[QUOTE=Lightray]
So, Ogre, what’s your opinion of Covenant (and his attitude) now that you’ve finished?
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Well, the interpretation of The Chronicles that satisfies me the most is the one I guessed at earlier. I think I was pretty much completely spot-on (:p) about the theme of the book. The Land is Covenant’s soul. Lord Foul is his self-hatred. The Illearth Stone is his disease. The Staff of Law it his powerful, yet ultimately self-destructive unwillingness to break out of his strictly prescribed leper’s life. It seems to track pretty well. Therefore, the entire series was really about knowing himself, and forcing himself to come face to face with innate self-loathing, in order to get past his reliance on his old life (Kevin’s Lore) and allow himself to grow again. Donaldson knows that self-change is one of the most frustrating and daunting tasks any person can undertake, so in retrospect, Covenant’s maddening nature as represented in the novels is perfectly understandable.
To make a long interpretation short, I choose to see the first books as pretty much a delusion from start to finish. Covenant’s mind made up the entire thing as the ultimate survival strategy. In this way, Covenant is mentally very, very powerful, and exceptionally lucky. I mean, he essentially had his inner landscape revealed to him in concrete terms.
I must say, however, that I’m already thinking “uh oh” in The Wounded Land, because suddenly, it’s a much more conventional story. Lord Foul actually has objective reality in OUR world now, as revealed through the eyes of Linden Avery and the cultists, and Joan’s possession. This is a lot less interesting to me than the whole “man vs. himself” slant of the first trilogy. I can deal, though. I’ll just have to see what Donaldson’s angle is this time (but I suspect that it will be much more of a traditional sword n’ sorcery fantasy hero’s quest. Could be wrong. Probably am. But that’s what I’m anticipating.)
I still see him as being very Moorcockian. Possibly even more so now. Even Moorcock’s antiheroes often tried to do the right thing, but were simply fatally flawed. What can I say? Covenant is the Land’s Eternal Champion, he reached Tanelorn at the end of the first trilogy, but I reckon he’s going to be called back into service from his well-earned rest. 
Actually, I think he’s both. Sauron and Lord Foul represent different things in the minds of their respective authors.
Sauron represents the forces of industrialization and change. Tolkien saw this as pretty much an unalloyed evil. It destroys pastoral lifestyles, erases history, and generally stinks up the joint. The way he presents it, Sauron is a flaw, a product of a Fall. Of course, JRRT never would have written (or even acknowledged) that these changes may not end up being an altogether Bad Thing.
On the other hand, Lord Foul is integral to the land. He’s part of it, because he’s part of our soul. In this way, he’s both more evil (insidious, personally destructive) AND more banal (hell, we ALL have our Lord Foul, and depending on how well we control him, sometimes we give him our own versions of the Illearth Stone. Covenant’s was leprosy. Someone else’s may be heroin, or alcohol, or Cheetos. In any case, it’s just a tool we give to our self-loathing that helps destroy us. Pretty banal.)
Interesting. He didn’t turn out to be as utterly ineffectual as I thought Donaldson was going to make him. So there may actually be some redemptive power in straightforward rationalism and calculation.
