"The necessity of freedom"

[aliantha]

Here's my post from the "what SRD said in the Q&A at E-fest 2014" thread (the exact name of which I've already forgotten):

Re the Creator's non-appearance in the Final Chrons: Maybe I was off in my own little fantasy land, but the impression I got was that the Creator didn't show up because Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah *were* in a sense the creators of the Land. Just as Covenant had to embrace Foul as a facet of himself, he also had to accept the responsibility for his part in the Land's creation. Which would give a fuller answer to the paradox of the necessity of freedom, wouldn't it? Damn....

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The original Creator was stuck outside his work, unable to reach in and fix anything without breaking the Arch of Time. The new Creators are inside their own work and now possess the knowledge of how to unravel or reweave it as needed. With the exception of the once-again-taking-its-beauty-rest Worm there isn't anyone (of whom we are aware) who has the ability to break the Arch, except for those two wild magic ringwielders.

Originally, we were also told that the one who has the power of wild magic has the ability to save or damn the world. Well, they wound up doing both.

Given the fact that the three of them are neither perfect, omniscient, nor precognitive, I am uncertain of the implications of their reweaving of the fabric of reality. In essence, they remade the world not in their own image but according to the topology of their own personalities. They must have missed some small things but also introduced new little imperfections but we have no way of knowing what those might be or whether or not they are able to fix them as they find them.

[wayfriend]

Ali, I believe the gist of SRDs comment was that the Creator had handed over his responsibilities to Covenant, or to Covenent+Linden+Jeremiah. (Precisely which would be another great question.)

But I want to clarify that I think it was a handover, and not a "merging". The original Creator didn't become embodied in Covenant (as Foul had) but rather he gave them the keys and moved on to something else. Under the circumstances, I think that's an important distinction.

Of course, for this to be successful, Covenant+Linden+Jeremiah had to do a bunch of creator-type-stuff. They had to gain experience as new creators who could take over for the old. And then, or course, they do, in a very literal way.

This process was signaled long before the Last Chronicles. (When I quote myself, it's because I like the way I said it at another time.)

In the Second Chronicles, Covenant discovers the horrible responsibility of gods: his god-like actions have reshaped the Land.

... all the fathomless ill of the Sunbane and the Clave was his fault, his doing. He had no answer for the logic of his guilt. The Staff of Law had been destroyed - and he had destroyed it. Wild magic had burst from his ring to save his life; power beyond all choice or mastery had riven the Staff, so that nothing remained but its heels. For such an act, he deserved to die. The lassitude of blood-loss seemed condign and admirable. His pulse shrank toward failure. He was culpable beyond any redemption and had no heart to go on living.

Covenant has become like the Creator himself; the Land is as much his Creation as any others. And, like the Creator, Covenant desires the beauty in his creation to survive, and the blight to be erased. And so he takes responsibility for his world, and sets out to restore it.

... Being one with the Arch of Time, the Creation upon which the Earth's very existence rests, Covenant is another step closer to the Creator. He's not only responsible for the Land, but he's even part of the process that allows the Land to exist. At the end of the Second Chronicles, when he usurps the Creator's place to speak to Linden, he does so as a co-creator who has earned the privilege.

Since I wrote that, AATE has come out, which brings us the brilliant description of Covenant literally remaking himself.

Bleeding from more wounds than he could count, Covenant found the path that led toward his present self. At once, he began to work his way along it. And while he arose from the Earth’s past, he fused fissures behind him. He closed cracks. Rife with silver fire, he healed breaks until all of them were mended.

Deliberately he annealed fragments of his former being, rendering them inaccessible so that he could be whole.

Like an astral spirit done with wandering, Thomas Covenant reentered his body in front of Joan.

Not only is Covenant re-creating himself, he is also repairing the broken Arch of Time, an object with which he is exceedingly familiar having been it for three and a half thousand years.

But more important than either of these things is that Donaldson makes these things seem like the same thing!

What better practice can anyone have for the events of The Last Dark than what Covenant undergoes here?

I think Linden's creator acts are a lot more obvious. She literally re-creates Law. And Jeremiah's abilities are rather straightforwardly applied.

We have a man who can re-create Time. A woman who can re-create Law. And a son who can build anything.

[lurch]

I like how Donaldson takes the concept of "necessity of Freedom"..to out of the box..beyond cliche parameters. For me. TLD,,is completely and totally about recreating anew, out side of the box. He demonstrates Freedom in different ways in almost every chapter. He busts the " story telling" paradigm " with each chapter a " parable, with huge display of metaphor, simile, allegory, , as already posted, whole chapter in alliteration, mystery camouflaged inside the " plot"..( he also did this in FR) and while I'm at it..reduced Plot to non sequitor. The Message IS The Metaphor...

