Hi – I’m Luke, and today we’re talking about A Memory of Light, last book of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. If you’re here after watching the entire summary, then congratulations! You’ve proven that you have what it takes to really dig into literature. In recognition of your talent, you have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada. Either way, if you’re here for my analysis of A Memory of Light and, really, The Wheel of Time as a whole, then you’re in the right place. We’re finally here, at the very end, and I’m really excited to get into it!
It should really go without saying at this point, but just to be sure: if you’re watching this video and you haven’t read the entirety of The Wheel of Time, including New Spring but most significantly A Memory of Light, then you should really stop watching and go read it first. I’m about to thoroughly spoil this book, and thus the series as a whole. This is a great book and a fantastic series: it’s really worth reading it for yourself.
For today’s analysis, I’m going to start by talking about the main theme of A Memory of Light and the ending of the series as a whole. In particular, I want to get into the worldview or message that I think is conveyed here, and I want to do so while focused entirely on the ending we actually got, without considering what could have been done differently or picking it apart. Once we’ve come to properly appreciate just how fantastic this ending is… then we can have some fun playing with other possibilities and picking things apart. There are definitely some things to criticize in A Memory of Light, and I don’t want to ignore that, but I also don’t want it to overshadow what was done well.
Once I’m done with all of that heavy stuff we’ll spend some time just having fun looking back at the series, calling out some of the best moments and most interesting characters. Despite all the time I’ve spent on the summary and on this analysis video – seriously, I finished the book about a month ago and I’ve been working on this nearly every day since – I’m still definitely stuck in that post-series melancholy. I’m really looking forward to spending just a little time just reveling in how great The Wheel of Time is.
Anyways, we have a ton of stuff to talk about today, so let’s get into it!
Why are novels the way that they are?
To properly discuss A Memory of Light, I think we need to start by asking ourselves a seemingly stupid question: why are novels the way that they are?
Why does The Eye of the World, following the prologue, start with Rand and Tam riding to the Winespring Inn to deliver casks of brandy for Bel Tine? Why not “Beltane” or “May Day”? Or Samhain, or something like “Sam’s Hine”? Why not Diwali? Why not someone’s eleventy-first birthday? Why do they ride horses instead of a truck or a spaceship? Why doesn’t Rand drive himself into Tosche Station to pick up the power converters? Why not start later in the story, perhaps with Rand failing to resurrect the girl in Tear? Why not earlier, having the whole first book take place in the Age of Legends, rather than just the prologue? Why do some of these alternatives feel more suitable than others?
There are real answers to these questions! It’s the start of a fantasy series, literally anything could have happened in the opening chapter. As we ask ourselves why we got what we got, I want us to consider the different perspectives or layers of what this question really means.
The most obvious perspective is probably to just consider the rules of the universe, characters, and plot that comprise The Wheel of Time. The story begins at the end of spring, so it’s time for festivals marking the start of summer, which is why it’s Bel Tine and not a holiday from another time of the year. It’s “Bel Tine” rather than “Beltane” because this is a story from far in our future and many of our words and traditions have morphed in a way that Robert Jordan took care to make feel realistic. The holiday here is Beltane because the Two Rivers culture has inherited Gaelic influences. They ride horses because this is a pre-industrial society, though we do see steam engines appear later in the series. They live outside of town because Rand and Tam are humble farmers, bringing brandy as their contribution to the festivities. Why is Rand a humble farmer? Well, because the Pattern needed him to learn humility to temper the worst of Lews Therin’s flaws in preparation for the Last Battle. Rand will later note that the main difference between him and Lews Therin is that Rand had a better upbringing.
We could go even further, considering character motivations. Rand and Egwene are at that age and this Bel Tine could be a big deal for Rand. As we learn later in the series, with both Rand and Perrin, Tam is very good at supporting younger people without making a show of it. This is a very good time for Egwene’s parents to think positively of Rand and his family. With the wolves and the weather the way they were at the time, Tam didn’t much want to leave the farm for this Bel Tine – he says as much to Bran – but it’s not a good time for Egwene’s father to think that Rand and Tam aren’t invested in the community.
I like to refer to this level of analysis as “lore.” Considering questions about literature in terms of lore encourages us to engage with the world of that literature in a deep way, taking it for granted that it’s “real” in some sense. Just looking at my bookshelf behind me, it’s clear that I love lore. I’ve got Encyclopedia Eorzea, World of Warcraft Chronicles, the Destiny grimoires, multiple Diablo lore and art books, and more. I store these books right alongside more “real” works like The Tale of Genji, Le Morte d’Arthur, and multiple translations and commentaries on the Prose and Poetic Eddas, and these, in turn, are right next to The Art of Computer Programming and The Idea Factory, rounding out this spectrum. I intentionally placed these books on the same shelf to emphasize, to myself and to anyone looking in my office, that I’m interested in ideas, not rigid hierarchies of fiction vs. non-fiction. Some of the first essays I posted online, some 20 years ago, were about the lore of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and now I’m spending the bulk of my time making videos that frequently touch on the lore of The Wheel of Time.
I’m dropping my lore cred here specifically to soften the blow when I say that I feel like the current state of popular literary analysis has, perhaps, come to focus just a bit too much on the lore. I particularly see this in discussion of video games. Look, Elden Ring was fine. I wrote a whole review of it that I absolutely do not plan on turning into a video. If you search for anything about Elden Ring on YouTube, then sift through all of poorly-named “OP Build” videos, you’ll find an incredible amount of fan analysis about every scrap of lore in the game: each character, location, item, spell, and line of dialog. You’ll also find some great videos digging into the references used to build the world. Again, this is good content. A lot of what I’ve done in my videos here is on this level of analysis.
But, I’d like us to consider that lore – a sort of metaphysics for the literature we’re discussing – is just a small part, one facet, of literary theory, in much the same way that IRL metaphysics is just one branch of philosophy as a whole. By focusing solely on lore, we ignore the fact that the author chose to create this lore and not some different lore.
So, again, why does our story start with Rand and Tam riding to the Winespring Inn to deliver casks of brandy for Bel Tine?
Well, one of the core themes of The Wheel of Time is the notion of cyclical time. A seasonal festival, one marking the transition between two seasons, puts this theme in our minds right away, whereas a birthday party – while still marking the passage of time – is less cyclical. More conical, really, spiraling toward an end. It’s nearly summer because our young characters are just on the verge of transitioning from the springtime of their childhood into the summer of their young adulthood. Summer is also the time of the sun and the light, which is a good place to start an epic that will eventually take us into a long winter and a battle against the shadow.
It’s specifically based on the Gaelic Beltane because, like with Samhain, there’s a focus on leaving offerings to appease the aes sídhe – beautiful, magical beings with long lives and mysterious ways, often mispronounced as “aes sid” and sometimes considered, depending on context, to be the descendants of the Tuatha Dé Danann – so they don’t, for example, take the village’s children away to live in their fairy kingdom, which is exactly what Moiraine – an Aes Sedai – has come to do. Beltane, like many spring and early-summer holidays, also has a fertility element, which certainly fits the whole town’s expectations for Rand and Egwene, and also gives context to all the interest in getting Tam a woman. As an American from the Midwest, I hazily remember celebrating May Day at Catholic school. For me, it brings to mind black-and-white habits and Queen Mary, and the whole thing feels very old-fashioned or provincial. Robert Jordan wasn’t Catholic, so I doubt he thought of the habits or the idolatry of Mary, but perhaps it felt similarly provincial and old-fashioned to him, which suits the rural people of the Two Rivers just fine while also setting the stage for the senseless, cruel tragedy of a Trolloc attack on people who aren’t ready for it and don’t deserve it in the least.
Why are they riding into town to deliver brandy? Well, because Rand and Tam are simple shepherds and farmers. Egwene doesn’t need to ride into town: she already lives there, as the mayor’s daughter. Even among the simple villagers of Emond’s Field, Rand and Tam are humble. This draws a parallel between Rand and Jesus, but it also just makes Rand very easy to form a connection with. The very first thing that happens to a person in The Wheel of Time, excluding the prologue, is that Rand feels cold. He’s human and fragile. We can emphasize with him. “He felt a little foolish about wanting to reassure himself that Tam was still there, but it was that kind of day.” He’s still a little bit childish, but he’s old enough to be a bit embarrassed about it (yet, not old enough to recognize that the embarrassment here is more childish than the feeling itself.) But, he also nocks an arrow to his bow. He’s young and innocent, but he’s also capable of defending himself. They may be humble farmers, but they’re part of the community. There’s a quiet, noble dignity to our humble father and son.
