Kevin's Watch

After my first trip through TCTC I always said Elena was crazy, maddened by her lust for power and control, and sick for her unnatural urges to "be" with Covenant.

After reading and re-reading TCTC several times...It becomes apparent to me that Covenant was attracted to Elena in a way I find completely..well, gross.

I've tried like hell to convince myself otherwise, but now I'm sure of it.
Donaldson may have been trying to drive home just how flawed Covenant is, but I must say I have lost some fondness for Covenant.

He knew Elena was his daughter. And it doesn't matter that she told Covenant that she considered Triock her father. Fact is Covenant fought his urges for Elena, but speaking from a father's point of view( I have 3 girls) Whether you raised her or not....no man should have feelings like that for his own daughter, no matter what the circumstances of her conception are..

Excuse what might seem as Covenant bashing...but it is indeed a sad day for me...I had to finally admit to myself that Covenant had unnatural and extremely wrong feelings for his own daughter...

*cries now*

anyone else have an opinion ?

Yea, i found it pretty weird, yet like the rape somehow forgivable....
i guess i always just wanted to forgive him.

i think that was the whole point...he knew they were wrong...otherwise he wouldnt have been trying to fight them...its not that he didnt raise her...its that he never even knew her, had only raped lena two weeks before(to him), and she was already fully grown when he met her...and he STILL knew it was wrong, therefore fought the urges...thats why nothing happened...he was intent on not making more mistakes...she practically threw herself at him, and he turned her away because, despite the reasons i gave above, he realised that it was wrong and didnt give in to any temptations which he may have had...

Yeah, don't forget she was ten years Older than him when they met.

Plus he still believed the Land was a dream. All the above mentioned factors, that the others pointed out, played a part in his thinking and actions.

Despiser,

..she practically threw herself at him, and he turned her away because, despite the reasons i gave above, he realised that it was wrong and didnt give in to any temptations which he may have had...

These are good points but I must raise a question for everyone here: Covenant knew it was wrong, why then did Elena try to tempt him so? What was her reasoning behind it all?

I don't know why Elena desired Covenant. Obviously, she was not entirely sane, and Stephen Donaldson himself says just as much. But what form of insanity Elena suffered from, I couldn't say.

As for Covenant, he should never have desired her at all. The idea of desiring his daughter should have repulsed and horrified him. But then again, Covenant had become a very ill person himself.
He may have resisted trysting with his daughter, but that didn't stop him from manipulating her to her death. He didn't have sex with his daughter; he only murdered her.

Hile Troy summed it up accurately, when he went ballistic at Covenant on Gallow's Howe.

Edelaith wrote:
As for Covenant, he should never have desired her at all. The idea of desiring his daughter should have repulsed and horrified him. But then again, Covenant had become a very ill person himself.

it DID repulse and horrify him, but he was also racked with the guild of raping elena and leaving her with a daughter, and having them both grow up with the knowledge of what he did...at the time of the second book, Covenant was still fighting with the idea that the Land was real...its not as cut and dry as "you're my daughter, that's how i'll treat you"...

its not like he got some chick pregnant when he was young, left, went on with his life, the came back years later to find out he had a daughter

Lord Mhoram wrote:Despiser,

..she practically threw herself at him, and he turned her away because, despite the reasons i gave above, he realised that it was wrong and didnt give in to any temptations which he may have had...

These are good points but I must raise a question for everyone here: Covenant knew it was wrong, why then did Elena try to tempt him so? What was her reasoning behind it all?

as far as her reasoning goes, it was said before...Triock was her father...and i think it was pretty much the fact that her mother was so obsessed with him, that it trickled down to her, and she to developed an obsession with him, but since she saw Triock as her father, she saw Covenant as her mother did

What I'm saying is that Thomas Covenant should have had no physical attraction towards Elena at all. He should not have had a basic physical desire response to her. But he did.
That's the wrong. That's the illness.
He may have been repulsed and horrified by the response of his body, but his body responded nonetheless.

Just my take.

Well, take into account that he was attracted to Elena before he knew himself to be the father. I mean, as far as emotional attachments go, Covenant had nothing even remotely father-daughter with Elena. It's not like he had raised her or spent his whole life with her. When he met her in the Illearth War, he saw an older, attractive woman--not his offspring. Maybe that initial impression was hard to get rid of? TC was always a torn guy, let's admit.

Good point, Lord Foul!

I admit, I'm being harder on Thomas Covenant than you'all are being. I concede Lord Foul's point above (it is a good point!) but still I think Covenant was twisted.

I see Thomas Covenant as having been a decent guy before he became ill, but his approach to survival amidst the reality of leprosy was sociopathy. Covenant became a sociopath.
What is a sociopath? A sociopath is a person who is willing to break the unwritten rules of society (of which there are many, of course) in order to get what he wants. And, obviously, he sets a new standard for the term ruthless. He will do whatever it takes to get what he wants, and if this hurts other people, that's just too bad, and he will not care.
We see this behavior from Covenant in the Land over and over again.

