Why You Should Pick Up Thomas Covenant Again (And Finish The Story)
Art by Mark Harrison
“It must be hell to be a leper,” [the doctor] said rapidly. “I’m trying to understand. It’s like I studied in Heidelberg, years ago, and while I was there I saw a lot of medieval art. Especially religious art. Being a leper reminds me of statues of the Crucifixion made during the Middle Ages. There is Christ on the Cross, and his features—his body, even his face—are portrayed so blandly that the figure is unrecognizable. It could be anyone, man or woman. But the wounds—the nails in the hands and feet, the spear in the side, the crown of thorns—are carved and even painted in incredibly vivid detail. You would think the artist crucified his model to get that kind of realism.
“Being a leper must be like that.”
***Warning: You will find spoilers for Lord Foul’s Bane and a few spoilers for The Illearth War and The Power that Preserves.***
What Has Gone Before
Right now, you’re probably thinking one of three things:
“Who is Thomas Covenant and why should I care?”
Or, “No way. I am NOT going down THAT path again. Nuh-uh. You can’t make me.”
Or, you’re thinking: “Yeah, I can dig it. In fact, I’m going to read those books AGAIN.”
If you’re in camp #2, this one’s for you!—the readers who began reading Book One, Lord Foul’s Bane (LFB), got about 70 pages into it, and then threw it away and never picked it up again.
But…you really should.
Art by Peter Goodfellow
First off, let me just say, I get it.
Trust me, I really do. I was a senior in high school (about 2007) when I first read it. Fantasy was a new genre to me. Years before, I’d gone in to see Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring in theaters without any foreknowledge or expectations about the story. I literally had no idea what movie I was going to see.
THAT is how new I was.
I started reading Eddings, Jacques, and Goodkind. Donaldson just so happened to be in the same section at Barnes & Noble, so my dad bought me LFB one day. I was so excited. Let me just say—it knocked me off my seat. Literally.
So let’s talk about it. First, a short summary:
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is a high fantasy series written by Stephen R. Donaldson in the same vein as The Lord of the Rings with one big twist: the main character is a misanthropic leper who gets transported from the modern “real world” to the Middle Earth-type “Land” and refuses to believe that anything is more than a dream.
That’s the basic premise.
What Donaldson has done with Thomas Covenant is subverted expectations in a time where everyone was looking for more Tolkien. Some might say he subverted them too much. It’s a fair observation, but one I disagree with.
The reception has largely been mixed. (Just take a look at the reviews on Amazon.) If you’re one of those one-star reviewers, I understand. You could stop now and never look back—that’s your right.
Or…you could re-read this passage from Lord Foul’s Bane:
“Together, they did not think about money or success. It was the pure act of creation which ignited his imagination; and the warm spell of her pride and eagerness kept him burning like a bolt of lightning, not for seconds or fractions of seconds, but for five months in one long wild discharge of energy that seemed to create the landscapes of the earth out of nothingness by the sheer force of its brilliance—hills and crags, trees bent by the passionate wind, night-ridden people, all rendered into being by that white bolt striking into the heavens from the lightning rod of his writing. When he was done, he felt as drained and satisfied as all of life’s love uttered in one act.”
Do you remember reading this?
Art by Darrell K. Sweet
It’s one of my favorite passages from the first chapters of LFB. The narrator is describing Thomas and Joan, his wife, in the first months of their marriage. Before Covenant was diagnosed with leprosy, he was an unpublished writer who was, presumably, writing a fantasy novel (implied through some subtle descriptions in this passage).
A few passages later, and you get to see what sort of a person Joan is as she takes it upon herself to name their child, Roger, after her father and grandfather—a name that Thomas actually dislikes.
We learn how Thomas finishes writing his book, sends it off to his publisher, and how it becomes an instant bestseller. He enjoys his success for a little while until it’s time to write the sequel. That’s when everything goes wrong.
