Joan's Ultimate Fate

[thewormoftheworld'send]

When Joan dies in the Land, does she also die in the "real" world? The parallels thesis suggests it.

[Prover of Life]

I would think so. She was struck by lightning initially. The krill's power was the parallel.

She's toast.

But are we through with her? Could she possibly be a part of "SHE" now? If so - will the resolution of this entity damn or save her?

*sigh* so much to wait for.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I would think so. She was struck by lightning initially. The krill's power was the parallel.

She's toast.

But are we through with her? Could she possibly be a part of "SHE" now? If so - will the resolution of this entity damn or save her?

*sigh* so much to wait for.

My reading indicated that "SHE" has to literally eat her female victims. Elena may be saved or damned in the end, but Joan is no longer relevant except to the way Covenant feels, as turiya so nicely pointed out, about how he ultimately influenced her fate.

It's not Covenant's fault for contracting leprosy, it's not Covenant's fault that he tripped and fell unconscious when she called him at the beginning of TIW. But it seems that characters such as Linden and Covenant are infinitely resourceful at finding ways to guilt themselves.

[rdhopeca]

When Joan dies in the Land, does she also die in the "real" world? The parallels thesis suggests it.

I think she dies in the Land *because* she died in the real world. I don't think you can separate the two per se.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

When Joan dies in the Land, does she also die in the "real" world? The parallels thesis suggests it.

I think she dies in the Land *because* she died in the real world. I don't think you can separate the two per se.

Didn't she die in the "real" world before she died in the Land? Aren't the Chrons still a shared dream?

[aliantha]

I am pretty sure everybody's moved past the "is the Land real or imagined" mechanics. I know SRD has.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I am pretty sure everybody's moved past the "is the Land real or imagined" mechanics. I know SRD has.

Of course. Covenant is dead in the "real" world yet alive in the Land. Why can't the same be true for Joan?

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I am pretty sure everybody's moved past the "is the Land real or imagined" mechanics. I know SRD has.

It depends on the question being asked. If someone explicitly asks Donaldson if the Land is real or a dream, he will say it doesn't matter. If however someone asks why it is that every human in the Land's world speaks English, he will answer that Covenant's language is English so naturally everybody in his hallucination speaks it except for the non-humans.

From the GI:

Look at the issue from a different perspective. How could I sustain, even briefly, the internal integrity of Covenant's Unbelief if he couldn't even talk to the people he meets? If the whole experience is a form of hallucination, which he desperately strives to believe--if it's all being generated inside his own failing mind--then *of course* everyone else speaks his language. What else could they possibly speak?

(Obviously "inhuman creatures" like the Waynhim and ur-viles are a different case. Since they represent alien concepts in Covenant's thinking, he wouldn't *expect* to understand them.)

(10/25/2010)

Note that this GI response dates back to only two weeks ago.

[Orlion]

What's important about the "is the Land real or not" is not the choice between "yea" or "nay", but rather, "wait it second, this doesn't really matter!" That was the resolution in the First Chronicles. Without that resolution, we'd still be debating whether or not Covenant's rape of Lena was bad, since whether or not the Land is real could have a bearing on it. Once we come to terms that the reality of the Land isn't important, we have pure, distilled morality. The rape was bad, resisting Despair is good. This stands up because we are no longer considering if the actions are real in of themselves, and can now move on to more important things.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

What's important about the "is the Land real or not" is not the choice between "yea" or "nay", but rather, "wait it second, this doesn't really matter!" That was the resolution in the First Chronicles. Without that resolution, we'd still be debating whether or not Covenant's rape of Lena was bad, since whether or not the Land is real could have a bearing on it. Once we come to terms that the reality of the Land isn't important, we have pure, distilled morality. The rape was bad, resisting Despair is good. This stands up because we are no longer considering if the actions are real in of themselves, and can now move on to more important things.

Agreed, but I wouldn't put it quite that way. The final moral of the lesson of the First Chrons is that what one does in dreams, where there are no real consequences, is revealing of one's character as a person. Covenant was first revealed to be of lowly character, from his covert slavering over the window-shopping girls in the "real" world at the beginning of LFB, to the rape of Lena soon after his translation to the Land. But Covenant does have a conscience, and he spent the next two novels trying to atone for his act while at the same time affirming his Unbelief.

