*Disclaimer: contains spoilers for Lord Foul’s Bane, the Illearth War, and the Power That Preserves, all by Stephen R. Donaldson, as well as the mention of rape*
Lord Foul’s Bane was released in 1977 in a dawning age for fantasy literature. Publishers were launching entire departments dedicated to the genre—and taking bets on whether the books would even sell. The Lord of the Rings trilogy held a solitary place in the minds of the public of what high fantasy could be, and Lord Foul’s Bane quickly drew comparisons. Its villain, like Sauron, was pure unidimensional evil. Its world was similarly lush with detail and magical nuance. The inhabitants of the Land, like Middle-earth, embraced story and song.
Reaction to the main character Thomas Covenant, though, was mixed.
He is described more often than not as unlikeable. As I began rereading the first trilogy (Lord Foul’s Bane, the Illearth War, and the Power That Preserves), “unlikeable” was an impression I, too, reached quickly. He has been called fantasy’s first antihero. However, according to author Stephen Donaldson, he is anything but.
The idea for this blog post began as an examination of how to write unlikeable protagonists. As I read more of Donaldson’s own insights into his work, and walked the Land with Covenant himself, it became instead an examination of how the unlikeable protagonist, when done correctly, is a lie.
In Elements of Fiction Writing: Characters & Viewpoints, author Orson Scott Card sums up the intent of an unlikeable protagonist: “At times…you’ll want to violate that general principle [of writing likeable main characters] and tell a story whose main character is pretty repulsive. Even then,” Card quickly adds, previewing our discussion, “with almost no exceptions, the writer who brings off such a story successfully is really not making the main character completely unlikeable. Instead, the character is given several major negative traits early in the story, and the traits remain prominent throughout so that readers don’t notice that the writer is using three dozen other techniques to create sympathy for the ‘unsympathetic’ hero. The true ‘antihero,’” he concludes, “is rare in fiction. Most seeming antiheroes are really heroes who need, metaphorically speaking, a bath.”
The reasons to dislike Thomas Covenant are many. It starts on page one with his very description. He is visually repellent. He is a “gray, gaunt man who strode down the center of the walk like a mechanical derelict.” He stalks. People avoid him, hold their breath. We see him as a threat to a child playing in his path. Rarely, if ever, does Covenant smile. Instead, he snarls, grimaces, clenches, and contorts. His body seems little more than a puppet of his own rage. But more than that, Covenant is a leper—in his own words, unclean.
Covenant is a reactive character. He resists action. At most, the reason he gives to even progress in his assigned quest, to march in step with this believed delusion in which he’s found himself, is a leper’s reason: move forward and survive. His proactivity, when it does appear, is selfish. Covenant wants to avoid responsibility. He will manipulate and lift others in order to remove burden from himself, at least through the Illearth War, when his manipulation pushes Elena, his daughter, to her destruction.
We dislike him for the pain he brings. Continually, he pushes away those seeking to give him kindness. Over and over, he curses good intentions. He refuses hope. In a beautiful world threatened by destruction, Covenant dares to say “who cares.” Early in the book, overwhelmed by the returned health that his leprosy had stolen away, he rapes a young woman, a woman who seemingly represents all the goodness that the Land has to offer. That alone would leave a reader wishing him nothing but misfortune.
But it’s never so simple, is it?
In an interview with OF Blog, Donaldson said, “I don’t think of Covenant as an ‘antihero’; I think of him as the most important kind of hero there is: a ‘human’ hero.”
Perhaps it helps to understand where Covenant appeared from in the first place. When talking to the Author Stories Podcast, Donaldson explained how the seminal idea for Lord Foul’s Bane was to write about a character who “must confront a…Sauron-type figure and have the courage to do that because, ultimately, he denies the reality of the evil.” Donaldson goes on to explain a later revelation: “If I want to write a big story about somebody who disbelieves, I should write about someone who has every conceivable reason to prefer belief.” Covenant’s very diseased existence should invite any means of escape, should encourage him to lose himself completely in the health and beauty of the Land. Wouldn’t we do the same? “Whose life,” Donaldson said, “could be more of a nightmare than a leper’s?” (Donaldson’s father worked in a leprosarium in India.)