He doesn’t realize he has gangrene in his fingers while he’s typing the sequel. This is because his nerves are dying. When Joan finally notices, she berates him and takes him to the hospital. There, they have to amputate the two smaller fingers on his right hand. After the surgery, Thomas finds out he has leprosy…
(to be continued down below)
Thomas’s Internal World
Donaldson is an accomplished wordsmith. His writing is packed with metaphors, symbolism, and foreshadowing. But sometimes his writing lacks concrete details, as in the following passages:
“In his confusion, [Covenant] scanned the street rapidly, but the boy had escaped completely. Then, as he turned back toward the old beggar, his eyes caught the door, gilt-lettered: Bell Telephone Company. The sight gave him a sudden twist of fear that made him forget all distractions. Suppose—This was his destination; he had come here in person to claim his human right to pay his own bills. But suppose—
He shook himself. He was a leper; he could not afford suppositions. Unconsciously he shoved the sheet of paper into his pocket. With grim deliberateness, he gave himself a VSE. Then he gripped himself, and started toward the door.
A man hurrying out through the doorway almost bumped into him, then recognized him and backed away, his face suddenly gray with apprehension...The man had been Joan’s lawyer at the divorce—a short, fleshy individual full of the kind of bonhomie in which lawyers and ministers specialize. Covenant needed that pause to recover from the dismay of the lawyer’s glance. He felt involuntarily ashamed to be the cause of such dismay. For a moment, he could not recollect the conviction which had brought him into town.”
Some amateur writers might forget to add details into the story because of the erroneous and unconscious assumption that the reader will “get it,” or that they’ll see the story how they see it. Donaldson doesn’t give us many details about the lawyer. He’s short, fleshy (plump), and has a kind of “bonhomie,” which means that he appears to have good-heartedness or extreme credulity.
That’s all we know, but it’s intentional. Thomas doesn’t want to know much else about him.
The way Donaldson writes Thomas Covenant as if he has a filter that only allows for certain recognizable details, and leaves most others out. Because they don’t matter to Thomas. It represents his extremely narrow perception of the world, which has become a kind of self-defense mechanism.
The reason I bring this up is because the writing, all the way down to the point of view, is telling us what kind of person Covenant is and that he values only the essential. Everything else is extraneous. Another example is that we don’t know Joan’s side of the story because Thomas doesn’t wan’t to know. All he knows is that he was abandoned, and that’s all that matters.
You might not remember what “VSE” means; it stands for “Visual Surveillance of Extremities.” When Thomas was being coached by his doctors about the dangers of leprosy, they gave him VSE as a kind of ritualistic check-up on his body to discover any unknown cuts, bruises, etc. Because his nerves were deadened, he wouldn’t feel a life-threatening injury until it was too late.
Early on, Thomas took VSE very seriously. He resolved not to die because of his leprosy. He even altered his entire life so that it revolved around preventing himself from getting nicks and cuts from things like furniture.
He became a recluse, never leaving his home. This was after Joan divorced him and took their son away from him. This was after everyone he knew or loved shunned him because of his leprosy.
His life had essentially been turned upside down.
Thomas Covenant Isn’t “Whiny”
Art by Allen Morris
One of the biggest critiques of Thomas Covenant is that, as a character, he’s insufferable. People claim he whines and complains about everything. They can’t stand his attitude about life and the way he treats people.
I say, he’s not “whiny,” but he is extremely conflicted. It comes off as immature or an And no one’s saying you have to like him. I don’t think Donaldson entirely wants you to like him at first.
Thomas Covenant is one of the better-written anti-heroes in modern literature. Some people don’t like anti-heroes, and that’s perfectly fine. You can stop reading now if you wish, because I’m not going to try to dispute this fact.
I’m not saying Thomas Covenant is for EVERYONE. What I am saying is that most people don’t give him a better chance. Not enough readers give him more than 70 pages. I think you should.
Still with me? Here’s where I make my case.
Most of the setup for Thomas’s state of mind is done in the first two chapters of LFB. When I first read this book, I missed it. I missed a LOT of it. And I don’t think people quite grasp Thomas’s state of mind by the time they flip to page 70.
He has a lot to be angry and bitter about. He’s been dealt an insufferable hand. Joan, his wife, has divorced and abandoned him simply because he contracted leprosy. Her reasoning was that she believes he refuses to take care of himself, and doesn’t want the leprosy to spread to their son, Roger. So she takes him with her and doesn’t look back. Thomas is left alone in his farmhouse, outside of a town that now fears and hates him.
