From: utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!bch
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Title: White Gold Wielder (****SPOILER!****)
Article-I.D.: unc.5037
Posted: Thu Apr 21 02:46:10 1983
Received: Fri Apr 22 21:33:03 1983

Now that the inital discussion of Donaldson's White Gold Wielder has died
down, I would like to start it up again on a more positive note.  I,
for one, was absolutely transfixed by the book and somewhat blown away by
the ending.  It makes me wonder whether those who chose to review the
book on the net read the same thing I did.  I am inclined to doubt it.

People who don't like the Donaldson books (sheesh, if they don't like
them how come they read six of them!) tend to compare them to Tolkien's
Middle Earth books.  This is a little like comparing apples to oranges.

Tolkien's books are a marvelous epic tale, I agree, with wonderful poetry,
an epic quest and a struggle between "good" and "evil" where "good"
(whew!) is predestined to triumph.  Not so with Donaldson.  On the surface
he has all of these things (maybe) but his "good" does not have innocence,
his "evil" is a much more complicated concept, his quest not quite so
direct and there is no triumph in the end.  Why?

My take is that while Tolkien is going for entertainment -- a good yarn
to tell to children of all ages -- Donaldson is going for the gut.  The
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are not so much an epic fantasy as an excur-
sion through Donaldson's (and ultimately our own) psyche.

Covenant *is* the land, and the land *is* Covenant in a bond that makes
Arthur's attachment to Camelot seem purely allegorical.  His leprosy is
its sickness and the strength of Lord Foul is directly related to the
degree to which Covenant "despises" himself.  The trilogies, then, are
both allegories of a personal growth and throwing away of preconceptions
of what is "important" and "moral" in order to confront the real enemies
of life.  The struggle that takes place is not a pleasant one, and it
takes Covenant places where Tolkien's heroes dare not go (one can scarcely
imagine Frodo raping a female hobbit in a surge if primal emotion!) but
it is no less a legitimate struggle.

The end, which seemed to dissapoint alot of people, is to me transcendant.
Covenant finally realizes who he is and what his relation to Lord Foul
is (they are one in the same.)  Linden Avery is released from her burdens
and heals Covenant/The Land in the way that was impossible for Covenant
himself.  No, Foul cannot be destroyed...he is as necessary for The
Land's survival as the demondim, the elohim, the croyen, the stone and
the wood.  The Law is restored, but as a living law rather than the
law of runes and wood that *failed* in the first place.  What more could
one ask?

I could go on for a while and I fear I have abbreviated my argument to
the point of nonsense.  Let me conclude with a question:  Why does
Donaldson use recognizable roots for the names of things in the Land?
(demondim, elohim, waynhim, Gilden, Vain, etc.)  It seems to me that is
the key to much of what he is doing.

				Byron Howes
				UNC - Chapel Hill