Tam is also a good father and a wise, level-headed man, which we see right away. Good fathers – particularly ones that are wise and nurturing, rather than merely strong defenders or high earners – are surprisingly rare in fiction. It seems clear to me that Jordan specifically wanted his writing to have some good fathers in it.
We could keep going here, but my point is that this sort of analysis is both similar and different from what we had before. We’re not just talking about the rules of The Wheel of Time here, we’re considering why Robert Jordan, as an author, made these decisions. We’re also considering how these decisions fit into a larger literary context and how this affects us as readers, regardless of the author’s intent.
Perhaps it would help to see this as four layers.
At the top we have “lore”: the rules of the universe. Rand and Tam are riding horses because the steam engine hasn’t been invented yet and because they live on a farm outside of town.
Then we have “genre and trope”: readers’ expectations of what a book is like. Rand and Tam are riding horses because The Wheel of Time is in the “high fantasy” genre and because it’s inspired by The Lord of the Rings.
The third level is “author intent”: what the author wants to accomplish with the series. Rand and Tam ride horses because Robert Jordan wanted distance to mean something and he wanted to emphasize how powerful Traveling is, once it appears. It’s Bel Tine because Jordan wanted to emphasize a broad theme of cyclical time and this is a good way to put that idea into our heads early in the series so we’re primed for it when characters like Herid Fel state this more directly.
The last level, then, would be “author psychology”: why does Robert Jordan want to convey this particular message. Rand and Tam ride horses because Jordan just likes horses and wants to talk about them a lot. He liked the sense of scale in The Lord of the Rings and wanted his world to feel similarly large and rich in a way that you can’t really experience if you’re just speeding past the scenery. He wanted to emphasize the inequality between people who can Travel and people who can’t, perhaps to highlight similar inequality in the real world. Any time we start to consider whether his experience in the Vietnam War is related to the story, we’re dipping into this level.
So, now that you have these levels… forget about them. I just made it up. Look, literary theory is really complicated and there are countless ways to break things down. Those four levels might be a useful lens in some cases, but – like any tool – it loses its value if you come to rely on it too much. You can hammer in a screw, but should you? Don’t throw out your hammer, just set it aside when a screwdriver suits the task at hand. This model, in particular, focuses on the author and their intent. This is useful when we’re actually interested in what the author meant, as in a historical context where we may be more interested in what the author meant than what they actually said! It can also be useful purely as a way of thinking about the text to understand the meaning.
Actually, just to clarify: have I made it sufficiently clear that I don’t actually care about Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson? I talk about what Robert Jordan meant all the time, but I only do that as a way to engage with the books for my own understanding. I’ve never met Robert Jordan. I’ve never met anyone who’s had a conversation with him. Robert Jordan isn’t even his name, but I’m not about to start talking about James Rigney Jr. or “Jim”. It’s entirely possible that some of the notions I’ve attributed to Robert Jordan were completely unintentional. My video on New Spring focuses on the story as a yuri romance. It’s entirely possible that, could Robert Jordan watch my video on New Spring, he’d say that that’s exactly what he meant, but it’s also possible that he’d wonder why on earth I brought up Japanese girls love comics in relation to his epic fantasy story in which literally all in-universe socially acceptable romance is between a man and a woman.
It’s certainly interesting to consider, for example, whether the similarities between Egwene’s time in the White Tower actually were meant as a reference to the civil rights movement and nonviolent direct action. I think there’s a really high chance that this is literally true! At the very least, I’m reasonably confident that a church-going American man born in 1948 in South Carolina who wrote a book series with several significant non-white characters, some good and some evil, including a dark-skinned empress of an empire founded on slavery on a continent to the west of not-Europe, was at least aware of the civil rights movement and of Martin Luther King Jr. But, given words like a’dam and sul’dam and how much spanking goes on, maybe he really was just thinking about BDSM. There’s nothing wrong with that, people can write about whatever they want, but I, personally, find the civil rights meaning to be more meaningful. I wouldn’t abandon that reading even if I learned that it was entirely unintentional: why would I? Make me.
So, when I ask what Robert Jordan meant about something, this is more of a useful perspective – a tool – than a literal question. Anthropomorphism is extremely useful in thinking about even very technical problems. When discussing chemistry, we might say that atoms “want” to have a noble-gas configuration. Thinking of atoms as “disliking” an almost-full or almost-empty valence shell can help reason about how a reaction works, but there’s no real will involved (and this is a massive oversimplification of the actual chemistry in any case.) We do the same thing when talking about organisms evolving by “trying” to compete. The software book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs famously states “in effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.”
The difference with literature is that there actually is, in fact, an author. Robert Jordan is a penname, but he was a real person. He actually did mean things. Interviews and notes can provide us with a source of authority when the text is ambiguous. In my video on The Gathering Storm, Anonymously Opinionated and Norpan83 pointed out that Rand’s sword is Justice, which I saw as inconsistent due to the description of the sword in The Great Hunt. Now, these two made a really solid case just using evidence from the text, which was enough to convince me, but after reading Origins of The Wheel of Time, I now also know that Jordan actually had this sword in his office, which would have been another solid point in this debate if I wasn’t already convinced.
On the other hand, I also heard that Sanderson mentioned, in an interview, that Lanfear somehow survived having perhaps the strongest man in the entire series break her neck, squeezing it until he feels and hears it break in his hands. Perrin can smell when someone’s scared, how the hell can’t he smell whether someone is dead, or pretending to be dead? She doesn’t move or do anything else after this scene, so there’s no real point to having her character survive. She can’t just be masking her scent unless she can somehow mimic the scent of being dead, which should be impossible – no matter her skill in the dream – as she doesn’t have Perrin’s nose: just projecting a vacuum would be a dead giveaway. Her survival would actually kind of weaken the point of Perrin finding it in himself to murder a woman in Rand’s stead or how his journey to center his sense of self on Faile allowed him to break the Compulsion. Do we agree with Sanderson’s point, made years after the book came out and completely unsupported by the actual text, merely because he wrote it?
Well, maybe. That’s kind of my point here. With literature, there’s rarely a single “correct” answer. Sometimes that really sucks, like when interpreting legal documents or scientific studies, but for fiction, it’s kind of the best part. The key to being an effective reader is to synthesize your own meaning from the connection you form with the work.
What I’m trying to convey here, and I really hope I’m not starting off my last video on The Wheel of Time with a boring, confusing rant, is that there are a lot of perspectives to consider when analyzing a work of literature and these perspectives can conflict, overlap, and shift depending not only on what we’re discussing but on what we want to discuss. Something can make sense in terms of the world’s lore but not in terms of sending a coherent message to the reader. Or maybe it completely makes sense, but it’s not very exciting. Or maybe it’s exciting, but it fails to make a political point as well as the author intended. Maybe it makes a political point perfectly, but the author disagrees with that point. This only matters to the extent that we make it matter!
So, as we get into the actual discussion on A Memory of Light, I want you to bear in mind that a novel is a message created by an author and meant for an audience, but it’s only truly realized through the awesome power of your imagination. As you read it, you build your own version of the novel in your head that won’t perfectly match what the author or any other fan held in their mind. This is intentional. A book with no room for interpretation would feel hollow and flat. Much of the meaning you find in a book is, in truth, meaning that you created yourself. Yet, the author also has some things that they really want you to see. You may not see it in exactly the same way they do, but the hope is that you’ll share something with them. Not merely a specific statement or argument, but a perspective: a little bit of the author, as a person, embedded in the world they helped you build.
As we read through The Wheel of Time, we built up an experience in our minds. We built it together. Together with Robert Jordan and, perhaps, together with other fans. Perhaps some of you watching read the series along with me and these videos became part of the experience for you. Reading and responding to comments as I went along, many of you have become a part of the experience for me. Just considering that other people would watch these videos influenced how I thought of the books. It made me consider things more carefully and with a focus on how people different from me might interpret things. Maybe some of you read the series back when it came out but you continue to refine it by engaging with other fans, discovering new details with each reread and fan discussion.
These are novels, they’re not just media products. The goal wasn’t merely to entertain us, it was to make us see some aspects of reality in a certain way. Robert Jordan had a very long point to make and we all sat down and heard him out to the end. Now that he’s finished talking, it’s our turn to respond.
With that in mind, let’s get into it.
