“No,” Covenant said. “I recognized something in what you said—I’m starting to understand this. Listen. This whole crisis here is a struggle inside me. By hell, I’ve been a leper so long, I’m starting to think that the way people treat lepers is justified. So I’m becoming my own enemy, my own Despiser—working against myself when I try to stay alive by agreeing with the people who make it so hard. That’s why I’m dreaming this. Catharsis. Work out the dilemma subconsciously, so that when I wake up I’ll be able to cope.”
According to Donaldson, everything external in a fantasy is an outward personification of an internal conflict of the main character...
Articulated as such here.
Almost a case of opening the 4th wall.
For me, the Land is like a parallel universe, like Narnia, and Covenant li…