Was the question of the Land's 'reality' [or otherwise].....

[peter]

....ever really settled in the Chrons?

I mean, with the culmination of the third and final series in TLD was anything actually added to the 'paradox' of 'It does exist/it can't exist' over and above the detail that we had already been furnished with at the end of C1 when TC overhears the conversation between the doctors saying that his survival was nothing short of a miricle. This for me was always going to be the big finale - that the paradox would be resolved - and in the dust storm of question and counter question raised by the publication of TLD I simply forgot it.

[lurch]

Are your " feelings" real? ...Are your Dreams and how they effect you ," real"?

IMHO,,the reality of the Chrons has been a non issue for quite a while...The " reality" of the Chrons is .." The State of Mind" of the reader. How the reader thinks and perceives determines the " reality" of the Chrons. If one is fully determined by logic and reason then TLD with its mystical epilogue doesn't answer .

The emphasis on being " whole" by the author suggests being in touch with ones " humanity". That includes feelings, intuition, creativity, instincts, imagination , even spirituality and Love. With that in mind, then the reality of the Chrons expands to all things by the way of ..HOW one sees and thinks about what he or she sees..

The reality of the Chrons becomes metaphor. The message is in the Metaphor. The reality of the Land is The State of Mind. The arc of the Chrons is from conflicted, divisive, upset, etc etc...to whole, at peace with oneself, happy, and ready for a different kind of future...imho..

[SleeplessOne]

....ever really settled in the Chrons?

I mean, with the culmination of the third and final series in TLD was anything actually added to the 'paradox' of 'It does exist/it can't exist' over and above the detail that we had already been furnished with at the end of C1 when TC overhears the conversation between the doctors saying that his survival was nothing short of a miricle. This for me was always going to be the big finale - that the paradox would be resolved - and in the dust storm of question and counter question raised by the publication of TLD I simply forgot it.

as lurch says, the question stopped being important to Donaldson himself, and by extension Covenant - or so SRD says - he still played around with it a bit in 2C, and there are strange occurences mentioned in the prologue of ROTE hinting at Foul's influence over Joan in the 'real world'.

I agree that the question of the Land's reality was a cool part of 1C, and Covenant's strange inability/reluctance to prove things definitively one way or another added to that.
2C of course had the beautifully poetic image of Linden acquiring the ring at the end of WGW, which further played with the 'paradox' you mention.

so, yeah, SRD touches upon it one more time in ROTE, and then after that it never really comes up, ever again. The characters themselves don't seem to care.

[peter]

And in the end I guess neither do we, but it was SO central to the story in 1C [and of course it had to be - how could it have been other; just place yourself in TC's place as he 'comes to' on Kevins Watch] that I never quite achieved the detatchment from it that you guys seem to have attained. I guess it's just one of those areas where we have to make our own answers work.

[wayfriend]

peter,

Why did you hope to see the real/dream paradox resolved?

It seems to me that once you know the answer, whichever answer it is, it kind of spoils half the book. You would reread it and not help but think "you're wrong" half the time.

It seems to me that the best way to capture Covenant's struggle with the paradox in the first Cs is to keep the reader wondering as well; similarly, the best way to portray that the paradox is not relevant is to not address it. It seems to me that, however you slice it, having a real answer can only detract from the story, steal away some of your empathy for the characters' positions.

[TheFallen]

Completely agree with you, WF. As I've very recently posted elsewhere, the reality/unreality of the Land has become irrelevant by the end of the 1st Chrons. TC's found a satisfactory answer to unbelief in the eye of the paradox, as TPTP informs us. After that point, it's just not a relevant issue any more. SRD's metaphysical interests have moved on, so the reader should as well, I expect.

[wayfriend]

(Also, the paradox is utterly necessary (in my mind) to properly execute Covenant's "unification" ... see my other recent post.)

But I should be trying harder to encourage peter to shed light on the other side of this notion. I am still wondering why it's desirable to know which it is, from someone who does.

[Zarathustra]

I don't know, I can sympathize with Peter's frustration on this issue. It's irritating that an author would expect us to ignore or forget an issue that was so crucial to a character's development at one time. Reexaming the starting points, or the initial conditions, and asking how they relate to the end, is just part of the process of understanding the end. If it didn't matter to the end, then why was it there in the first place? (The same questions can be asked about the Creator/begger ... which apparently, was the "mother of all spoilers," that we're now supposed to accept was insignificant??)