Main Themes
There’s a part of me that really wants to boil down The Wheel of Time into one great theme that encompasses all others, but no matter how I squint at my whiteboard, I can’t quite do it.
The closest I came to finding one unifying theme is “the endless knot,” which actually does fit so perfectly that I wonder if it was intentional, but I don’t think it’s a particularly useful perspective in itself, if only because it’s not a common concept in the West so it would still need to be explained in just as much depth.
I think we really have four themes which are strongly intertwined. More precisely: I think we have three abstract themes which are all in service to a single practical theme. The cyclical nature of time; the changing of meaning across metaphorical distance; and the concepts of duality and nonduality, work together to form a broad worldview that puts the events of life into a broader perspective. These perspectives give us the tools necessary to deal with the “problem of evil,” overcome trauma, and grow. Like a large sheet of paper, when we examine our suffering from multiple angles, we can see that even if an event seems overwhelmingly heavy to us, it’s actually very flat when viewed from the side – easily crumpled up and thrown away. No matter how isolating or all-encompassing pain may seem, if we can learn to see it from outside of ourselves then we can reason about it with wisdom. Pain teaches us to do better, it connects us to others who have suffered as we have, and it shows us how the actions of others affect us and thus also how our actions affect others. A moment that may seem as though it will last forever will, in fact, end, just as it has for so many other people, and sooner than we think. With a proper understanding of the role that evil plays in the world, we can come to terms with the horror and seeming injustice that an omnipotent god would willingly permit evil to exist in the world. The world and plot of The Wheel of Time form a worldview, but it doesn’t exist for its own sake. Our character arcs demonstrate how we, too, can leverage these perspectives to embrace the suffering brought about by evil, put it behind us, and move on to the next adventure – the next life – stronger and wiser for it.
Cyclical Time
I already mentioned the theme of cyclical time, so let’s start there.
In The Wheel of Time, time is literally cyclical. It’s on a wheel. As I first learned while listening to Grammar Girl, “wheel” and “cycle” actually appear to have the same root if you go all the way back to Proto-Indo-European’s “kʷékʷlos.”
In terms of lore, this is very literal. We know, for a fact, that people are reborn. Herid Fel makes a very good case that even the battle with Shai’tan is cyclical. Way back in Lord of Chaos he predicted that Rand would need to remake the prison, not merely patch it. “When the Wheel turns back to here, back to where they drilled the hole in the first place, the Dark One’s prison has to be whole again.”
But it also goes deeper than this. Birgitte has had many lives, but they were all different. Rand learns that people are reborn so they can do better than they did in previous lives. Events repeat, but not in the same way. As we’re repeatedly reminded: “There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.” Each day, each season, each life has its own challenges, sorrows, joys, and loves. If we can see the pattern then we can see how familiar each iteration is while also appreciating the novelty of this particular time. The Dragon will ride again on the winds of time, but Rand al’Thor has just one life.
Perhaps the best example of this is when Rand learns that Elayne is pregnant. “I’m going to be a father, he thought, not for the first time. Yes, Lews Therin had had children, and Rand could remember them and his love for them. It wasn’t the same. He, Rand al’Thor, would be a father.” Even with a clear understanding of what it means to be a father, the emotional depth is undiminished. Rand has learned to understand the cyclical nature of time without being calloused by it. Anyone with pets can probably relate: it doesn’t matter how many pets you’ve had through your life: each birth, youth, adulthood, old age, and death is just as precious and impactful as the rest. But, the experience of past pets makes you more prepared to handle each new situation better. You won’t go to the vet for silly reasons as often, you’ll be less shy about cleaning up messes, and you’ll be much better at obedience training and pet-proofing a room. But, you’ll also find that none of that preparation lessens the joy of a happy puppy, kitten, or kit, or mitigates the despair of death. It’s always the same, but it’s always completely different. If that sounds like a contradiction, don’t worry, we’ll get to duality and nonduality in a bit.
This realization that time is cyclical is key to Rand’s awakening. His denial of nihilism and despair and embrace of life, love, and hope. “Why, Rand? Why do you go to battle? What is the point? Why? All was still. Even with the tempest, the winds, the crashes of thunder. All was still. Why? Rand thought with wonder. Because each time we live, we get to love again. That was the answer. It all swept over him, lives lived, mistakes made, love changing everything. He saw the entire world in his mind’s eye, lit by the glow in his hand. He remembered lives, hundreds of them, thousands of them, stretching to infinity. He remembered love, and peace, and joy, and hope. Within that moment, suddenly something amazing occurred to him. If I live again, then she might as well! That’s why he fought. That’s why he lived again, and that was the answer to Tam’s question. I fight because last time, I failed. I fight because I want to fix what I did wrong. I want to do it right this time.“
Don’t limit yourself by considering the Wheel of Time purely in terms of lore, as merely ‘the way things work in The Wheel of Time.’ I think this reflects a worldview that Robert Jordan wanted to share with us for real life. Everything that happens has happened before in some form and will come again in some form. In the moment, it may feel like you’re the only person to ever experience loss, love, or frustration. You may, at times, feel as though the world is ending. But “there are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time.” If you could just see your life from the perspective of someone from the distant past or distant future, you’d see that, while your journey is unique and worthwhile, it’s familiar even to people separated from you by a vast gulf of time and space.
What I really want to emphasize here is that, while the cycles of Ages and lives across reincarnation are a very clear way to demonstrate this worldview, you don’t need to die or live hundreds of years to see cycles both within your life and between lives. That’s where Androl comes in. Androl may go on to live a very long life as an Asha’man, but when we meet him, he’s still young by Aes Sedai standards. Yet, he’s lived many “lives” through his various vocations and travels. Even Pevara, multiple times his age, is impressed by how much he knows, not just in terms of facts, but in his worldview. Androl has the perspective to swallow his pride and accept ridicule when necessary. He knows when to fight and when to retreat. He has an inner strength, integrity, calm, and confidence that we can associate with age and wisdom, and it comes from Androl’s many experiences.
Of course, this applies even more broadly than that. You don’t need to switch careers a dozen times any more than you need to live several lives. This isn’t about finding one specific pattern, but in learning to see the myriad patterns that weave through all time.
We can learn concrete lessons from spotting these patterns. If you garden, you’ll probably do a better job next year than you did this year. You’ll learn which pest solutions work and which don’t. You’ll get a little better at using the right amount of water and fertilizer every year. If you garden for a long time then you’ll also see the longer term patterns: rotating plants or adding more nutrients to keep the soil healthy. You’ll learn what to do differently in an unusually dry or unusually wet year. The longer you do it, the more problems you’ll encounter and solve. If you’re clever, you’ll ask around to see what other gardeners in your area have to say. The best experience to learn from is someone else’s. That’s how we grow, not merely as individuals, but as a society.
But, it’s not just about concrete lessons either: it’s also about perspective. Consider stress at work. In the moment, it can feel like a project is the most important thing in your career. Did you even know about it five years ago? Even if it goes as terribly as you fear, will you really look back on it in 10 years as the moment that ruined your life? I suppose there are some very rare cases where this may actually be the case, but not only is this rare, but it’s impossible to tell in the moment what the future will bring. Maybe you really do screw up so bad that you get fired, but then that gives you the impetus to start your own company. Maybe the stress was literally killing you and you would’ve been dead in 5 years if you’d gotten that promotion. From the perspective of a moment, living without seeing the greater pattern, we can only see what’s right in front of us.
Even true hell, being the victim of a real tragedy with no upside, will pass with time, if you let it. Think of Rand, holding on to the weight of losing his hand. Ignore the part where he gets a new body and just think of him sparring with Tam. Yes, fighting with one hand isn’t an advantage, no matter how you spin it. As I mentioned when covering the scene where Rand lost his hand: I really don’t see this as a lesson or an advantage in any way. It was just sad. But, Rand didn’t need to stop practicing with swords altogether. The peace practicing with a sword gave him was still there, as Tam showed him. Time and support help. You can’t simply skip the time – even knowing that it’ll get better won’t make it better right away – but it can still be comforting to understand that it won’t last forever. Nothing lasts forever.
We can see the cyclical nature of time in literary references too. Everything in The Wheel of Time has roots in other stories. We have characters named for King Arthur and his associates. The plot and some of our locations are based on The Lord of the Rings. Symbolism from Norse mythology, various Eastern religions and philosophies, and Gaelic folklore appear throughout the books. This building upon existing ideas is common to all literature. If you can’t see it, then you’re not looking hard enough. Yet, each story is also new. You could read every book Robert Jordan ever read and still be surprised by events in The Wheel of Time.
