Kevin's Watch

I'm rereading AATE right now and saw that Roger is described several times as half handed. When did he become half handed I thought he had one normal hand and one fiery hand (from Kastenessen), neither of them halved.

Can anyone clear this up for me?

I can only guess that it's short for "Half-and-Half-Hand".

I can see how someone with only one hand might be called "half-handed". He has half the usual number of hands ... We say half-wit on the same basis, I think.

It's a leap from there, but perhaps the name is based on his losing one of his natural hands, and not recognizing that he gained someone else's hand.

I also wonder how Roger's fire hand fits in with the rest of the story. It seems that all characters summoned to the land, receive some power that is an externalization of some part of their character back on earth. TC = Wild Magic, Linden = Health Sense, Hile Troy = Land Sight,
Joan = Ceasures, and Jeremy = Door Builder. Roger's fire hand doesn't seem to fit this rule, as it has to be grafted upon him, it does not come from within. I do see the literary need for Roger's hand to reflect on TC's deformed hand, but so far I think Roger has gotten short-changed in the natural gifts department.

RaverRats wrote:I also wonder how Roger's fire hand fits in with the rest of the story. It seems that all characters summoned to the land, receive some power that is an externalization of some part of their character back on earth. TC = Wild Magic, Linden = Health Sense, Hile Troy = Land Sight,
Joan = Ceasures, and Jeremy = Door Builder. Roger's fire hand doesn't seem to fit this rule, as it has to be grafted upon him, it does not come from within. I do see the literary need for Roger's hand to reflect on TC's deformed hand, but so far I think Roger has gotten short-changed in the natural gifts department.

Nice little tidbit I never really noticed. I wonder if it does fit in a way; Roger needs grafting/being used as a channel because he is weak, untalented, raised to be used/manipulated. He's the negative of Jerry...both in his treatment by real world adults as he matures, and when the evils of the Land touched him, Roger signed on while Jerry resisted. Just a thought.

This is an interesting line of thought. But is Roger more special than the others? Everyone's powers are something they get from the Land. They don't have them in our world. Hile Troy outright needed Hurtloam to get his special sight.

The connection to fire must be the most important part here. Could it be connected to his father's burning of his first novels?

That's right, Roger is the only one begging to be summoned. That may be the difference with him. Or maybe his "gift" is that he cannot feel the land and its power. Maybe his narcissistic attitude is actualized in the land by being blocked from feeling the power of the Land. He has similar characteristics to that of a serial killer, and can only emulate human emotions, he has no empathy. So in the Land, he is caught in his own specific zone of Kevin's Dirt where there is no sense of what is natural or un-natural. He would be as blind to the horror of a Raver, just as he would be blind to the lawfulness of the Wraiths of Andelain. Everything is just a means to an end for him.

RaverRats wrote:That's right, Roger is the only one begging to be summoned. That may be the difference with him. Or maybe his "gift" is that he cannot feel the land and its power. Maybe his narcissistic attitude is actualized in the land by being blocked from feeling the power of the Land. He has similar characteristics to that of a serial killer, and can only emulate human emotions, he has no empathy. So in the Land, he is caught in his own specific zone of Kevin's Dirt where there is no sense of what is natural or un-natural. He would be as blind to the horror of a Raver, just as he would be blind to the lawfulness of the Wraiths of Andelain. Everything is just a means to an end for him.

Seeing as his powers are a mixture of Elohim and Skurj I would think he got a variation of the health-sense from his Elohim side. That doesn't make him care about good or evil, just aware of their presence.

shadowbinding shoe wrote:This is an interesting line of thought. But is Roger more special than the others? Everyone's powers are something they get from the Land. They don't have them in our world. Hile Troy outright needed Hurtloam to get his special sight.

The connection to fire must be the most important part here. Could it be connected to his father's burning of his first novels?

Hmmm...I think I'd like you to connect some metaphorical dots for me on that fire connection? What would it lead to/imply?