[Vraith]

I am pretty sure everybody's moved past the "is the Land real or imagined" mechanics. I know SRD has.

Of course. Covenant is dead in the "real" world yet alive in the Land. Why can't the same be true for Joan?

At this point, I think this is true for all of them...tc, linden, roger, jerry...though there may be a little wiggle room. [and way back when, it was true for Hile].

edit: forgot to put in the point...but dead people in the Land have never turned up alive in real world. Joan is dead in both now.

[aliantha]

I am pretty sure everybody's moved past the "is the Land real or imagined" mechanics. I know SRD has.

It depends on the question being asked. If someone explicitly asks Donaldson if the Land is real or a dream, he will say it doesn't matter. If however someone asks why it is that every human in the Land's world speaks English, he will answer that Covenant's language is English so naturally everybody in his hallucination speaks it except for the non-humans.

From the GI:

Look at the issue from a different perspective. How could I sustain, even briefly, the internal integrity of Covenant's Unbelief if he couldn't even talk to the people he meets? If the whole experience is a form of hallucination, which he desperately strives to believe--if it's all being generated inside his own failing mind--then *of course* everyone else speaks his language. What else could they possibly speak?

(Obviously "inhuman creatures" like the Waynhim and ur-viles are a different case. Since they represent alien concepts in Covenant's thinking, he wouldn't *expect* to understand them.)

(10/25/2010)

Note that this GI response dates back to only two weeks ago.

You missed a key word in his response. I highlighted it for you.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I am pretty sure everybody's moved past the "is the Land real or imagined" mechanics. I know SRD has.

It depends on the question being asked. If someone explicitly asks Donaldson if the Land is real or a dream, he will say it doesn't matter. If however someone asks why it is that every human in the Land's world speaks English, he will answer that Covenant's language is English so naturally everybody in his hallucination speaks it except for the non-humans.

From the GI:

Look at the issue from a different perspective. How could I sustain, even briefly, the internal integrity of Covenant's Unbelief if he couldn't even talk to the people he meets? If the whole experience is a form of hallucination, which he desperately strives to believe--if it's all being generated inside his own failing mind--then *of course* everyone else speaks his language. What else could they possibly speak?

(Obviously "inhuman creatures" like the Waynhim and ur-viles are a different case. Since they represent alien concepts in Covenant's thinking, he wouldn't *expect* to understand them.)

(10/25/2010)

Note that this GI response dates back to only two weeks ago.

You missed a key word in his response. I highlighted it for you.

Agreed, it's important to note that Donaldson is not committed to the "dream" interpretation, but he still uses it hypothetically.

[aliantha]

Since you didn't copy over the question, I can only assume -- but I'm guessing the question related to events in the 1st Chrons, when it was crucial to the story for Covenant to question whether the Land is real.

Once he reaches the conclusion at the end of TPTP that it doesn't matter whether the Land is real or not, then the question is no longer relevant.

And as soon as SRD brings Linden into it, it's pretty clear (to me, anyhow) that the Land is real. It's highly unlikely that they would hallucinate the same "shared dream" with the same characters -- altho I suppose you could still argue that Linden's piggybacking on Covenant's hallucination, that somehow their minds met while both of them were passed out on that rock together. And she has no way to confirm it, just as Covenant had no way to contact Hile Troy after TIW.

But the events at the start of Runes pretty much put paid to the notion that the Land isn't real. By then, a whole boatload of people are sharing the same "dream" with Linden. (But it still doesn't matter; the characters in the story still have to act ethically, whether the Land is real or not.)

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I am pretty sure everybody's moved past the "is the Land real or imagined" mechanics. I know SRD has.

Of course. Covenant is dead in the "real" world yet alive in the Land. Why can't the same be true for Joan?

At this point, I think this is true for all of them...tc, linden, roger, jerry...though there may be a little wiggle room. [and way back when, it was true for Hile].

edit: forgot to put in the point...but dead people in the Land have never turned up alive in real world. Joan is dead in both now.

Bullet holes in the chest of everybody's shirts. Lytton's boys are sure good shots when they want to be: even at night, during a crazy rainstorm, with lightning the only light to see by.