I don’t think that Robert Jordan believed in literal reincarnation in the real world or in a literal wheel of time. I imagine that he held either the current scientific understanding of the world’s history or a fundamentalist Christian one and neither theory supports reincarnation. Or, maybe he did. The specifics don’t really matter here. Though The Wheel of Time is fantasy, it arose from a certain worldview that I think we can appreciate. This has all happened before. It will all happen again. No matter how alone and alien you may feel, you have kinship with countless people extending backward and forward in time. Even with your past and future selves.
It’s about perspective. Scope. Don’t despair at falling leaves, they’ll enrich the soil for the coming spring. When we forget this, when we lose sight of the Pattern, we become vulnerable to despair.
So, don’t forget it.
Meaning over distance
As you’ve probably already noticed, I can’t really talk about any of these themes without also mentioning the others. Next up, let’s turn our attention to “meaning over distance” or “meaning over metaphorical distance.” …or maybe “how meaning changes as it crosses thresholds.” Look, this section was really hard to write (my first draft had a fifteen-minute section on information theory that even went into the math of calculating units of entropy.) When I say “distance” here, I’m talking about thresholds between perspectives. Sometimes this just means shouting down a hallway, trying to be understood over the background noise of lawnmowers and barking dogs. Sometimes it means recording and cleaning audio for a YouTube video, crossing the distance of internet publication. But, it can also mean trying to explain something to someone who doesn’t share any language with you, or trying to explain a bit of scripture to someone who doesn’t share your religion. “Distance” here can be the distance between you and someone writing a book hundreds of years ago. It can even be something as simple as trying to talk about The Wheel of Time with someone who hasn’t read it, which is a discussion that crosses the threshold of “having read The Wheel of Time.” Like the other two themes, it’s about perspective, but the point in this section is how meaning changes as it passes from one perspective to another, how the degree of difference – or distance – between two perspectives impacts this change, and how this change can actually be a good thing: not the degradation of a signal over distance, but the evolution of meaning for a new audience.
Time is cyclical and events echo throughout time, but they’re always just a bit different than before. But, and this is key to this perspective, the differences aren’t arbitrary or random. Rand is a continuation of Lews Therin but he’s not the same man. When Rand opens his heart to Lanfear, she’s shocked by what she sees. “the truth that, down deep, it was not Lews Therin who made up Rand’s core. It was the sheepherder, raised by Tam.”
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.” Through time, the details of a moment degrade, but the truth within takes on new meaning in each time that it’s remembered in. As we learned in The Eye of the World, long ago there were two great entities in the world – Merk and Mosk – who fought with great weapons of fire that could reach around the world. Now, they are no more. For us, today, the details of this story are critically important. Will America and Russia truly launch ICBMs at one another? Who will survive this breaking of the world? Can we stop it? As Aviendha and the Wise Ones conclude regarding a different crisis: it doesn’t matter if we can stop it, we must try.
But, for the people at the end of the Third Age, it hardly matters whether the weapons were lances and spears of fire or ICBMs. The lesson is that there were two great entities, powerful beyond the understanding of individual people, but they used their power for war, and then they were no more. Perhaps Elayne should think on this story when considering how to strengthen Andor: how will an arms race end? Which nation will rise up as a giant to oppose her and how terrible will their great weapons be? In the end, won’t they be doomed to the same fate as the giants? Fortuona, too, should appreciate that, mighty as her empire is, the giants of the past left the world without leaving behind more than the slightest trace of memory. It’s not hard to imagine, as in Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” the last remnant of the once-great Seanchan empire: a lone, ruined statue with a faded inscription: “My name is Fortuona, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind actually has a lot in common with The Wheel of Time.
Stories can be updated to become more relevant to people with new sensibilities. I’m not just talking about matters of representation and diversity, such as remaking an old movie with a more racially diverse cast, but also about references, descriptions, and even deep matters of cultural meaning. The people in The Wheel of Time do not see “dragons” as great fire-breathing lizards with wings, but they know that a dragon is powerful and dangerous. Wondrous and special, a force for good or evil, but always destructive change, to be feared. You know you’re in an epic story when a dragon shows up.
Our character names are frequently taken from King Arthur and his associates, but in most cases their stories are very different from their namesake or inspiration. Rand has many similarities to King Arthur, but so does Artur Hawkwing, and neither of them had an accidental incest child with Morgase. Galad is certainly pure of heart, but at the very least he’s definitely held Berelain’s hand. My guess is that she’s not going to wait long before ruining Galad’s chance to find the Saint Graal. Still, even though Galad’s story has little resemblance to Galahad’s, if you had to pick out one character from The Wheel of Time as Galahad, you’d pick Galad even if he was named Jimmy. A pious knight by any other name would still probably be a pain in Elayne’s ass.
Of course, time isn’t the only threshold that meaning can cross. Distance, culture, gender… any difference in perspective. Our own perspective is always, inherently, by definition, limited. We can only see what we can see. But, we can also hear about what others have seen and imagine how they felt or how we would feel in their circumstance. It likely won’t come as a surprise that I’ve never been to outer space. I don’t even like to fly. But I can find pictures of our planet, taken by astronauts, in moments. We all can. Seeing pictures of the earth from space may awaken different meanings for each of us. A challenge to overcome. A precious garden to protect. A great business opportunity. If it were me in a ship beyond the earth’s atmosphere, I think I would just see home. I wonder what Rand must have felt, wrestling with Shai’tan outside of the pattern, to walk through a recreation of Caemlyn, knowing that he might never return to his Caemlyn, in reality.
We can imagine what someone else felt like while staring down at the earth from space, but we can’t truly know for sure. We can’t even know what we would have felt in their position. I do believe in such a thing as objective truth, but it’s a very tiny fraction of truth as a whole: you would hardly see it as more than a spec if you placed the objective truth alongside all subjective truths. We can all agree whether it’s raining outside, at a specific time and location, but what does that mean? I love the rain. I love storms and shade. Clear days give me a sun burn and bore me to tears. Rain reminds me of other rainy days, particularly when I used to go on long walks during rough Wisconsin storms. One time, I was in a storm so bad that the wind picked me off the ground. I couldn’t see more than a foot in any direction and I had to hold on to a lamp post to stay on the ground. I should have been terrified, but it was just thrilling. Over time, what little fear there was fades further and further into obscurity while the memory of the excitement grows even stronger. My puppy seems to hate the rain, but he can’t tell me why. He’s very small and fluffy, maybe he just doesn’t like getting all wet. Maybe it reminds him of getting a bath, and he hates that.
Just thinking about a hypothetical rain storm, I could go on for hours about what rain means to me and what I think it might mean for my puppy. I’m not even a meteorologist or hydrologist. I suppose a professional could tell me that there’s more to the objective truth of rain than I’m giving it credit for. They could probably go on for days talking about what they know about the rain, or even what just one storm could teach us about the sky, the land, and the sea. All things that may be true, but aren’t really about any particular storm, and all filtered through the subjectivity of a single human perspective. The distance between two people under the same rain cloud may seem small, but the distance between their perceptions is as vast as the distance between planets.
The same could be said of all truths. The most powerful and destructive truth in The Wheel of Time is the story of the Aiel. Walking through the pillars in Rhuidean alongside Muradin, we see how the same truth can affect two people differently. Rand saw the truth of Shai’tan and the destiny of the Aiel. Muradin tore out his eyes, veiled himself, and succumbed. This isn’t because Rand was strong and Muradin was weak, it’s because the truth of the Aiel meant entirely different things to them. The threshold of culture filtered away the unbearable aspects for Rand, allowing him to see the parts of the truth that pertain to his destiny. Even the Aiel who support him note how recklessly and unempathetically he forced this terrible truth on to the Aiel: he really didn’t understand the true depth of what it meant to them. The result of the difference between Rand and Muradin tore the Aiel into factions, allowing Sevanna, an obviously terrible leader, the opportunity to seize control of the Shaido. The truth of Shai’tan and the terrible actions of the ancient Aes Sedai were always part of the truth of Rhuidean, but that wasn’t the important part for the Aiel.
Sometimes stories change by accident, as in a signal degrading. Sometimes they change on purpose as new storytellers impart their own interpretations and creations. Then, sometimes the storyteller was merely inspired, and had no intention to retell the story in the same way. Mah’alleinir has almost nothing to do with Mjölnir, other than the name and that they’re both hammers, but you can see how Perrin’s awesome hammer was inspired by Mjölnir, even if there’s no deeper connection.