TC didn't resolve the reality issue. He found a way to ignore it (ostensibly ... I don't believe it--see below). But just because the character found a way to ignore it doesn't mean that readers should follow his example. We could all apply the same dismissive attitude to our own lives, and pretend that the question of Being is irrelevant, merely because we accept the life we live as real or valuable. So then is anyone who engages in ontology a fool? Was Heidegger a moron for spending so much energy on the question of the meaning of Being?

No, there is still some value to examining our understanding of Being, since doing so is an elucidation of ourselves. We are creatures for whom our Being is an issue, who stand in unique relation to Being for this very reason. Therefore, questions about Being open us up to our unique relationship with it, and show us how our lives are either authentic or inauthentic depending on how aware we are of our power to determine our Being through our choices. Covenant faced similar choices, even after he found a way to dismiss the question.

For an author to say, "Don't look here," just feels like the Wizard of Oz not wanting us to look behind his curtain. It feels like there's something he's hiding. If that "something" was merely insignificance of the question itself, then asking it in the first place was pointless.

But it wasn't pointless. And the author's metaphysical interests haven't "moved on," only the character's interests. SRD wouldn't have ended the Chronicles with a literal joining with a metaphor if he truly had no interest in the metaphysical implications of this analogy. That *is* taking a side. In fact, TC himself wouldn't be able to accept Foul as part of him if he weren't simultaneously taking an ontological stand on that issue. Saying that "Foul IS me" is a statement on his reality. The literal joining of the symbol and that which it symbolized unavoidably forces this issue back upon us once again. In short, there's absolutely no way Covenant can be indifferent to the reality of the Land and simultaneously make such a claim about the identity of its chief enemy. That claim is existential, or ontological. It's a statement of Foul's existence and reality. Pretending that this has no metaphysical implications is itself inauthentic.

[peter]

Wow - Z's argument there is a weighty matter and goes somewhat further than I had thought the matter through. For this reason I'll stick to a quick response to Wayfriends question as to the 'why' of my desire to see the paradox resolved.

Put most simply the reason was love. TC's frustrating refusal to see the Land as real was, as noted a major part of 1C and [I'm guessing] had us all shouting at the pages "It's real you fool - It's real!" The reason I/we did this was because we were in love; in love with giants, in love with hurtloam, in love with health you could see and consequently we needed to know it was real and not some chimera sprung from TC's diseased mind. Of course we followed TC in the passage of his 'take' on things to the point where the paradox was resolved by the opposing directions of the 'flow of care' he was experiencing [ie as his care for the Land and it's people grew his care as to their reality or otherwise diminished in proportion. But as Z points out, this was TC's solution and does not necessarily have to satisfy us, although it may well do.

I know it seems ridiculous, but I remember long ago reading one of the classical authors discoursing on literature [might have been Plato or Aristotle] when they gave the sort of basic rules that a story should have a beginning, middle and end. Each part was discussed and one of the features of the end was that no questions should be left unresolved or the work failed to be self-contained. Now I know it would be unfair to apply this too zealously to the Chrons - or indeed any other work - but there is an old fashioned element in me that sort of likes this tidy state of affairs. As I said above love of the Land I suppose made it for me [a bit at least] necessary that SRD would come out and say to TC [and us] "Yes - you were right; It was real." To me this would not have made the story less [but then, I never have any trouble rewatching films where I know the end either].

Finally I suppose, the ending was just so different than I ever concieved that it would be. I always - always - saw the ending returning to TC's real world in some shape or form and yes [again as Z says] with a sort of Creator involved epilogue. That my assumptions were so wildly adrift and that the wrapping up took the form that it did, sort of caught me unawares - like a caesura with nothing at the far side of it.

[peter]

it's been an interesting 24 hours for me in respect of 'The Chrons'. I went searching for a copy of 'Gilden Fire' that I knew I had, and found as well a combined volume of 2C that I didn't.

I read [out of interest] the foreword SRD wrote to 'Gilden Fire' and found a reference to the topic of this thread where he says [in reference to those readers who have already read the First Chrons]

...those readers know that the question of whether or not the Land is ultimately real......no longer matters

Now I'm sorry SRD - but things are just not that simple. For starters here, there are two distinct issues. What does SRD actually mean by this. Does he mean that for TC the issue of whether or not the Land is real no longer matters.... or does he mean that for us, the reader, this is the case. There is a significant difference between the two. Skipping ahead to the 'Real World' bit at the beginning of 'The Wounded Land' where we are introduced to Linden, there is no question that by this stage it is the authorial intent that the reader should be viewing the Land as real. No question. All traces of ambiguity are gone. References to the Land's existence, independand of Covenants mind abound. It is at this point that the actual question of the original post is answered by the very same criteria that the author himself refers to in the introduction to 'Gilden Fire'.