The Creator is like the Plot..no longer needed...non sequitor..TC, Linden , Jerry ,( Hope, Love and Compassion) together, whole, is the future,,no longer dwelling in the Land of the Creator, the Land of the Past..The necessity of Freedom...is to have the choices that enable a future that doesn't repeat the past. That can be only done with Love Hope and Compassion.

[aliantha]

Ali, I believe the gist of SRDs comment was that the Creator had handed over his responsibilities to Covenant, or to Covenent+Linden+Jeremiah. (Precisely which would be another great question.)

You may be right, Way. As for who got the handover -- Covenant and Linden for sure. I don't think the Creator ever appeared to Jeremiah, did he? He couldn't, because Jeremiah was already in the Land. Right?

[wayfriend]

Just as Covenant had to embrace Foul as a facet of himself, he also had to accept the responsibility for his part in the Land's creation. Which would give a fuller answer to the paradox of the necessity of freedom, wouldn't it? Damn....

This last bit has been backburnering in my brain. Is there a connection between the disappearance of the creator and the necessity of freedom?

You seemed to see it instinctively. I am struggling with it.

Is the notion here that the Creator would not want to hand over responsibility for the Land to someone who was just a tool he was using? That makes sense: tools aren't really independent. Therefore, Covenant (and Linden and Jeremiah) must be free if the Creator wants to completely disengage.

Being free means being free to save or damn. If you think about it, the Creator himself operated in that mode at creation time: he had no limits, he was free to create a good or bad creation as his impulses dictated.

Nothing exhibits this like throwing Foul down into the Arch. That's sort of on the damn side of things.

Maybe the Creator wanted to hand things over because Covenant (and Linden and Jeremiah) would do better than he had?

Covenant and Linden and Jeremiah are not outside the Arch, they are in - they are part of Creation. Maybe its the natural course of good creations that they come to take care of themselves.

Maybe -- probably -- Creators want to create things and then be done. The Creator stuck around because of an obligation incurred by his mistake. Once that was corrected, he no longer felt obligated.

[aliantha]

Just as Covenant had to embrace Foul as a facet of himself, he also had to accept the responsibility for his part in the Land's creation. Which would give a fuller answer to the paradox of the necessity of freedom, wouldn't it? Damn....

This last bit has been backburnering in my brain. Is there a connection between the disappearance of the creator and the necessity of freedom?

You seemed to see it instinctively. I am struggling with it.

Is the notion here that the Creator would not want to hand over responsibility for the Land to someone who was just a tool he was using? That makes sense: tools aren't really independent. Therefore, Covenant (and Linden and Jeremiah) must be free if the Creator wants to completely disengage.

Being free means being free to save or damn. If you think about it, the Creator himself operated in that mode at creation time: he had no limits, he was free to create a good or bad creation as his impulses dictated.

Nothing exhibits this like throwing Foul down into the Arch. That's sort of on the damn side of things.

Maybe the Creator wanted to hand things over because Covenant (and Linden and Jeremiah) would do better than he had?

Covenant and Linden and Jeremiah are not outside the Arch, they are in - they are part of Creation. Maybe its the natural course of good creations that they come to take care of themselves.

Maybe -- probably -- Creators want to create things and then be done. The Creator stuck around because of an obligation incurred by his mistake. Once that was corrected, he no longer felt obligated.

You're asking me to recreate an "aha!" moment. Let me attempt that first, and then I'll comment on what you've posted.

I don't think I was thinking in terms of the Creator at all. I think I was focusing on Covenant and his relationship to the Land. The big question in the first Chrons was whether the Land was real. (And by extension, whether Covenant's actions there mattered, the answer to which is that it does, regardless of whether the Land is real or not. Covenant needed to be true to himself -- to act in a way that he could live with. But that's not what I was focusing on.)

If the Land isn't real, then it's Covenant's own construct (like -- hey! -- Jeremiah's race car track). But he spends the first Chrons refusing to take part in shaping the Land, and disavowing any responsibility for anything that happens there (apart from raping Lena, although that may not even matter if the Land isn't real, yada yada -- you guys know all this).

By the end of the 3rd Chrons, we're all in agreement that the Land's reality or unreality doesn't matter. And it's also clear the Covenant needs to not only recognize that Foul is a part of him, but to embrace his Foulness. Right? Which he does. But he also needs to acknowledge the *good* in himself -- the part that is capable of creating something as beautiful as the Land. Lepers don't have much truck with beauty ("outcast unclean!"). They don't believe they deserve it. Covenant must choose, at last, to believe that he is capable of beauty. That's where the necessity of freedom comes in. Linden's love and faith in him lead him partway there, but he has to make the rest of the journey himself.