In The Wheel of Time, there are also numerous references to the power and unreliability of rumor. Some characters wield rumor intentionally, for propaganda. Rand often finds himself the victim of both intentional propaganda and simple misunderstanding. Berelain’s cruel game with Perrin, spreading rumors that they slept together after Faile was taken, caused him a great deal of distress. In these cases, the modification of meaning between the original facts and the audience is very intentional. It’s lying, but close enough to the truth to mislead, either by convincing people of the “real story” or simply by providing enough doubt for each individual to adhere to what they already wanted to believe. Of course, this isn’t an ethical or uplifting example of how meaning changes across thresholds, but it’s certainly effective. It’s a tool, for good or evil. Even Berelain misjudged how her rumors would affect Perrin and the people from the Two Rivers, not understanding the cultural difference between her and them.
Throughout the Last Battle, several characters tell lies to bolster morale. Lan claims that he doesn’t mourn for the fallen, he cheers! Tam says they’ll go back for their bows later. Loial still plans to finish his book, running out to watch Lan’s fall so he can document it, knowing that he likely won’t survive the hour himself. “There was no harm to such a little lie.” Perhaps some people believe the lies, but more simply choose to share in them, preferring them to the truth. Through communal effort, the lie can even become truth. The Borderlanders truly do cheer the fallen, laughing as they recount stories of great heroism. The last words of the series come from Loial’s book.
How often do characters from other cultures misunderstand one another in The Wheel of Time? Even in a world with only one language, we still see regional dialects and different modes of thinking. Wetlanders struggle to understand the humor in Aiel jokes just as Aiel struggle to understand how a person could be so irresponsible as to actually bathe in water. As Aviendha thinks to herself: “That couldn’t be healthy.”
We see how prophecies and stories of Rand are different in each culture. He Who Comes With The Dawn will destroy the Aiel, leaving only a remnant of a remnant, yet he will also lead them to meet their ancestral toh. The Dragon Reborn will break and save the world. His symbol represents suspicion and the Shadow and his existence brings dread, yet he’s also a savior. No one truly sees him for what he is, other than, perhaps, Min, but none of them are entirely wrong either. They each see him as they need to see him. It’s not really about him anyways.
As information changes across each dimension of movement, we can see that whether the change is “good” or “bad” is inherently subjective. The Aiel may not like how some Cairhienin have come to adopt their own version of ji’e’toh, but the philosophy is plainly beneficial to many city people, particularly women, who lacked a cultural framework to see themselves as being capable of responding to the changing world around them and rising to meet it confidently and even aggressively, ironically interpreting Aiel culture in a way that has them proudly wearing swords in place of spears. They took what they needed from Aiel culture and ignored what they didn’t. You could see this as cultural appropriation, or you could see it as a respectful interpretation of the Aiel’s at times superior culture by Wetlanders who truly look up to the Aiel, but come from a culture that reveres swords as the highest class weapon a person can use on foot. They cling to those swords as firmly as the Aiel eschew them, even after learning the truth that they were never meant to wield spears as weapons either.
These Wetlanders were dealing with a great trauma. The world was changing around them and they didn’t feel ready for it. Many people lost family and friends to the Shaido in the Second Battle of Cairhien and had to come to terms not only with that sudden loss but also with the humiliation of being saved by other Aiel. Their lives came to be dominated by factions of the Aiel. For some, certain aspects of Aiel culture provided a perspective that helped with processing these complex and upsetting emotions.
The Tuatha’an, the Tinkers, are yet another side of the Aiel, adhering more firmly to the Aiel’s ancient way of life than those who continue to call themselves Aiel. If all Aiel had maintained the Way of the Leaf, then the world would have fallen to Shai’tan. If all Aiel had gone the way of the spear, there would have been no living memory of the Way of the Leaf in the world. Not one truth, but many, shaped by various metaphorical distances.
In Perrin’s relationship with Faile, he frequently struggled with her expectation that he would be assertive or even aggressive with her. She could tell that Perrin was bottling up his feelings and trying to deal with disputes through compromise, or even by simply capitulating to what he thought she wanted. That’s not generally a good long-term relationship strategy! It certainly wasn’t going to work for Faile: she prefers to discuss these things outright, taking comfort and pleasure in the passion and commitment that honest emotions bring forth. Yet, with Perrin’s position in the world changing so dramatically around him, the most tender moment we see between the two is when Faile makes an effort to make Perrin comfortable with a simple outdoor picnic, based on advice from a man from Emond’s Field.
If not for learning to communicate more honestly with Faile, could Perrin have learned to be confident about himself and his identity as a man and a wolf? We could go even deeper, asking whether Perrin’s overabundance of caution in speaking with Faile came from the pain of losing his family and not wanting to lose yet another person he cares about. Learning to trust that not only can Faile take care of herself but, even if she can’t, a relationship can’t survive if it’s built on a fear of losing it, is an important part of Perrin’s growth. Not just because he needed to help Rand before looking for Faile during the Last Battle, but so the two of them can have a healthy future together.
The thresholds of Aiel and Wetlander, male and female, us and them, brings us to our third theme: duality and nonduality.
Duality and Nonduality
Alright, so, the cyclical nature of time is baked right into the title of the series and the first paragraph of each chapter 1. The changing of meaning across time, space, culture, etc. also comes up repeatedly throughout the series. But, if you had to explain how The Wheel of Time is different from other fantasy series, Robert Jordan’s take on gender is probably the first thing you’d mention, right? Well, unless you were fine with giving away spoilers, which we’ll get to in just a bit.
We’re introduced to the Women’s Circle and the Village Council in the very first chapter of the series. The names seem to indicate that the men’s group is the “main” one simply because it doesn’t need a gender qualifier: as we see so often in our time, “male” is the default. Yet, from what we see, it appears that the two groups are normally matched in power, or perhaps the Women’s Circle even has the upper hand, at least, when the Wisdom isn’t so young. Regardless of which, if either, is superior, we’re introduced to the struggle between the two almost immediately, long before we learn almost anything about the world of The Wheel of Time. In that same chapter, we see a bit of how young boys and girls interact, with Mat and Dav planning to set an angry badger loose on the Green so they can watch the girls run. We quickly learn that the women in Emond’s Field feel that Tam needs a woman because “it was a simple fact that a man just could not do without a woman to take care of him and keep him out of trouble.”
One of the most interesting aspects of the series, in my view, is how gender norms are different in different cultures. The world as a whole seems to slant just a bit towards female chauvinism, but most cultures aren’t true matriarchies, except for Far Madding. We see imbalances, such as Ebou Dar marriages, but we also see a male king take the throne after Tylin dies. We see that in most cultures, even cultures that generally respect the Aes Sedai, men don’t trust them while women do. There are more female soldiers than in our history, but soldiers in The Wheel of Time are primarily male, and even Maidens of the Spear need to give up the spear while pregnant and leave Far Dareis Mai altogether if they marry. All of our great captains are male. The most powerful regent in the Wetlands is a queen and the most powerful empire is headed by an empress, but many of the regents we make are male. The Dragon is male, and except for just one thought in A Memory of Light, Shai’tan is always described using male pronouns. This isn’t a world dominated by women, it’s a world where the balance between masculine and feminine is askew, just like our time, but unlike in our time, the scales shift in favor of women, and the manner of this imbalance is different in each culture.
The Borderlanders are particularly interesting, in that they hold protective views towards women that we would associate with male chauvinism, but they also seem to sincerely hold women as more important than men. This seems inspired by the southern and military culture that Robert Jordan was familiar with, but spun in a slightly different light. Discussing this in either The Wheel of Time or the real world is very complicated.
Does holding a door for a woman or offering her your seat demonstrate male chauvinism, the belief that men are inherently superior to women and thus women need the extra help? It’s similar to how we treat children, offering them extra support because they need it. But, it’s also how lower class people treat higher class people. So, are women children compared to men, or are they nobility among commoners? When it comes to war or dangerous jobs, we seem to agree that men are far more expendable. Yet, when it comes to childbirth and bodily autonomy, a popular religious movement wields immense global political power towards the goal of making women expendable. For both progressives and conservatives, it’s immensely difficult to agree on whether men and women are the same or if they even should be the same. Socially, even the notion that sex and gender aren’t an immutable one-to-one mapping is hotly debated, despite the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that they are not.