On the first...certainly the expression/activation of the powers transforms and becomes more "real" in the Land. Yet they're still connected to some attribute present in the real...Hile Troy's vision seems to me sourced in his real-world talent for sightless visualization of spaces and relationships. BTW, I don't know if there are blind people who do so, but there are real people who "see" numbers in particular spatial relationships, or in colors...very strange, perhaps related to other synasthetic things [like musicians who literally perceive colors with key signatures, Aminor is blue for instance, and people who when they see someone touch someone literally feel the touch on themselves].

Raver, I like that. Another connection can grow from that, perhaps. An aspect of TC's struggle is that he's a physical leper...but his ethical essence, or spirit, what have you, is otherwise...Roger has a leprosy of the soul, and the lack of empathy you point at is surely part [perhaps the entirety, even the cause] of that.

That's a real good point, Rats. We do know that just because you have a talent doesn't mean you can find it, or that you are able to use it.

I think Roger never had a chance to find his own talent because he surrendered everythin to Lord Foul and Kastenessen, becoming their tools. So, as a tool, he has no unique abilities of his own - he has nothing to add, he's just an extension of those who rule him.

He did have independent plans with the Croyel. They probably never had a chance to succeed but he has a will of his own.

I can see where you're coming from with the blindness to healthsense but I think there's actually more to all of this. Unlike Linden, who enters the Land blind with no knowledge of what is happening, Roger seems to know quite a bit. Foul has communicated with him sometime in the past and told him what is going on. But! This is unearned knowledge. He did not gather it or reach it himself, someone just gave it to him. And so when we see him in the Land he has all the Land's history at his fingertips but it gives him no insight about right and wrong in this place or in his life and actions. Its just things he received from his Elohim powers or contact with Foul and mean little to him.

Vraith - When we meet him in the 'real' world he tells Linden he chose to work as a butcher. Linden is appalled. The son of a writer and a philosopher/moralist chooses uses his hands to do menial work, to slay instead of create. After that he spends most of his time shooting his gun off at everyone killing and torturing everyone he can while trying to obtain his father's ring. She can't connect that person with the Thomas Covenant she knows but before Covenant experienced the Land he wasn't that man. He was someone with a lot of resentment to his fellow man, someone who concentrated his energy on preserving his physical existence while letting his mental and emotional and creative abilities go to waste. He burns his books because they're not good enough (or not painful enough?) but does not make anything else in their place. He sits in his farm and stews. Covenant is full of hellfire and brimstone but he suppresses them most time until he overcomes them by TPTP. He wants to hurt happy teenage girls he sees in a store. What would have happened to him if he never entered the Land? Would 'hellfire!' have become more than an empty word? Would he have ventured one day back into town, this time with a gun instead of a phone bill?

Both Jeremiah and Roger are 'islands' in the human landscape. But while Jeremiah passively hides from the world in his inner world, Roger aggressively destroys the world around him to get what he wants. Roger is a reflection of Covenant's dark side from his pre-Land time taken to its extreme. He is hellfire! destructive and ever hungry for more to burn.

He is hellfire.
Wow.
The only thing I can say is a muttered, "Hellfire," at that. Apt.

Well, when he was impersonating his father, the glamor did replicate TC's half-hand, so, surely that qualifies him to be called Half-hand, especially since the warnings were referring to when he was impersonating his father.

RaverRats, interesting analysis of the other Non-land born folks and their gifts, hadn't thought abotu that, thanks

Also a good point, Sindatur.

Another way to think about this is, every half-hand is a symbol of something. Certainly, in the first Chronicles, Covenant's half-hand represented leprosy, and the loss of connection that leprost brings. Maimed in soul as well as in form. The maimed Bloodguard represented, of course, Covenant. The Humbled now represent those Bloodguard.

Roger, too, is maimed, but he voluntarilly half-handed himself to get power. Therefore, if anything, his half-hand represents his selling out to Foul. Self-maiming is an extreme form of control over oneself, and signifies a willingness to compromise wholeness for more important things.