part three: runes of the earth and conclusion:
Now then, In Runes we are not given any new mythos. Linden briefly remembers Foamy's story of the stars, which Covenant must have told her off camera. There is also a brief recap of the Clave's perverted teachings.
But - there is another possible way of looking at the land. the paradox of the Land is that is both real and a dream/delusion.
So what do these two competing mythos tell us of the two people sharing the dream/delusion?
The original story, about the Creator, can probably be "assigned" to Thomas Covenant. Since he is a creator of sorts himself, and burned his stories, this makes sense. He is both creation and destruction in one package. the characters in the story he wrote are the lost stars, the Unhomed. both the old man in the ochre robe and the despiser himself are important aspects of Covenant's mind and personality. he creates, and he destroys his own creation in despair and disgust...
The second set of stories, about the Worm and the Wurd, would therefore go along with Linden. if that is the case, it would explain why the old man in the ochre robe never shows up in Runes - if he is an avatar of a part of Covenant's personality, Covenant is dead in the real world. thus, so would be the old man...
But what do the Worm and the Wurd have to do with Linden's inner psyche? the Worm/Wurd could represent that terrible inner darkness that represent the destruction of life and the murder of her mother? the darkness that ate life and turned her into a matricide? Might the Earth represent how she built a life revolving around saving lives upon that sleeping inner murderous darkness? And the awakening of the Worm might be her greatest fear - that her new life will be completely destroyed if that sleeping destruction ever wakes up?
only one mythos is there when Covenant alone is in the Land. the second does not appear until Linden starts to come into her own in TOT. both characters might experience both cosmologies in the Second Chronicles because they are sharing the same delusion/dream
I originally posted this at the Donaldson discussion board at http://kevinswatch.ihugny.com where I was told it would not suffice, due to too much duplication of discussion with other existing threads. Nevertheless, it represented a great deal of work and thought on my part, and I wished to save a copy for myself before it gets taken down.
And at the moment I think I will never go to that discussion board again.
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