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No Exit: the Hero As Victim in Donaldson

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No Exit: the Hero As Victim in Donaldson Volume 11 Number 2 Article 4 Fall 10-15-1984 No Exit: The Hero as Victim in Donaldson Gordon E. Slethaug Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Slethaug, Gordon E. (1984) "No Exit: The Hero as Victim in Donaldson," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 11 : No. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol11/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Study of Thomas Covenant as a transformation of the standard fantasy hero, who is not permitted (in Tolkien’s words) “the Escape of the prisoner.” his fantasy world Covenant is victim and victimizer, whose eventual “acceptance of his own weakness and evil” allows him to subdue Lord Foul. Additional Keywords Donaldson, Stephen R.—Characters—Thomas Covenant; Heroism in Stephen R. Donaldson This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol11/iss2/4 Page 22 MYTHLORE 40: Autumn 1984 TVo The Hero as Victim in Donaldson Gordon E. Slethaug And he who wields white wild magic in t hetsecondary world - the very foundation gold of escape - depends upon the innocent hero's is a paradox - marked superiority to his primary world. for he is everything and nothing, hero and fool, In The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the potent, helpless - Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson transforms and with the one word of truth or this view of fantasy based on escape by treachery writing of a diseased man who can neither be he will save or damn the Earth cured of his leprosy nor put off his despair because he is mad and sane, as he enters the secondary world. Thomas cold and passionate, Covenant is paradoxically the weakest, most lost and found.1 culpable of men, subject to the severest limitations of his real world as he is thrust In his essay "On Fairy-Stories" J. R. R. in the role of hero in the secondary world. Tolkien counters the typically Freudian slur In the real world, he is the victim of at escapist fantasy by distinguishing between disease, social bigotry, and self-pity. In the "Flight of the Deserter" and the "Escape the secondary world he additionally perceives of the Prisoner."* The Deserter is one who of himself as the victim of metaphysical cannot cope with the world and so wants to sources beyond his control. His refusal to escape, but the prisoner is he who needs a abandon feelings of victimization in order to reprieve from diseased vision, the charnel accept pure responsibility for the well-being house of life, long enough to recover a of others in the secondary world ultimately fresh, untainted, prelapsarian view. turns him into a victimizer, not Just a Tolkien, of course, implies that he himself, victim. He is both escaping prisoner and his fantasy heroes, and his readers are among deserter in flight. But as victim and the escaped prisoners, fleeing from the victimizer, he comes to realize his primary to the secondary worlds for that essentially human dimension, and it is fresh vision. through an acceptance of his own weakness and evil that he is finally able to transcend It is for this reason of escape - them and subdue, but not defeat. Lord Foul. momentarily abandoning the decayed world and Within this series, the author Donaldson recovering fresh vision - that Tolkien's never allows himself the luxury of a complete heroes so clearly follow the pattern of the escape nor does he allow that for hero and hero as described, for instance, by Lord reader. It is this refusal to permit escape Raglan in The Hero.3 According to this view, which gives the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the hero comes of honorable and royal the Unbeliever its special message, interest, lineage, but he must escape from his home and and distinction. It is this quality that go to a foreign location where he gains his separates it from Tolkienesque fantasy. And education and maturity among strangers. it is this factor which gives it an Within this formulation, the innocent, noble especially American cast, in the manner of origins of the hero are essential mainly to Hawthorne, Melville, Ellison, and Barth where establish a kind of hereditary access to innocence cripples, leading to despair over heroism, though the hero is seldom able to the knowledge of pain, suffering, and evil. effect any heroic accomplishments where he is born. His birth place serves mainly as a Although little is said of Covenant's springboard to admit him to a secondary early life, it is clear that he has not location, the first having little significant suffered. Once a golden boy - a healthy, bearing on the second. After trials and creative, and successful novelist, innocent contests that test his implicit nobility and of pain, suffering, and real evil, husband of manhood, giving him the opportunity to the beautiful Joan, father to Roger, and suffer, grow, and prove his heroism, the hero owner of a nice home - Covenant’s childlike is given suitable rewards and allowed to innocence of illness and ignorance of despair return to his starting point, although he may do not prepare him for the trauma of painful have been touched in such a way by the and certain death. Rather than assisting him secondary world that he becomes a sort of in coping with life, innocence cripples him victim. Consequently, the interpenetration when he is confronted by the larger issues of of the home environment, or in fantasy the disease, death, and evil. While such primary world, into the secondary world is innocence and success have been the essence limited. In fact, it has almost become de of his American dream, they are not the pith rlqueur within fantasy that the primary, of the human condition - pain, suffering, and often "real," world will not intrude in any evil combined with struggle, Joy, love, and significant sense into the secondary. The self-sacrifice. His adherence to innocence charm, coherence, and integrity of the quest creates a climate in which frustration. MYTHLORE 40: Autumn 1984 page23 disbelief, and despair easily grow. the grave. Bodies jerk like puppet corpses, When Covenant is diagnosed as a leper and and hell walks laughing - (1,10) taken to a leprosarium for treatment, he In a very real sense leprosy becomes a meets a hermit from the West Virginia disease of his flesh and mind, a physical and mountains who manifests the most tragic psychic illness: cursed wijth a festering, consequences of Covenant's leprosy: "His incurable disease without origin or cause, he hands were swollen stumps, fingerless lumps conceives of the world as a gaping wound, the of pink, sick meat marked by cracks and projection of his own "great raw wound of ulcerations from which a yellow exudation emptiness" (I, 18), governed by a sickly and oozed through the medication" (1,15). Since capricious power of fate. He can not accept neither this mountain man nor Thomas has a it as part of the natural order and so grow personal or familial history of leprosy and despite and because of it. In this respect no exposure to it, the source of and reason Covenant is heir to the same legacy of for the disease is an absolute mystery, as bitterness as other stunned tragic heroes Hawthorne might put it, the very mystery of such as Melville's Pierre or Ahab who have iniquity bearing with it guilt and social been disastrously disillusioned of their ostracization. As Donaldson expresses it, ". youthful idealism and belief in a benevolent virtually all societies condemn their universe. lepers to isolation and despair - denounced as criminals and degenerates, as traitors and Betrayed by his body and dead to his villains - cast out of the human race because family and community. Covenant feels denied science has failed to unlock the mystery of any significant freedom of choice except that this affliction" (1,17). Although Covenant of life or death, and he consequently seems blameless, his community takes the considers himself absolved of responsibility disease "... as proof of crime or filth or to others. He refuses to grow beyond his perversion, evidence of God's judgment, as wish to regain a primal innocence of outlook. the horrible sign of some psychological or Responsible only to himself, he often spiritual or moral corruption or guilt" despairs, but once he makes his existential (1,18). Like most other offenders against decision not to be an early victim of death, accepted social values such as Hester Prynne he narcissistically turns inward, protecting in The Scarlet Letter. Covenant finds himself himself by trying to submit to the the source of ridicule, the butt of jokes, regimented, therapeutic care that his doctor and the target of prejudicial treatment.
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