Thomas Covenant is the “unbeliever.” His survival system—after leprosy rips everything away from him except the terrifying image of what an unguarded existence could bring (as shown by other wasted victims in the leprosarium)—is a rigid set of rules that must rely on reality. Leprosy cannot be cured. A reality. Any superficial wound risks death. A reality. Human contact is a risk to others and must be avoided. A reality. Lepers are outcasts, unclean. A reality.
We begin to see more, then, the sympathetic devices Donaldson has used. The Land is an un-reality, at least to Covenant. It threatens the rules he’s created in order to ensure his own survival, asks him to give up his guard. To believe in the Land, to succumb to the hope it provides, and be proven wrong should it reveal itself as an illusion, would be suicide.
We come to sympathize with Covenant in moments of expectation (such as the dance of the wraiths and Elena’s fight against Lord Kevin) when all the stakes are placed upon him to overcome the challenge, knowing—as he does—that he has no understanding of how to wield the power of the white gold. No one believes he can’t do it. He will, they believe, be the savior they need. So he avoids responsibility, because he knows he can only fail. He’s as much a victim of a destiny he can never hope to achieve (at least early in the series) as he is of his leprosy.
His refusal to be touched is a result of the shame and disgust heaped upon him by a world unwilling to look any deeper than the name of his disease. (We see this in moments when he cracks and pleads for understanding—“It’s not catching.”—and in moments when he is compelled to break his isolation and seek the presence of others, if even from a distance.) We build sympathy for the characters who offer their kindness; we see them as better people for it. And that has a way of actually endearing us to Covenant in turn, of starting to see what’s in him that good people would continue to care in the face of his cynicism.
He is, in a way, like Frodo from Lord of the Rings. Frodo fails, time and time again. But in return, he makes those around him that much better. We love Sam immensely for his never-ending friendship and loyalty. Aragon and Legolas and Gimli give sword and bow and axe and become (among others) the Fellowship; they become the heroes we root for, because—let’s face it—we’re never going to root for Frodo. The support from those around him—people whom we like—becomes Frodo’s primary sympathetic device, because we see him, then, as someone worth supporting.
The nature of Thomas Covenant is a fine line for Donaldson to walk. In an interview with Science Fiction Review, he explains, “Covenant is certainly not a “golden mean” [a perfect midpoint between hero and villain] in any normal sense. His is an extravagant personality, for good or ill—almost literally incapable of emotional (or ethical) moderation. So, he is a mixture of good and evil insofar as he contains within himself the raw materials of which both Lord Mhoram and Lord Foul were created: both are aspects of himself. But, within that context, I perceive him as being far more heroic than villainous. Even his bitterness is just part of his ceaseless and uncompromising attempt to define some kind of integrity for himself in the face of the impossible contractions of his situation.”
Perhaps Covenant’s strongest redeeming quality is an arc of growth, however slowly. He changes, and we as readers attach ourselves to characters who change. “I’ve never considered him to be ‘unsympathetic,’” Donaldson says. “I wouldn’t have written him if he had not so fully engaged my sympathies. But, of course, while I was writing him in Lord Foul’s Bane, I knew what he was going to become in the Power That Preserves.” (Science Fiction Review) Covenant begins to care about the Land, learning to trust—and even love—its people. “He learns to discover what real importance is. Importance comes from within. Within him. It doesn’t matter whether the Land is real or not. What matters is that he cares about it and he’s willing to sacrifice himself for it.” (Author Stories Podcast)
Ultimately, sympathetic devices must rise above the negative traits. As Card warns in Elements of Fiction Writing, “The storyteller’s strongest tools for provoking the readers’ antipathy cannot be overwhelmed by the tools for arousing sympathy.” Donaldson believes in Covenant, in his flaws and challenges. If he didn’t, if he wrote with antipathy solely in mind, the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever would not hold the respect and success that it does. It would not be the beautiful, complicated, and emotional tale that it is.
The lesson, then, (unlike this post) is brief: if you have written a protagonist that is truly and irredeemably unlikeable, you have written a story that will fail.