Kevin's Watch

Having no life, most of what I've done for the last month is reread the copies of the Covenant novels that I still have. Due to this appalling level of immersion in the specific wording of virtually all individual passages, I noticed this strange point in the dialogue on page 48:

[Linden talking here] "So why didn't I see that old man? The one who told me that 'There is also love in the world.' Why didn't he warn me?"

... [fast forward to Covenant] "Maybe he's given up. Maybe he knows there's nothing he can do."

Forget him in this ecstasy.

At once, several of the Giants protested, prompted by their instinctive passion for life. "What, abandoned his Creation? The Earth entire?"

Linden never says that she or Covenant thinks of the old man as even potentially the Creator, but the Giants seem to automatically interpret the old man under discussion as if he were the Creator. So unless Linden talked about her first pre-Land experience with Pitchwife or another of the Search, or if Covenant covered that information or something, I sort of have to conclude that SRD inadvertently, perhaps, has confirmed the shared identity of the old man and the Creator through this chunk of conversation.

And I must pray for the Watch to forgive me if this has already been duly noted.

But note also, I think, that in the GI there is some dismissal of the idea of entities on a higher plane of existence compacting their reality into the lesser reality of Haven Farm's world. I don't know that this is said in the GI, but I have a half-memory of something to this effect there...

For all these seeming contradictions he's lost in, no wonder SRD is a fan of saying that there's hope in contradiction?

Possibly that's a legitimate narrative inconsistency.

Possibly Donaldson assume's that Covenant and Linden had explained the ochre-robed dude earlier and off camera.

But I find also this, earlier in the same book:

In [u]Against All Things Ending[/u] was wrote:Fumbling, unsure of his movements, he forced himself to stand and face her. "It isn’t up to me." He was hardly able to feel his hands and feet. "I just didn’t want - " His fingers twitched involuntarily, as if he were reaching for something. But he was unaware of them. They were as useless as the knowledge which had bled out of him. "That old man. The beggar. The Creator. He abandoned you before you ever came here. I didn’t want you to think I’d abandoned you too."

So the old man/Creator link had been mentioned earlier, if a bit obliquely.

I noticed that earlier passage as well, cursed at myself, but then thought that the Giants weren't there when Covenant said that, so IDK... I actually thought it might also be some weird sorta evidence for the dreamworld/Platonic world theory, though, that the Giants would intuitively understand the reference as part of Linden's/Covenant's mind(s) (since it refers back to that "level" of Earth's reality or w/e).

Vraith wrote:The likeliest place to look for an explicit connection, or even strongly implicit, is the 2nd Chrons. Because the entire plot centers on LF corrupting/using a tale of the creator. And cuz TC/Linden/Giants hang out together a lot.

I just checked out a copy of TOT from the local library, so I'm on it.