Firstly a quote from SRD as featured in W.A. Senior's lengthy critique "Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Variations on the Fantasy Tradition", published in 1995. A link to the text of this can be found here.
The interview from which the below passage is taken is actually dated March 1991 and it's thus pretty clear that SRD knew what shape the dénouement of any Last Chronicles would take, even before he'd thought of starting on them:-
The self-same concept is echoed again by SRD in the following quote from a 2006 interview with Anthony Head featured on the author's own website. The link to this is here and the relevant answer is to the interviewer's question "I've got twenty dollars..." (thanks to SlickThomas for pointing me towards this):-On pages 235-236 of the above-mentioned book was wrote:W.A.Senior: All right. Last Covenant question. You may not want to answer this but we've been talking about this for - what is it - five years we've been meeting. In a hundred words or less, if you ever write the Third Chronicles, what are they going to be? You always know the stories before you write them. In essence, Covenant is dead. Where are you going to go now?
SRD: OK. In a hundred words or less In the First Chronicles, Thomas Covenant faces Lord Foul and defeats him. In the Second Chronicles, Thomas Covenant surrenders to Lord Foul and accepts him. In the Last Chronicles, Thomas Covenant becomes Lord Foul. Following the psychological paradigm through, what happens at the point that you become your own other self is that you become whole, and the universe is made new.
The key to the entire Chronicles of Thomas Covenant seems to be in Donaldson's twice-made reference to psychology, but more on this to follow.In the above interview from 2006, SRD wrote:Um, well, that's a powerful inducement, I must admit. I'll tell you what, I've said this before: I think as an exercise in intellectual construction, it's possible to predict the exact shape of how the story is going to end. Not how, not the details, not even the content. But the shape of it. There's a very paradigmatic structure: In the first chronicles, Thomas Covenant defeats Lord Foul. In the second chronicles, Thomas Covenant surrenders to Lord Foul. What's left? I think you can sit down and reason this out for yourself.
And if you can't, it's not a flaw in you, it's just because you haven't studied the particular schools of psychology that I've studied. It's probably only obvious to me because of the particular areas of interests that I have. But I feel like there's a way in which everybody already knows how the story's going to end. My job is to get there in a way that is satisfying and still takes everybody completely by surprise. I feel, rightly or wrongly, I feel like anybody can figure it out for themselves.
Okay, the later answer seems a little more accurate when held up against the culmination of TLD, in that SRD no longer states that Covenant "accepts Lord Foul" at the end of the Second Chrons, merely limiting himself to restating TC's "surrender". He also no longer states that Covenant will "become Lord Foul" by the end of the Last Chrons - I suspect that this may well be because the ending of the Last Chrons had crystallised more clearly within his imagination over the fifteen year gap between the two interviews.
As we now know from the end scenes of TLD, Covenant doesn't exactly become Lord Foul - that's way too simplistic a reading. Instead he embraces the Despiser and takes LF within himself. However, as per the first interview quoted above, it is this very act that allows the universe to be "made new". Without the lore gained by Covenant in his acceptance of Lord Foul into himself - and tellingly, without Linden's wisdom won in her facing up to her biggest fears as embodied in SHE and subsequent redemption of that anguished bane, plus equally tellingly Jeremiah's attained knowledge in his rejection of the temptations of moksha Raver during that final possession, the salvation of the World would have been impossible:-
All three key protagonists achieve a kind of epiphany in confronting their personal demons . They gain lore - revelatory knowledge that is crucial to their being able to save and/or remake the World. But, given SRD's twice-given insistence above that, if we look to psychology, we'd have known the way that the Last Chrons would end, it's well worth looking beyond and behind the narratively superficial in the books.The Last Dark - Chapter 12 wrote:We have everything we need," Covenant assured Jeremiah. "Two white gold wielders. The Staff of Law. Linden's health-sense. Your talent. Hell, we still have the krill. And I think - " His face twisted in pain and chagrin and hope. "I'm not sure, but I think I know everything Lord Foul knows."
The Despiser had striven for eons to escape his prison. His knowledge of the created world was both vast and intricate.
Jeremiah stood straighter. His hands tightened eagerly on the Staff. "I've learned a few things myself."
"And I've seen She Who Must Not Be Named without all that agony and bitterness," offered Linden. "I know what She means."
SRD clearly believes that humanity is by its very nature imperfect - an alloy, much like white gold, but of Good and Evil, with individuals equally capable of both saving and damning and he's encouraging us to realise the redemptive necessity in our both discovering and acknowledging that fact. Without such realisation, we are lost.