[Zarathustra]

Something I just now read in the GI kind of blew my mind:

However, you've focused on Joan. And where she is concerned, my response is actually quite simple: in her case, "madness" is emphatically *not* "a form of external Evil". In symbolic terms, she represents Covenant's self-loathing; specifically his loathing of leprosy, and of himself as a leper. In psychological terms, of course, she represents herself; and she has externalized or projected her own self-loathing as a loathing for Covenant-the-leper. (This fact in no way alters her symbolic meaning in Covenant's internal drama.) For herself, she became vulnerable to being used (possessed) by external Evil because her loathing had already torn her apart (madness). For Covenant, she is, and perhaps has always been, the question he must answer: Is that me? Is it a part of me? And if it is, what do I do about it? How can I live with it?(07/10/2009)

In my reading and analysis, I've chosen the "shared dream" interpretation, but this quote implies something even more extreme: it's not a shared dream at all, but it's still all just Covenant. (Even Linden and Jeremiah.) At least in symbolic terms. Whatever that means.

And now this has got me thinking about the end of AATE. Symbolically, Covenant didn't kill his ex-wife. He killed the part of himself that is his own self-loathing. I thought he had already done away with that, but what if he hadn't? What if he just learned to live with it? If so, this was an absolutely essential part of his overall story arc, and the last step towards his final redemption.

[Vraith]

Something I just now read in the GI kind of blew my mind:

However, you've focused on Joan. And where she is concerned, my response is actually quite simple: in her case, "madness" is emphatically *not* "a form of external Evil". In symbolic terms, she represents Covenant's self-loathing; specifically his loathing of leprosy, and of himself as a leper. In psychological terms, of course, she represents herself; and she has externalized or projected her own self-loathing as a loathing for Covenant-the-leper. (This fact in no way alters her symbolic meaning in Covenant's internal drama.) For herself, she became vulnerable to being used (possessed) by external Evil because her loathing had already torn her apart (madness). For Covenant, she is, and perhaps has always been, the question he must answer: Is that me? Is it a part of me? And if it is, what do I do about it? How can I live with it?(07/10/2009)

In my reading and analysis, I've chosen the "shared dream" interpretation, but this quote implies something even more extreme: it's not a shared dream at all, but it's still all just Covenant. (Even Linden and Jeremiah.) At least in symbolic terms. Whatever that means.

And now this has got me thinking about the end of AATE. Symbolically, Covenant didn't kill his ex-wife. He killed the part of himself that is his own self-loathing. I thought he had already done away with that, but what if he hadn't? What if he just learned to live with it? If so, this was an absolutely essential part of his overall story arc, and the last step towards his final redemption.

Agree. Particularly significant to note the mood/motivation/psychology of the killing: Not fear/anger/revenge/justice...but of love, mercy, empathy, acceptance. I made it explicit this way, though it seems implicit in what you said [given it is part of redemption], because it spawned a question: Is there a difference in kind between the "Joan-Loathing," and the "LF-Despite?" And what is it? His last dealing with LF was also an acceptance...the same, yet different in method/accomplishment.
I mean [heh...this might make it foggier, not clearer...ah, well] Is Joan just a sort of synecdoche of the whole of LF/loathing/despite? Or a different theme/symbol in her own right?

[shadowbinding shoe]

Something I just now read in the GI kind of blew my mind:

However, you've focused on Joan. And where she is concerned, my response is actually quite simple: in her case, "madness" is emphatically *not* "a form of external Evil". In symbolic terms, she represents Covenant's self-loathing; specifically his loathing of leprosy, and of himself as a leper. In psychological terms, of course, she represents herself; and she has externalized or projected her own self-loathing as a loathing for Covenant-the-leper. (This fact in no way alters her symbolic meaning in Covenant's internal drama.) For herself, she became vulnerable to being used (possessed) by external Evil because her loathing had already torn her apart (madness). For Covenant, she is, and perhaps has always been, the question he must answer: Is that me? Is it a part of me? And if it is, what do I do about it? How can I live with it?(07/10/2009)

In my reading and analysis, I've chosen the "shared dream" interpretation, but this quote implies something even more extreme: it's not a shared dream at all, but it's still all just Covenant. (Even Linden and Jeremiah.) At least in symbolic terms. Whatever that means.

And now this has got me thinking about the end of AATE. Symbolically, Covenant didn't kill his ex-wife. He killed the part of himself that is his own self-loathing. I thought he had already done away with that, but what if he hadn't? What if he just learned to live with it? If so, this was an absolutely essential part of his overall story arc, and the last step towards his final redemption.