He’s left alone with an almost superhuman determination to survive leprosy, an extraordinary focus on what is real, and an extreme aversion for what can potentially kill him (which is almost everything).
With all this in mind, we enter…
The Land
Art by Michael Whelan
I’m skipping over a few things, but the one thing you most likely remember the most about the first book is the Land.
Most who have read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (LOTR) will remember how similar it is to Middle Earth. That’s intentional.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (TCTC) is what’s called a deconstruction of Tolkien’s work. Which means that Donaldson intentionally took certain tropes from Tolkien’s works and subverted the readers’ expectations of those tropes. Instead of small, innocent hobbits, we have a bitter, gaunt man with leprosy getting sent on an epic quest.
If you’re a Tolkien fan in the late 70’s, the premise might sound interesting if a little odd. I can only imagine how the first readers reacted at that time. They probably wanted more heroic quests, dragons, magic, etc. That’s why people flocked to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.
Absolutely no one was expecting one of Tolkien’s immediate successors to write a modern fantasy about a leper of all people.
But if the reader has been following the narration up until this point, they’ll note that there has been no indication that Covenant will suddenly become the hero they want him to be. He’s not going to turn into Aragorn, lead a quest of legendary warriors up to Lord Foul’s Creche, and destroy all evil.
And if you expected that, you haven’t been paying attention.
Because getting sent to the magical Land is probably the worst thing that could happen to someone like Covenant—ever.
Remember:
Thomas is a leper with dead nerves and therefore averse to going out of his house or putting himself in situations with the slightest possibility of causing himself harm
He is bitter and misanthropic since his friends and loved ones treated him horribly and abandoning him when he needed them the most
He is determined to survive leprosy at any cost, and that means focusing on what’s real and staying far away from the fantastical (in fact, one of the first things he does after his divorce with Joan is burn the still-unfinished manuscript for the sequel novel to his first bestseller, and he does this because he can’t afford to get lost in those imaginary worlds again, lest he forget about his survival and perish)
With all this in mind, we enter the Land…which is a magical, fantastical world that:
is able to restore feeling to his nerves
is home to many kind, genuine people who take an interest in Covenant’s well-being
makes him out to be the reincarnation of a legendary hero who can save everyone from the dark lord’s evil plot
Is there any wonder that he rejects the reality of the Land? How could any of this be real? It must be a subconscious manifestation of the things he wants to be true.
Art by Allen Morrison
Be honest, now. The full title of the series is called “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.” He refuses to believe that the Land is more than a dream. And the actions that one takes in dreams never have real-world consequences. Right?
Right?
That’s what a rational person would think and say. That’s what most people know to be true. Dreams aren’t real. Strange things happen in our dreams and everything goes back to normal when we wake up. If we remember the dream in the morning, and if it was memorable, we might recount it to someone for the entertainment value. Then, we move on.
Once, as a teenager, I dreamed that I had shot and killed someone. But I didn’t, really. I had stayed up too late the night before playing a video game, and the dream was a manifestation of my hyperfixation on that first-person shooter. I woke up and didn’t think anything of it. My life has been normal ever since. Relatively.
The Land Will Kill Thomas Covenant
At least, in Thomas’s mind, this statement is true. Why? Because if he lets down his guard for just a second; if he even believes for a single moment that he’s cured of his leprosy, he could succumb to the illness and eventually die a horrible death from it.
It doesn’t matter what the reader thinks. It doesn’t matter if the Land is real or not because the very nature of the Land threatens his uncompromising survival instincts. It threatens his sanity. He would go to any lengths to prevent himself from losing himself.
This is what happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object. This is why Thomas Covenant is one of, if not the best-written anti-heroes in all of fantasy literature.
All Right…Let’s Talk About THAT Chapter
You knew where this was going.
If you’ve stuck with me this far, you must at least be partially convinced or at least curious. But before we talk about the particular scene in question, which takes place at the end of the chapter, I’d like to set the stage a bit more.