The Wheel of Time doesn’t have any easy answers to these questions. How could it? If Robert Jordan had known how to solve these problems, I’d like to think that he would have done so in a more direct way than working the answer into a fantasy series. What the series does provide are different perspectives to consider gender in different lights. For example, I’ve pointed out in many places where many of our coolest female characters are really kind of chauvinist, arrogant, and selfish. Certainly more so than most of our male characters. Yet, are we – as readers – more tolerant of arrogance from male characters than female characters in the stories we read? Would I have noted how frustrating Egwene is compared to Rand if their genders were reversed? I would very much like to think so, but it’s a question I’ll carry with me into everything I read in the future. I’m not wrong about Egwene, but it’s possible that I’ve been wrong about other characters without realizing it.
I almost feel like I don’t even need to mention saidar and saidin or the Black and White Towers. “A bird cannot teach a fish to fly, nor a fish teach a bird to swim.” Of course, as Verin points out, “There are birds that dive and swim. And in the Sea of Storms are fish that fly.”
Which brings us to the true point here: is gender truly a duality? Is this theme about duality or nonduality?
Now, before we get into this, I do need to at least briefly touch on one of the touchiest aspects of The Wheel of Time: the existence of trans and nonbinary people. We have exactly one trans character in The Wheel of Time, and they aren’t the best representation. I don’t just mean that Aran’gar is a villain, but that they’re only trans because of a fantasy element of the series. You could take Aran’gar as a statement that gender is a matter of the soul, which is why Aran’gar still channels saidin, but you could also take this as a statement that being trans is unnatural, literally coming from the source of all evil.
We don’t really have any non-binary characters at all. The notions of saidar and saidin even seem to imply that there’s no such thing as being nonbinary in The Wheel of Time, though I think this is somewhat debatable, as you could consider the ability to channel either saidar or saidin as just one aspect of a person, which could, debatably, make Aran’gar NB, though I don’t really feel that this is a strong position to take for Aran’gar in particular, and I’d be kind of surprised if any NB readers found validation and representation in this character. Though, if anyone watching this did find representation in Aran’gar, I would love to hear more in a comment. Maybe, in my own limited perspective, I’m missing something significant. (This isn’t some “change my mind” sophistry, I’d really like to know!) Maybe the bar was low enough in 1994, when Lord of Chaos was published, for Aran’gar to just barely clear it.
In any case, I really think that Robert Jordan just didn’t consider trans or nonbinary people when writing. Given his age and when he started writing these books, I don’t think this was a deliberate attempt to exclude anyone or make a political point, I really get the impression that he just wasn’t really aware of this and was just writing from his own, limited experience with gender. Maybe he addressed this in an interview or something, but regardless, I think the most productive thing we can do is to just treat the series as a product of its time and consider the duality of gender in more abstract terms, not as necessarily corresponding to the literal facts of sex and gender in real life, but as the masculine and feminine as perspectives. It’s already a fantasy world, after all: perhaps the lack of trans and nonbinary people is no different from the ability to channel or the raken, or maybe it’s even a result of the tainting of saidin. I don’t think this was intentional, but I can imagine the rough sketch of an interpretation of The Wheel of Time as specifically showing how the world is thrown into disarray when we treat gender as immutable and binary.
In some ways, this reduction actually helps us to reason about gender and duality by focusing on one limited dimension. The Wheel of Time also lacks a diversity of language and religion, but I don’t think this was really meant as a social statement or an unintentional omission, but just that Jordan wanted to focus on differences in culture and belief within a limited context. As I’ve mentioned before, the fact that everyone we ever meet in The Wheel of Time shares the same religious worldview actually serves to emphasize, for example, the beliefs of the Children of the Light. If they had simply had different religious beliefs, different gods and a different concept of the universe and life after death, then we would have lost some of the nuance to how they relate to the rest of the world. In the same way, by locking down gender to just one, limited binary, we turn up the contrast a bit so we can see the differences and similarities more clearly.
But, back to our point: even without considering NB people, The Wheel of Time forces us to consider whether gender is a duality or a nonduality, or whether it can be both. The nonduality of duality and nonduality.
This is our real theme here. Men and women are different. Saidar and saidin are different. The Village Council and the Women’s Circle are different. The Wise Ones and the Clan Chiefs are different. But they are only whole when taken together, and they aren’t as different as they seem. Separate sides, but also a continuation and union of each.
Consider the running gag that pretty much everyone in The Wheel of Time thinks that the opposite gender is prone to gossip. Pretty much everyone feels that the opposite gender is irrational, unable to see past their emotions. Though this is played as a joke, it really does aid our theme here. Even across a true duality, one that’s reflected in the physical laws of saidar and saidin, the other side looks much the same as your own side, seen from the other side. Imagine Elayne or Nynaeve standing alone in a room with a mirror, unwilling to say her thoughts aloud for fear that her reflection, like Mat, would just screw things up if she knew what the plan was.
So long as the two sides are in balance and in communication or continuation with one another, there is a sense of goodness. When they cut themselves off from one another, or one grows in relative power, there is a sense of badness. Compare the relation between men and women for the Aiel compared to everywhere else we see. You couldn’t find an Aiel man who would only trust a Wise One who could channel so long as she was restrained by the oaths. Neither could you find a Wise One who would need them to prevent her from dominating men.
Well, except for Sevanna, who – notably – could not channel. When the Shaido break away from the rest of the Aiel, Sevanna attempts to rule as both a man and a woman, leading only to disaster. Even the Wise Ones who enabled and supported her saw the evil in this!
I still find it interesting that it was Nynaeve who explained to Egwene that when the Aes Sedai cut themselves off from the world, they risk arrogance. It would seem that, for all the lessons Egwene learned from the Aiel, she didn’t manage to generalize the lesson of the nonduality of duality and nonduality.
We could get very abstract and philosophical with this concept. But, I think it’s actually pretty intuitive if you don’t try to push it too far.
Consider Perrin and Faile. They are different people, not just in that they’re literally two people, but in that they have very different personalities. Yet, Perrin very literally defines his core self, his truest notion of “home,” as Faile. It’s what allows him to maintain his sense of self in the dream and it’s what enables him to break free from Lanfear’s Compulsion. When the two of them were apart, he fell to pieces. Faile, on the other hand, actually found a greater sense of self while in Malden, learning the responsibility of leadership. Yet, upon being reunited, they both prioritized reconnecting with one another. Though she can stand alone, she chooses to form a couple with Perrin. Her time in Malden strengthened her as a person, but this strength didn’t diminish the benefit their union brings in the slightest.
Don’t get too hung up on gender either. Gender is definitely the most obvious form of duality in The Wheel of Time, but is this the only difference between Perrin and Faile? Or, more pointedly, is this the only duality we can come up with for Perrin, the man who is also a wolf? Several of our characters have an internal duality. Perrin and Elyas are men and wolves. Isam and Luc share a single physical presence. We could push this even further, seeing Mat as a gambler and a warrior, a lover and a fighter, a commoner and a prince. Nynaeve begins the series in the role of a mother to the Emond’s Fielders, but eventually comes to literally call Egwene “mother.” While in the White Tower under Elaida, Egwene was both a prisoner and an Amyrlin. Padan Fain is just all sorts of people. For each of these characters, their two sides are distinct, but it’s the emergent unity of them that forms the character. Learning to see both sides as part of themselves, drawing support from both, comprises some of our most important character arcs.
This brings us, finally, back to how I started this section. If you had to describe how The Wheel of Time is unique without major spoilers, you’d talk about gender. If you didn’t mind spoilers, you’d talk about Rand and Lews Therin. I already talked about this in the section on cyclical time, but it’s such an important part of both Rand’s arc and the series as a whole that it bears examining not merely from two perspectives but from two meta perspectives.
Consider that, just as Rand and Lews Therin oppose one another in Rand’s body, so too do the wounds from Shai’tan and Shadar Logoth. The duality of those wounds is what inspires Rand to cleanse saidin by leveraging their mutual animosity. Note that these are both evils! They’re both on the evil side of the duality between good and evil, yet they also oppose one another, to their mutual destruction. Imagine how powerful evil would have grown if Shai’tan and Shadar Logoth hadn’t rejected unity.