And contrary to what SRD says in respect of it 'no longer matters - of course it matters! [to us if not to TC, though it should to him more than anyone else given his crimes in the Land]. As I think Z. pointed out above - the entire first series hung on this question of the Lands reality or otherwise and the buissiness of 'the rape' [and how it is seen] is absolutely framed around this question. And finally whether the question matters or not [and to me it does] - my original question remains [though now somewhat altered]. Do you guys agree that without question the Lands 'reality' is established [from a reader point of view if not for TC's] in the place I claim above.

[Zarathustra]

No, I don't think the Land's reality is ever established. The bonfire eyes/fangs may have been in Linden's head. Flames can sometimes look like that.

[peter]

Thus is my essentially spineless nature displayed; already the solid certanties of yesterday begin to dissipate into the amorphous ambiguosities of tomorrow .

[Zarathustra]

It's just my opinion. You're free to have your own. However, I'm pretty sure it's SRD's position, too, that nothing in the 2nd Chrons undermined the possibility of doubt. I'm sure someone will chime in with the relevant GI quote soon.

[Dondarion]

Personally I don't think it really matters in the end. We the reader learn a lesson through the main character about how to respond to the many unanswerable questions in life, the things we can't control. We must learn to accept that there are things we have no power over, and nevertheless we must choose to act on those things we can control, those better parts of our nature, that can affect us and others positively. As to the rest, we have to let go, and trust. TC does this, and whether the Land was real or not, same lesson holds true for us.

[thoughtcube]

In the first chronicles it was clear that the "reality" was undecided. In the second, it was pretty close, but still debatable. But in the third, so much happens in the real world that cannot be explained without the land being "real" and capable of affecting the real world, that I don't think it is an open question. Joan's behavior, Joan's fetters vanishing even under surveillance and in opposition to the laws of physics, pretty much all of Roger's behavior, and to a lesser extent the storm and lightning, and Jeremiah's constructs that shadow things in the Land.

But, I think the more general point might be that it doesn't matter if it's real or not. The ethical and personal questions remain the same as always.

[peter]

I know it doesn't matter and that the point of the books is no longer about the reality or otherwise of the Land - but I'm still interested in how people 'think' about it. It's like a sort of 'frame' that you hang the entire way you see the Chons on - allbeit unconciously perhaps - as you read the books. I guess for me that frame is that the Land is real, and I view the events and plots though that particular 'window'. Not, as I say, always conciously thinking about it, but like a glass of a particular 'hue' through which I am seeing the stories unfold. I am interested as to whether other people see the Chrons thourgh a different window?

[Zarathustra]

But in the third, so much happens in the real world that cannot be explained without the land being "real" and capable of affecting the real world, that I don't think it is an open question. Joan's behavior, Joan's fetters vanishing even under surveillance and in opposition to the laws of physics, pretty much all of Roger's behavior, and to a lesser extent the storm and lightning, and Jeremiah's constructs that shadow things in the Land.

Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean we can conclude that something magical or supernatural is occurring. Personally, I don't see how the Land could cause Joan's fetters to vanish. I don't have another explanation for it, but that's not proof of anything. Maybe Linden was just wrong, or a little crazy herself. She did have an extended hallucination of journeying through the Land, after all.

Joking aside, I think it's easier to believe in a shared hallucination than a magical alternate reality which can violate the laws of physics in our world. But how I "frame" the Land, in Peter's words, is more of middle position between those two extremes. As I noted before, SRD talks about the Land being real in a Platonic sense, sort of like a realm of universals that are even more "true" than our world.

[Vraith]

I frame it slightly to the "real" side...
partly for reasons similar to Z's middle ground reasons...[though one should keep in mind my position that even in the real real world there are literally different kinds of real.]
but mostly cuz the "unreal" choice in every case I can think of ultimately leads to one of two "real" endings that I can't stand:
"And then he woke up." or the even weaker
"TC passed away last night, never having recovered from an unexplained coma."

[peter]

The infinite number of paralell universes of 'the multiverse' and the infinite number of 'paralell multiverses' overlaid on top makes it hard to see how any imagined scenario could not somehow, somewhere be represented in reality [but still I guess the laws of fizics is the laws of fizics ].