This line of thought makes me uncomfortable. It reeks of objectification of other people. Joan is not important as a person, just a(n overly simplistic) representation of self loathing. I don't buy it just like I don't buy saying the Unhomed slaughter only matters as something relating to Covenant and the like.

For me, the story of Covenant's rape of Lena exemplifies this sort of thinking. Lena is not real and therefore she is what he think she is: a conjured (willing) toy created for his gratification. The act only becomes a crime in retrospect when Covenant's logic and story-building abilities develop the new dream-Land into a self-coherent thing where Lena is more than a paper thin fantasy object.

On the other hand (one might say in defiance of it) I also think that Covenant's morals are too rigid. The Christian line of thinking about the evil of unacted thoughts, or in this case dreams and imaginations is taking morality too far. Would dreams have much (metaphorical) meaning if they did not allow us to go beyond the limits of our daily lives, to enable us to experience all the possible outcome of an act instead of just one, to show us what might have been if we were truly free. Your dreams can teach you about yourself but you are not accountable for your dream-crimes.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

Something I just now read in the GI kind of blew my mind:

However, you've focused on Joan. And where she is concerned, my response is actually quite simple: in her case, "madness" is emphatically *not* "a form of external Evil". In symbolic terms, she represents Covenant's self-loathing; specifically his loathing of leprosy, and of himself as a leper. In psychological terms, of course, she represents herself; and she has externalized or projected her own self-loathing as a loathing for Covenant-the-leper. (This fact in no way alters her symbolic meaning in Covenant's internal drama.) For herself, she became vulnerable to being used (possessed) by external Evil because her loathing had already torn her apart (madness). For Covenant, she is, and perhaps has always been, the question he must answer: Is that me? Is it a part of me? And if it is, what do I do about it? How can I live with it?(07/10/2009)

In my reading and analysis, I've chosen the "shared dream" interpretation, but this quote implies something even more extreme: it's not a shared dream at all, but it's still all just Covenant. (Even Linden and Jeremiah.) At least in symbolic terms. Whatever that means.

And now this has got me thinking about the end of AATE. Symbolically, Covenant didn't kill his ex-wife. He killed the part of himself that is his own self-loathing. I thought he had already done away with that, but what if he hadn't? What if he just learned to live with it? If so, this was an absolutely essential part of his overall story arc, and the last step towards his final redemption.

This line of thought makes me uncomfortable. It reeks of objectification of other people. Joan is not important as a person, just a(n overly simplistic) representation of self loathing. I don't buy it just like I don't buy saying the Unhomed slaughter only matters as something relating to Covenant and the like.

For me, the story of Covenant's rape of Lena exemplifies this sort of thinking. Lena is not real and therefore she is what he think she is: a conjured (willing) toy created for his gratification. The act only becomes a crime in retrospect when Covenant's logic and story-building abilities develop the new dream-Land into a self-coherent thing where Lena is more than a paper thin fantasy object.

On the other hand (one might say in defiance of it) I also think that Covenant's morals are too rigid. The Christian line of thinking about the evil of unacted thoughts, or in this case dreams and imaginations is taking morality too far. Would dreams have much (metaphorical) meaning if they did not allow us to go beyond the limits of our daily lives, to enable us to experience all the possible outcome of an act instead of just one, to show us what might have been if we were truly free. Your dreams can teach you about yourself but you are not accountable for your dream-crimes.

How you would act in a situation in which there is no accountability or consequence for your actions tells us something about your moral character. Covenant's is an anti-consequentialist (thus duty-centered) morality. He has a conscience, his morality is inward-driven. And unlike traditional Christianity, it is not driven by the promise of rewards and the threat of punishment but, simply, by his belief in right and wrong.

[shadowbinding shoe]

How you would act in a situation in which there is no accountability or consequence for your actions tells us something about your moral character. Covenant's is an anti-consequentialist (thus duty-centered) morality. He has a conscience, his morality is inward-driven. And unlike traditional Christianity, it is not driven by the promise of rewards and the threat of punishment but, simply, by his belief in right and wrong.

I wouldn't say anti-consequentialist. Kantian duty is not in opposition to consequntialism. It's simply a different outlook. I also think beauty was important to Covenant. Beauty, maybe even of the self, is at the center of dreaming, if you accept the dream viewpoint.