What set Covenant apart from Lord Foul, was that he could feel, could feel wretched and sad and even violent, over the atrocities he had committed. When, for example, he sees the firelight glimmering through Gay's legs, he remembers the blood on Lena's thighs, and he reacts violently to the memory ... and to his criminal act.
Eventually, this spark of humanity that remained in the monster Covenant had become grew and reclaimed the man from that monster. Lord Foul had thought Covenant would remain a sociopath for all time; he was counting on it. Covenant became a human being again, instead.

However, just because he defeated Foul and saved the Land does not excuse Covenant's actions and behavior. The author seems to agree, since Covenant's actions caught up with him and killed him in the Second Chronicles.
When I read the First Chronicles long ago, I reacted with disgust, rage, and perplexion at Covenant's crimes and inaction. Rereading the First Chronicles now, my primary reaction to Covenant's behavior is one of sadness and condemnation: primarily sadness.

drew wrote:Yeah, don't forget she was ten years Older than him when they met.

Whoa! id completely forgot that...I always imagined Elena 20ish

..man..he was gone for forty years!
But the Earthpower kept her younger looking--being the Daughter of the White Gold Wielder, and the holder of the staff of law, she could have easily lived well into her 100's.

Those who find it so "unnatural", seem to be under the impression that we get to choose who we're attracted to.

Yes, it was a major point of conflict for TC. And he fought against the feeling from the moment he knew she was his daughter.

Elena on the other hand, never really thought of herself as his daughter. So that "intuitive" relationship, (which I dispute anyway) was not a factor.

I believe that "inhibitions" like that are socially derived. Of course, again it depends on what you percieve as "natural". Certainly nature itself has no prohibitions against "incestual" relations. Animals are not constrained by the idea of "parenthood", or "relation".

Our own repuganace over the matter stems from socially inculcated mores. Raise a brother and sister completely seperated from each other, in total ignorance of their relationship, even in ignorance of each others existence, and there is the same chance that they will be attracted to each other when they meet as there is between two totally unrelated strangers.

We have no "inborn" morality. All morality is created by socialisation. If it was otherwise, ignorance of a familial relationship would automatically prevent any "feelings" for the other. This is clearly not the case.

In nature, problems like that sort themselves out through the genetic balance. Offspring may be non-viable. There is no far-reaching damage to either species or individual. It is only our perception thereof, that renders it "unnatural".

Nothing in our biological design will prevent that base, physical response. Nothing.

Nature doesn't care who we're attracted to, who we have sex with, or what results. Only society does.

--Avatar

Edelaith wrote:However, just because he defeated Foul and saved the Land does not excuse Covenant's actions and behavior. The author seems to agree, since Covenant's actions caught up with him and killed him in the Second Chronicles.

I was under the impression that Lord Foul stabbing Covenant was ultimately Covenant's choice, not punishment for his rape and almost committing incest.

And just like Avatar said, Covenant's reaction was completely natural--just not by society's terms. But that's maybe a Close argument (which I'd be glad to take up, if someone bothers to make the topic).

But my point: whether or not Covenant was doing something wrong is completely subjective. One can even say that SRD's word is not final, since his views are influenced by societal norms and mores. Hypothetically, had SRD been an ancient Egyptian when he wrote these books (a society that freely practiced incest), then Covenant might've gone through with the act, and Elena might not haven been portrayed as crazy.

I think I'll post my response as a new thread, since it also ties in with the other Elena thread...

Two things seem to be worth adding to this discussion.

(1)
Elena was very aluring. There is no doubt about it. She was not only beautiful, she was charismatic, spirited, and downright compeling. She affected everyone around her, including the other Lords. She was, in every sense, "hard to resist". A cult of personality.

I didn't find anything in Covenant's reaction to her to be anything other than a response to such a compeling person. Being eager to please her, desiring her company, chivalric actions - this is not lust, this is being influenced by the aura of someone magnetic.

(2)
Feeling like a father towards a woman is not something you just turn on. It's something that you grow into. Covenant's parenthood was nothing other than an unadorned fact to him for a long time; something he accepted intellectually, but with none of the emotional depth that comes from being a true father. In a situation like that, it's entirely possible to even forget for periods of time. The dream question, plus the time speed differential, only worked to make this a more difficult 'reality' to grasp.

Personally, I don't find the Glimmermere or blanket scenes to be 'distasteful' in any way. What I see when I read this is a man slowly growing into a more real fatherhood, a man who is thrust into a confusing situation and emerging from them with the right choices made. There's no perfection here - there are some wrong steps - but they are corrected and put behind.

When TC finally says "Unbelief has got nothing to do with it. She was my daughter," there's enough of a background behind this, enough of a struggle and resolution told in the story, that we feel this to be true. He hasn't accepted the Land yet, but he's accepted his daughter. Under the circumstances, I find that to be a high achievement.

yeah, when he found out that he WAS her father, he was flooded with guilt, and from then on tried to come to terms with that, while the consequences stared him in the face the whole time