Or, maybe we don’t need to imagine. Whereas the two evils never see that they are truly one, the two great goods within Rand – Rand and Lews Therin – do come to understand this, and in so doing, they form the awakened Rand, who is both separate from Lews Therin and a continuation of him. The man who defeats Shai’tan, gaining the power to extinguish evil from the world forever. Yet, in his enlightenment, Rand sees that even good and evil – Light and Shadow – form a monad. He sees that the emergence of free will arises specifically from the nonduality of good and evil.
Note that, for all the fantasy elements at play here, the critical moment of the entire series occurs on the top of Dragonmount. This isn’t really a magical or supernatural moment. Rand didn’t learn a new weave or a secret tactic to defeat Shai’tan in that moment. He merely accepted that what he saw as a duality was really a continuation.
We see, for example, with Androl and Pevara or with Rand and Nynaeve, how powerful the supernatural unity of saidar and saidin can be. But, the scene on Dragonmount really emphasizes that this isn’t a bit of fantasy worldbuilding, this is a worldview that we can take with us into the real world.
Like with the cyclical nature of time and the changing of meaning over distance, duality is about perspective. Our perspectives are precious, but so is the understanding that our perspectives are all different angles of the same greater truth. The key isn’t to merely see things from another point of view, but to realize that it’s seeing things from multiple points of view, together, that brings deeper understanding.
It’s like the parable of the blind men and the mysterious animal. A group of blind men heard that a strange animal had been brought to town. They decided to go touch it to figure out what it is. They each touched a different part of the animal. One felt a snake. Another felt a fan. A tree trunk. A wall. A rope. Lastly, a spear. The story has multiple endings, depending on the telling, but only when you put all of the pieces together do you discover an elephant, with its snake-like trunk, fan-like ears, wall-like sides, rope-like tail, and spear-like tusks.
Some of the best aspects of our most inspiring characters come from them reaching outside of their perspective. Tam is a good father because he is nurturing and supportive. This doesn’t make him less of a man: being a father is about more than simply being a man. In fact, even being a good man is about being more than purely masculine: you need the drop of yin in the yang. Egwene responds to Gawyn’s death in much the same way that a Warder does for losing their Aes Sedai: she doesn’t spend weeks moping around, she grows furious and throws herself back into the fight without a care for her own safety. Being the Amyrlin is about more than being Aes Sedai or a good woman. She also, by the way, has a specific strength for earth weaves, which is generally a masculine trait. Being a good woman is about more than being purely feminine.
It’s only after Rand realizes that he is a continuation of Lews Therin, coming to see himself as more than four hundred years old, that he finds it in himself to go to his father like a child, crying openly and apologizing for everything terrible that he’s done. As C. S. Lewis commented on 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to appear very grown up.”
When we look at the world from only our perspective, adhering to duality and eschewing the love, empathy, and charity that binds duality into nonduality, it’s as though we’re looking at the world through a glass, darkly: seeing only our own reflection. Embrace the oneness between the self and the other, here and there, now and then, and be whole.
The Problem of Evil
Alright, I’ve defined our three abstract themes and mentioned both C. S. Lewis and the First Epistle to the Corinthians, so I think we’re finally ready for the main theme of The Wheel of Time. Though there’s a lot more to the series than just one theme, if we have to pick one primary theme that explains the entire series – and we do, if only because I’m making us! – then the series exists as a work of Christian apologetics dealing with the problem of evil. It is also, equivalently, a guide to personally getting over trauma and moving on with our lives. To a person living with a Christian worldview, like Robert Jordan, these two concepts are identical. To a person who lived through the hell of war, like Robert Jordan, these two concepts are of utmost importance. Just as a quick reminder, this whole section of the video is about the worldview of The Wheel of Time as I believe it was written. I’ll offer my personal thoughts on all of this once we’ve finished analyzing it for what it is.
Christian Apologetics
Christian apologetics is large branch of Christian theology that aims to defend and bolster the faith. From the outside, this may appear strange: why “defend” a faith at all? If the faith needs defending, then why hold it? But, apologetics actually takes a transformative role in Christian theology. Even the Pauline Epistles, a huge fraction of the New Testament, are – in a way – a form of Christian apologetics. In this way, Christian apologetics are similar to the Jewish Talmud: a long-term study of scripture and the world, debated logically between theologians, which build up a commentary to expand sacred scripture without the need for new prophets.
See, for most Christian denominations, the set of scripture that’s considered “canon” is closed. You cannot write a new book of the bible, at least, not without creating a new denomination, if not a new religion altogether. Different denominations have different rules regarding what is included in biblical canon, but most branches of Christianity agree, in general, that the New Testament is formed of writings from those close to the apostles. Some denominations believe that people today may still receive the gift of prophecy while others hold that there’s been a degree of cessation in divine gifts. But, even if you receive the gift of prophecy, you can’t really write a new book of the bible. To expand the set of Christian literature within a single denomination, you basically have two options: write a devotional, which is a more experiential, personal, and emotional work, or write some apologetics, focusing on a logical or even legal interpretation of existing scripture and dogma.
As you might imagine, this is far more complex than I could describe briefly, with differences in opinion both within and between denominations. This also isn’t unique to Christians, but a common concept for Abrahamic religion in general. Judaism holds that Malachi is the last biblical prophet and that the next time the world sees prophets they will come with the Messiah, which means “anointed one,” which is also what “christ” means, as Christians believe that Jesus is that Messiah. Islam holds that Judaism and Christianity have lost their way – the faiths were, after all, the result of a long period of oral tradition and scattered writings without a single, unbroken source – and Muhammad is the last prophet, sent by Allah not to create a new religion but to restore the original Islam bestowed upon Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the other prophets of old.
The Latter Day Saint movement is particularly notable for being a Christian denomination with a new book of scripture. So, again, this is more complicated than I can express without derailing the whole video.
Anyways, the super high-level takeaway here is that Abrahamic religions generally do not allow additions or modifications to scripture. So, when believers find an apparent flaw in the scripture, or when scripture and existing dogma fail to address a situation, there’s a need to create new meaning through interpretation of the existing scripture. We call it “apologetics,” but it’s very similar to how courts in a judicial system set precedent for new law without new legislation. Amending a constitution is very difficult, so when a new situation arises, courts make an effort to address the situation by interpreting existing law and legal precedent. Right now, courts across the world are scrambling to do just this for recent developments in AI. In the US, there’s been a major recent push to achieve conservative goals granting the state power over individual bodily autonomy through judicial action. Similarly, apologetics help to both respond to new situations due to the changing world and in reconciling changes of worldview. At their worst, apologetics can be used to argue for harmful dogma or to excuse atrocities.
But, at their best, apologetics can also be a form of introspection and self help. A way to reason, logically, about challenges in our own lives. A way to answer the question: “Why has God done this to me?”
The Wheel of Time
Which brings us, at long last, to the core meaning of The Wheel of Time.
“The Creator had made the world and then left humankind to make of it what they would, a heaven or the Pit of Doom by their choosing. The Creator had made many worlds, watched each flower or die, and gone on to make endless worlds beyond. A gardener did not weep for each blossom that fell.”
“‘I am the Dragon Reborn!’ Rand roared at saidin, at Tam, at Cadsuane, at the Creator himself. ‘I will not be your pawn!'”
“He was angry. Angry at the world, angry at the Pattern, angry at the Creator for leaving humans to fight against the Dark One with no direction. What right did any of them have to demand Rand’s life of him?”
“Why? Why must they do this over and over? The world could give him no answers. Rand raised his arms high, a conduit of power and energy. An incarnation of death and destruction. He would end it. End it all and let men rest, finally, from their suffering. Stop them from having to live over and over again. Why? Why had the Creator done this to them? Why?“
These are all quotes from Rand, but there are many more thoughts like this throughout the series. Even Faile, in one moment of frustration, asks herself “Why had the Creator made people as perfect as Berelain? Was it mockery of the rest of them?”
We are told explicitly, in the glossary, that Shai’tan is “the source of evil, antithesis of the Creator.” As Rand and Shai’tan fight, the Dark One refers to Rand primarily as “adversary,” a clear reference to the original Hebrew word “śāṭān,” which is occasionally used in the Old Testament to refer to human adversaries (for an example of this, look at 1 Samuel 29:4, find the word “adversary,” and then look at the Hebrew text.) A being of personified, egotistical evil named “the Satan” actually doesn’t show up much in the bible, except for in the book of Job and Zechariah. Consolidating “the Satan,” Lucifer, the Devil, etc. into the single figure we now think of is a matter of dogma, rather than something you would naturally infer while reading the books of the bible. Though most Christians today believe that God alone created the world, there has been historical debate over a potential role for an antithesis in the process of creation.