There is a strong religious undertone within this view - "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned" - because within Christianity, salvation is impossible without a prior and sincere acknowledgement that we are flawed and sinning.
However, unlike Christianity, Donaldson doesn't look to an external power to deliver salvation, to redeem us, to forgive us of our sins. Instead, he looks to each individual to provide and attain his/her own redemption, and the roots of such salvation are to be found within one's own psyche. Note that in both interview quotes above, Donaldson refers to "the psychological paradigm" and "schools of psychology" that he has studied. His personal "answer" - if so it may be called - seems to stem from both Freudian and more particularly Jungian psychological theory. After some considerable thought, here's how I see it.
Freud famously divided the human psyche into the Id (the unconscious, that part of the mind that has no morality and seeks instant gratification at any cost), the Ego (the intellect, that part of the mind that rationalises and deals with reality) and the Super-Ego (the conscience, that part of the mind that houses morality and is one's inner critic). Freud viewed the Id as primarily negative, one's dark side, containing such impulsions as the "death instinct" alongside the pleasure principle, with the former being as he said "an instinct of destruction directed against the external world and other organisms" - could this be any more apt a characterisation of Lord Foul? Freud believed that in the psychologically damaged, the Ego uses a number of defence mechanisms to paper over the conflicts between the paradoxical drives of the Id and the Super-Ego, including "denial" (TC in the First Chrons, anyone?), "repression" and "regression" (anyone recognising Linden here?), plus "displacement " and "dissociation" (Jeremiah, anyone?).
Jung on the other hand went further. He firmly believed that the only way in which an individual could become complete was by acknowledging, assimilating and reconciling one's internal paradoxes, the differing drives of the conscious and the unconscious. He called this vital process "individuation". This from Wikipedia, which puts it better than I would have been able to:-
The underlines are all mine, but doesn't this ring so true when viewed against the backdrop of the culmination of the Last Chrons? Isn't this exactly what Covenant - and for that matter, Linden and to a lesser extent Jeremiah too - achieves?Wikipedia wrote: Jung considered individuation, a psychological process of integrating the opposites including the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining their relative autonomy, necessary for a person to become whole.
Individuation is a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious is brought into consciousness... ...to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche to take place.
Besides achieving physical and mental health, people who have advanced towards individuation tend to be harmonious, mature and responsible. They embody humane values such as freedom and justice and have a good understanding about the workings of human nature and the universe.
So if we are to take SRD at his word - and there's no reason why we wouldn't - viewing the Last Chrons both allegorically and psychologically, there seems to me to be a clear call to action, an exhortation to "know thyself" as per the ancient Greek maxim variously attributed to Socrates and Plato amongst others. SRD highlights the absolute importance of self-examination, the acknowledgement and then the reconciliation of (rather than the denial or the repression of) the existence of one's imperfections, one's capacity to "sin", one's darker side. You don't achieve ultimate victory by fighting it (First Chrons) or surrendering to it (Second Chrons). The only viable answer, the only means to redemption is by assimilating it (Last Chrons).
Okay, so SRD may externalise Covenant's "inner Despiser" as Lord Foul. So he may similarly separately portray Linden's propensity for self-loathing and fear of rejection, of love lost as SHE. But isn't the internalised allegory now becoming clear? And as for other externalisations, to go back to Jungian theory again, the Land and its various inhabitants/denizens can easily be seen as the reification of mythic archetypes within the collective unconscious, used as a backdrop against which the main "otherworldly" - or "definitively real", if you'd rather - protagonists undergo their discrete personal struggles towards individuation.
This is the solution to the paradox of white gold. This is how the circle is squared. This is how something that is by its very nature bound to be imperfect can achieve perfect works. This is how something that can so easily damn can also save - and in so doing also be saved. This is how our own personal universes can be "made new"... only by knowing that we are flawed and guilty, that we sin, can we be redeemed or made psychologically complete - "only the damned can be saved", remember?
Is this not what Donaldson was alluding to in his two interviews? Aren't all ten books allegorically about humanity's struggle to recognise, then reconcile and thus transcend its imperfect and conflicted nature? Isn't this the core lesson that Donaldson is holding up for us all?
although I highly doubt that I'm the first with this take on the Chrons.
) will be to you, Z, as you are a long way down Existentialist Road. However, for me I am finding an important real-life resonance with Covenant's final merging with Foul.
