Fatal Musings: Epic Vision

[wayfriend]

I'm glad to hear you liked it. I'm also glad to hear it's interesting, because like anyone I do fear laying an egg. So thanks.

One of the reasons I write these kinds of posts is to encourage people to know that they can discuss these things. If I can, anyone can. Let loose with the ideas, barnetto!
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* I occasionally post things on KevinsWatch because I am a fan of Stephen R. Donaldson; this should not be considered as condonation of the white nationalist propaganda which is posted far too frequently on this website.

[ninjaboy]

I thought that was a really well-written essay. Very thought out and it really does emphasise what is so special about the Chronicles.. Well not the *only* thing that is special about the Chronicles..

This 'epic vision' is one of the reasons I am irritated by those who just put it down after the rape scene.. Because they really are missing out on something truly remarkable. And reading 'Twilight' instead. *shudd
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Forgive my death.
It was my flesh that failed you, not my love.

[wayfriend]

I've been thinking, I could have written a whole subsection in Epic Vision about the jheherrin.

For what purpose did Covenant encounter these beings shortly before his confrontation with the Despiser? The help that Covenant and the giant needed in order to penetrate Foul's Creche could have taken any form. So, why creatures of mud?

The jheherrin are pitiful, and weak, and cowardly, and impotent. Their nature is such that they cannot tolerate something as innocuous as sunlight. They fear the Maker, under whose very nose they eak out a futile, childless existence. They live as if any day they will all be wiped out, and only by remaining craven can they hope to survive.

They are, by any and all accounts, beings fully living in the Ironic Mode.

In fact, they are so Ironic Mode, they make lepers seem like superheroes.

It is plausible that this is why Covenant meets them.

On the path of his story arc, Covenant is just about to confront the Despiser. Whatever character transformations he needed to make in order to be ready for that, he has made them. He has epic vision. Latent, unknown to himself, and untested. He has come a long way since he was a scared, self-protecting leper daring to go into town to pay his phone bill.

When he meets the jheherrin, he is meeting himself, as he used to be.

The result is tears. He feels concern and pity for the jheherrin, and sadness at their state. He is appalled that he may have distressed them by interfering with their sole dream of a Perfect One.

It is interesting the the jheherrin cannot abide the sun. They seem to be the precursors of the people of the Land in the Second Chronicles, who suffer under the Sunbane. Like those people, the jheherrin live in the Ironic Mode, and lack epic vision.

In the Second Chronicles, Covenent gives back to the people of the Land the epic vision that they have lost. Similarly, in the Second Chronicles, we find that has also given it to the jheherrin. They are now the sur-jheherrin.

[ussusimiel]

Hi Wayfriend,

I know that this post is up here a while but I am new to the forum and I just wanted to say that your post made me register so I could express my gratitude for the generosity of your offering. It is exactly what I would hope to read in a scholarly yet vibrant book about the Chronicles. The kind of book that I would buy immediately if I saw it. A book by a scholar and a lover of Covenant and the Land.

This site is a beacon of light on the net. A necessary corrective to Ironic Mode. You do credit to yourself and all the rest who make this site what it is.

Hail Earthfriend!

[Cambo]

[ussusimiel]

You're welcome, Cambo, glad to be of service!

I'm new on the Watch and I hope to meet you on the plains of the threads and the slopes of the forum!
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Tho' all the maps of blood and flesh
Are posted on the door,
There's no one who has told us yet
What Boogie Street is for.

[Cambo]

[Iolanthe]

A marathon post, but I read it in one go, must go back and read it again in a few days - memory not so retentive these days. Now I feel the need to read the books all over again. Trouble is, once I begin I can't put them down. Thank you so much for recording your thoughts.

[wayfriend]

(I wasn't sure which topic best served this post. Rape thread? Re-read thread? I chose to stick it here.)

If you have Epic Vision on your mind, as I do, when you reread the Chronicles, as I am now, there are lots of things small details that pop out at you in and shine in a new way.

And the rape of Lena now seems quite different to me now.

I came across these lines when it struck me.

[Savor Dam]

I agree that this is the proper thread for these insights, weaved as they are into the fabric of your Epic Vision interpretation of the Chrons.

Nicely done. Not sure how the "wild, white fire" phrasing escaped all of us for these many decades. Like an optical illusion, it is so clear once it is pointed out...
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Love prevails.
~ Tracie Mckinney-Hammon

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
~ Rainier Maria Rilke

[ussusimiel]

Interesting insight, wayfriend.

u.

P.S. It's also cool to get a notification from the thread that inspired me to join the Watch*. Many thanks again to wayfriend for that!

*DISCLAIMER: wayfriend is on no way responsible for any perfidities that I have subsequently perpetrated on the Watch. Those have been all my own doing
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Tho' all the maps of blood and flesh
Are posted on the door,
There's no one who has told us yet
What Boogie Street is for.