Another side effect of the leprosy is impotence. This isn’t something that Donaldson belabors. It’s mentioned once in the first chapter and then later in chapter five and seven of LFB. But you’re expected to remember it.
Imagine you’re a man and you’ve been impotent for years. (Bear with me, here…) Your nerves are dead, but you still remember what it was like to be in love. To have a family. Nowadays, there’s no bringing dead nerves back to life. At least not completely. It’s the 70s, and with a disease like leprosy, Thomas has all but given up on experiencing the sensations that come with being a husband ever again.
Then, he gets transported to the Land, gets injured (I’m skipping over quite a bit here), and encounters an attractive young girl named Lena. Concerned for his safety and health, she offers him something her people call “hurtloam” in order to heal his wounds:
“Blood still oozed from the heels and fingertips, and when he washed it off he could see bits of black grit lodged deep in some of the cuts. But before he started washing again, Lena returned. Her cupped hands were full of thick brown mud. “This is hurtloam,” she said reverently, as if she were speaking of something rare and powerful. “You must put it on all your wounds.”
“Mud?” His leper’s caution quivered. “I need soap, not more dirt.”
“This is hurtloam,” repeated Lena. “It is for healing.” She stepped closer and thrust the mud toward him. He thought he could see tiny gleams of gold in it.
He stared at it blankly, shocked by the idea of putting mud in his cuts.”
Everything in the Land is challenging Thomas’s survival instincts. In the real world, you do not put mud in your bleeding injury for fear of an infection forming there. Thomas wouldn’t survive another infection, even a small one.
Poor Lena, who doesn’t understand the position she’s put herself in, is just trying to help. She is innocent, but she has become a part of the main threat to his sanity. And this, I suspect, is why many people had such a visceral reaction to what happens later.
As you may very well remember, the hurtloam does, in fact, heal Thomas’s wounds—but it does more than that. It heals his dead nerves!
As if Thomas needed more proof that he was in a dream.
Along with his miraculously healed nerves, Thomas’s libido returns as well—something he knows is impossible. But why do we have to talk about this? Why does it have to be mentioned at all? Because it would be disingenuous if Donaldson hadn’t written about it. Thomas is a person after all. He’s also a leper that has to deal with these kinds of issues.
I could go on about disingenuous writing, but that would be one digression too far.
To his credit, Thomas holds back his urges as long as is possible. However, he is still convinced he is dreaming. Lena, in her infinite goodness, is really only the catalyst that sends him over the edge…
“His words filled her with horror and protest. “How can it be?” she moaned. “You are not—abominable. What world is it that dares treat you so?”
His muscles jumped still higher in his shoulders, as if his hands were locked on the throat of some tormenting demon. “It’s real. That is reality. Fact. The kind of thing that kills you if you don’t believe it.” With a gesture of rejection toward the river, he gasped, “This is a nightmare.”
Lena flared with sudden courage. “I do not believe it. It may be that your world—but the Land—ah, the Land is real.”
Shortly after Lena says this, you turn to page 70, and Covenant rapes her.
There is no excusing or extolling his action. In fact, Donaldson deliberately makes the scene uncomfortable and horrible—using words and phrases like “foul,” “tore” and “torn,” “helpless with anguish,” “stabbed,” “crumbled.”
At this point, you likely tossed the book at the wall, or in the trash, and never picked it up again.
“How dare he do that?”
“This comes out of nowhere!”
“Donaldson only wrote this for shock value!”
Well, no he didn’t. You just weren’t paying attention. And how do I know this? Because I wasn’t paying attention either.
I actually went to my dad and complained, but he seemed unsurprised or unconcerned at my reaction. I eventually decided to give it another go.
Why Follow Someone So Thoroughly Unlikable?
Art by Allen Morris
TCTC is not a story for the faint of heart, I’ll admit. It’s not a story that gives you the warm fuzzies like The Hobbit does. In this, it is more like A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) by George R. R. Martin. Covenant is not a good person, but we understand why and how he became the person he is. We understand why he acts the way he does.
At least we should, anyway.