Now, on what you've said: I think you're probably right that the Creator hoped Covenant (and Linden and Jeremiah) would do a better job with Land v.2 than he had done. But the creative strictures are all still in place, aren't they? Covenant didn't expel Foul from the Land v.2 -- he's merely contained him.

I suspect that in some way, Foul *needs* to be in the Land. There needs to be bad stuff there, if only to contrast with all the good stuff. Kind of like the argument that we wouldn't know what happiness was if we didn't also experience sadness.

[lurch]

Good points Ali...Freedom is Choice..no choices means you have no freedom..So..now we are back to the Cain/ Able parable of the Old Testament..Choice between whatevers is what gives humans freedom..Despair is a choice and as the author puts it..it also makes us stronger,,as long as we know of its presence.

At one time,, Foul was seen as a small dark flaw in the Creators creation..Over the Chronicles though the Despair of Foul became the ..save and damn,,something more than either extreme..That 3rd reality , created by the " and" takes us in new directions of Freedom that goes beyond the confines of " Or". Once Free to perceive a 3rd choice beyond the Despair of " Or", one OR the other,,then its easy to realize a fourth choice, a 5th, a 6th, etc etc etc..But the habit of confining ones choices to 2..btw of " Or",,has to be broke first. Demanding a 3rd choice or more is Liberation,is Freedom..

The Creator was old and rotting. I'm not sure he was capable any longer.

[aliantha]

The Creator was old and rotting. I'm not sure he was capable any longer.

Or at least he wanted Covenant and Linden to think so.

I think you've hit on it, though, lurch. It's not that Covenant can save or damn the Land -- it's that he has the capacity to both save and damn the Land. It's not either/or, it's both. Both are necessary, and both must be freely chosen.

[lurch]

yeaa..I like how the author evolves or get us to the " save and damn" in TLD...I don't want to spoil the dissect so I'll just say...you have Save...you have Damn.. you have Save and Damn...Free yourself from the " Or" !

In order to Save the Land..it has to be disassembled ( damned)and built anew..because, like the Creator..it was olde and rotting..imho..a great metaphor of How We Think and Perceive.

[wayfriend]

Covenant must choose, at last, to believe that he is capable of beauty. That's where the necessity of freedom comes in. Linden's love and faith in him lead him partway there, but he has to make the rest of the journey himself.

This is still a wild cognitive leap for me. I hear you saying that Covenant can't discover he is capable of [creating] beauty unless he is free from the Creator's influence ... but i don't see the connection from A to B there. Is it that a pserson can't know something about who they are if they are not free?

I do really want to know. My intuition is that you are on to something I want to understand. There is an emotional/spiritual arc for Covenant in the Last Chronicles, but it's darn hard to describe it properly.

[aliantha]

Covenant must choose, at last, to believe that he is capable of beauty. That's where the necessity of freedom comes in. Linden's love and faith in him lead him partway there, but he has to make the rest of the journey himself.

This is still a wild cognitive leap for me. I hear you saying that Covenant can't discover he is capable of [creating] beauty unless he is free from the Creator's influence ... but i don't see the connection from A to B there. Is it that a pserson can't know something about who they are if they are not free?

I do really want to know. My intuition is that you are on to something I want to understand. There is an emotional/spiritual arc for Covenant in the Last Chronicles, but it's darn hard to describe it properly.

That's the problem with intuitive leaps. They're so damn hard to describe....

Okay. Covenant is a novelist. A writer. What do writers do? (Well, one of the things writers do....) They create worlds. So he's *already* a Creator.

But then he got this horrible disease, and everybody rejects him. They see him as nothing but his disease. Not to get all clinical, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to see Covenant as not just crotchety, but probably also depressed. Depressed people have trouble believing *anything* good about themselves. They certainly can't picture themselves as lovable, or beautiful, or capable of creating anything lovable or beautiful.

But Covenant desperately doesn't want to believe himself to be evil. (That's your Christian Good v. Evil dichotomy at work -- if you're not Good, then you're Evil. Or serving Evil, anyway.) So it's a big leap for him to embrace Foul -- to acknowledge that Foul is part of him.

But just as Foul is an outward manifestation (if you squint just right...) of Covenant's bad side, the Creator can be seen as an outward manifestation of Covenant's good side (and of Linden's good side, too, for that matter). It's not that the Creator is stepping aside to let Covenant re-create the Land. It's that Covenant *is* the Creator, in the same way he's Foul. He has to embrace both the good and the bad in himself in order to remake the Land. He has to believe not just that he can create beauty, but that he, himself, is beautiful. That's not a belief that Linden or anybody else can hand him -- he has to get there on his own. And he has to choose to do it.

Does that help?

Huh. Now I find myself wanting to talk about Linden-as-Creator. There's a reason why the Creator appeared to her as an old man who seemed to be rotting from the inside out. Let me collect my thoughts on it....