contrived.
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Post by Zarathustra »

No need to apologize! I appreciate your (and everyone else's) participation in my discussion.
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