But I’ll admit it’s difficult to empathize with a leper. Most of us haven’t had leprosy or known anyone suffering from it. In fact, it seems like Donaldson went out of his way to create one of the most unempathizable characters in all of fantasy literature. We can possibly sympathize with Covenant, but how can we truly know what it’s like? Well, we’ll just have to use our imagination!
(It doesn’t help that a cure for leprosy was discovered shortly after this book was released! We haven’t had to worry about leprosy in the U.S. for about 60 years, now.)
Anyway, if you think Covenant doesn’t suffer the consequences of what he’s done, you’re wrong.
With each book, he suffers the consequences of the rape in a different way (like meeting Elena, his and Lena’s daughter in Book Two!), and it actually hangs over him throughout the series. Donaldson ensures that Covenant pays dearly. Over and over again.
So there is a sense of justice in the books, and none of it feels arbitrary. It’s all important to the story.
But why follow someone who does something so awful?
This is an excellent question.
Art by Fantasy Flight Games
There’s one parallel I can draw from another fantasy series, published more than a decade after TCTC. In ASOIAF, by Martin, there’s a character by the name of Jaime Lannister. He starts off as a pretty despicable person as well. We’re not supposed to like him, but then several things happen to him in later seasons that show us what kind a person he really is.
He becomes empathizable. He’s done terrible things, but he’s also become real to us. We end up rooting for him at the end…
Same thing with Covenant.
The appeal of following either Jaime or Thomas lies in the choices they make later and what they learn along the way. I believe that there is a deep, dark part of us where Jaime and Thomas lurk. All the cynicism, unyielding bitterness, crippling pride, frustrating unbelief—in short, all the darkness that we strive to suppress or change within ourselves.
That’s Thomas Covenant. That’s Jaime Lannister.
These books are an advanced exercise in empathy. I believe that if a despicable person like Thomas Covenant can grow and change over time, then so can we—absolutely. As difficult as this series is to read at times, I think the payoff is equally rewarding, if not more so.
As with most human beings, Covenant isn’t 100% without any positive qualities. Sometimes they are subtle, but I think that’s one of the points of the story. If you can see the good in Thomas Covenant, then you can see the good in anyone.
“I’m Still Not Going To Read Them” -You, Probably
That’s fine! To each their own. I certainly can’t force you.
But, then again, you’d be missing out on a great story.
Art by Allen Morris
At the very least I’m arguing to finish the first TCTC series, which consists of only three books. That’s it! Just three:
Lord Foul’s Bane
The Illearth War
The Power that Preserves
These books changed my life when I read them—and in ways that I didn’t fully understand at the time. They gave me:
a well-written anti-hero
an advanced writing style and vocabulary
mature themes in a genre that’s historically geared toward children
an ending well worth the wait
Don’t even get me started on the second part. (I think The One Tree in the Second Chronicles is considered the best in the entire series.)
But that’s not what I’m pitching right now. Maybe you’ve matured a little since you picked up LFB. You’ve gotten wiser. You may have read ASOIAF by Martin or at least watched the Game of Thrones show on HBO. If so, then at the very least you have an idea what it’s like to experience the peaks and valleys of a character’s arc. To both hate and love a fictional character at the same time.
That’s what it’s like to read Thomas Covenant.
Conclusion
If you’ve gotten this far, you’re either:
still not going to read it because of the bad experience you had the first time
or, you’re considering picking up Lord Foul’s Bane again after however many years it’s been
If you’re in camp #2 above, then great! I want to know what you think of the second time you read it! Write a comment below or send me an email at Readers@starsreach.net.
There is something to be said about the fact that TCTC (specifically LFB) has caused such a stir in the fantasy community. Most fantasy enthusiasts have a strong opinion about Thomas Covenant, one way or the other. There doesn’t seem to be any in-between. You either hate it or love it.
A complex story like Covenant’s deserves to be read in its entirety, and I think if you go in with proper expectations, knowing what it is you’re reading, it can deliver a great read into your hands.
I hope I’ve convinced you to try again. Read with a more open mind, and you might just be left surprised and satisfied where this adventure leads you.
If not, then I’m sure you’ll let me know.