The Wheel of Time doesn’t give Shai’tan any credit for the act of creation, making it clear that Shai’tan was “imprisoned by the Creator at the moment of Creation in a prison at Shayol Ghul.” Whether Shai’tan existed before this creation, or if Shai’tan was created, too, at the moment of creation – created and imprisoned in the same moment – is never really addressed.
Not that it really matters for our characters.
What does matter is that Shai’tan – as the embodiment of evil – has existed for all of creation, always bound, but always there. The Dark One cannot step into the world, but it can and does influence it. Even without the Bore, even without the ability to directly touch the Pattern and influence it, Shai’tan influences the world through the actions of humans.
The climax of the series is when Rand sits atop Dragonmount and realizes that a life filled with evil is still valuable. The climax of A Memory of Light expands on this, as Rand realizes life isn’t merely worthwhile despite evil, but it wouldn’t truly be life without it. Evil is a requirement for free will. In his too-perfect world, life continues to exist, but it loses its flavor, its spark. We need to be tested in order to grow, and a test is only meaningful if the consequences are real.
We see an echo of this in Nynaeve’s test for the shawl. In her wisdom, she cannot forget that the test is not real: it’s just a test. In her wisdom, she also decides that this doesn’t make her actions any less important. To the contrary, it only strengthens her resolve to do what she knows is right, rather than selfishly pursuing the test as a test. She refuses to walk calmly when she could do more good by running. She will even use forbidden weaves in the service of good. I think we can see this as a metaphor for living with belief in an afterlife. If this world is a test and Heaven is more real, do you live your life by meticulously following the rules of this world in order to earn your reward in the next? Or does a true sense of ethics, real integrity, encourage a good person to do what’s right without a care for passing the test? After Nynaeve’s test, the Aes Sedai fret over what to do with her failure while she, as an enlightened woman, appreciates the lesson the test taught her about herself.
It’s not about passing, but about learning.
The three perspectives we’ve been talking about are useful tools for growth, but a perspective is only worth something if there’s something to focus it on. In a world without evil, what impetus would there be for growth?
This is the realization Rand has, holding Shai’tan in his hands, preparing to destroy it forever. It’s a vile, hateful thing, but humanity needs it to give our selves meaning. But, we also need goodness. We need to experience both to learn how to eschew evil and pursue good.
We see this in every major character arc throughout the series. I’ve already mentioned several in just this video, and I couldn’t enumerate them all without basically just re-summarizing the entire series. But, I suppose I should offer at least some examples here. I’m really just picking these as they come to mind, as almost any character would work here.
Logain was once hated and feared for being able to channel. He found that he could only accomplish anything in the world while being feared. Yet, when he sees that the refugees he saved look at him with different eyes than those who once hated and feared him, he puts that prejudice behind him. “The Black Tower protects. Always.” A great evil, the treatment of men who can channel, harmed Logain and tested him. His madness caused him to fear that he would lose the ability to channel again and so he must seize all the power he can to protect himself. Then, the evil of the Trollocs attacking the refugees made him chose: abandon goodness to pursue the power to protect himself, or risk weakness – let himself be vulnerable – to do something good.
What’s the major difference between Taim and Logain? When Logain was at his lowest point, he was shown a glimmer of goodness. Though he was filled with rage and fear, on a path toward evil, he was shown a degree of trust. Min saw that he would achieve greatness. The Asha’man trusted that he would lead them. Taim, meanwhile, received only hatred and fear from Rand and from the world. Taim was never caught and gentled and never learned what it was to be powerless and shown mercy. Logain learned to see beyond himself. He learned to see what it was like to be truly helpless, reliant on others for protection. He saw that a person can choose whether to give in to fear or whether to risk trust. He learned how it feels to receive mercy, and thus he learned how to give it.
Both Logain and Taim saw the world in a duality between men who can channel and everyone else. But Logain, through the suffering of being gentled, learned to see past this duality, to see that the taint does not define him. Yes, he can channel, but he can choose how, just as those who cannot channel can choose how to see him. Taim never suffered this pain, never grew, and died very much as when we first met him.
We see a similar progression for Rand and Egwene and their imprisonment by the Aes Sedai and the Seanchan. The experiences risk twisting them both towards fear and hate of those others who imprisoned them, but they both come to see that not all Seanchan and not all Aes Sedai are the same. The duality between Egwene and the Seanchan, between Rand and the Aes Sedai, does not need to define them. Egwene learns to trust Leilwin, despite being Seanchan, while still opposing Fortuona, not merely as a Seanchan, but on specific principles. Rand learns to trust even Cadsuane, while also acknowledging her mistakes and the mistakes of her Sisters. After all, he made mistakes too. How can he forgive himself without also forgiving those who have wronged him?
Consider Rand and Moridin. They both came to see existence itself as misery. But, Moridin fails to see existence through the lens of the cyclical nature of time. His immortality blinds him to the joy of existence. Moridin is still the same man he was in the prologue, the same man he was in the Age of Legends. He tastes death, but not rebirth, being transmigrated with his consciousness intact. Rand, on the other hand, experiences true death and rebirth. He finds new loves, new joys, new reasons for existing. Through the pain of killing his family and the joy of finding a new one, he sees that life is not static, but ever changing. Though we suffer in loss, we rejoice in new life. Moridin does not suffer this loss, and thus he doesn’t learn how to move past it. For Moridin, time stands still. Of course he hates existence.
Consider Morgase. Her fall from being the greatest queen on the continent to a lowly servant and her abuse at the hands of the Whitecloaks was terrible. What kept her strong through it? Sure, she’s tough, she’s hard, but as we saw with Rand and Egwene, hardness alone isn’t sufficient. Instead, she came to appreciate the nobility in serving. She discovered that serving tea is a delicate art that she never properly appreciated before, as intricate and challenging as many of her duties as queen. Learning to see the meaning across the metaphorical distance between classes helped her live with her humiliation, finding a sense of purpose where she would have previously seen none. Even after being revealed as Morgase and being reunited with Elayne, we see that Morgase retains that sense of respect for the simple art of serving tea, and likely a greater respect for servants as a whole.
We can see how evil encourages growth in each character just as we see it in the big, broad themes, such as the Aiel’s evolving views on violence. The ancient Aiel followed the Way of the Leaf, then come to follow ji’e’toh, warring with one another. In the Fourth Age, they will use their strength in violence to prevent violence by upholding the Dragon’s Peace. Over generations, across cultural boundaries, and through shifting views of self vs. other, the Aiel grow into the world’s stabilizing force. Yet, they must still remain vigilant. Life and growth are never finished, and the Wise Ones and Chiefs will continue to steer their people in the right direction.
When Rand and Elayne talk together, Rand explains that the Pattern is balance, neither good nor evil. She asks him, “if what you say is true, then there can never be good in the world.” Though, at this point, Rand hasn’t fully realized the truth that Shai’tan is a necessary part of the world, he responds: “so long as we care, there can be good.” The world presents us with both good and evil. It’s our choice whether to embrace the good or give in to the evil. That choice, itself, is what gives the results meaning.
The Ending
So, that’s the main theme of The Wheel of Time. With that in mind, now I finally want to talk about my own thoughts on the ending.
To be perfectly honest, my initial reaction upon finishing A Memory of Light was to say, out loud, “this book fucking sucks.”
For a good few days, I was honestly a little depressed. The series was so good. I spent all of this time talking about it and thinking about it. I don’t know if it’s apparent just how much time I’ve been spending on these videos. It’s a lot. I could’ve probably written my own book by now. Hundreds of thousands of words written and edited, hundreds of hours spent in research and discussing ideas with friends. All of that investment in a fantasy series.
And Shai’tan is just the devil? Sanderson threw in phrases like “its screams were the sounds of planets grinding together” and the repeated imagery of dark, chthonic tentacles. Shai’tan’s speech is in all-caps. But, ultimately, there really wasn’t any novel element to Shai’tan. In a series filled with references to a variety of religions and myths, with references to other dimensions and stars, why does Shai’tan have a personal ego at all? If I’d written the ending to The Wheel of Time, Shai’tan would have been truly incomprehensible. Alien. Or, at the very least – like Sauron – I just wouldn’t have had Shai’tan appear directly, as a character.
Fain was even worse. My god. Mat having survived the evil of the dagger in order to kill Shaisam didn’t really mean anything. I mean, Mat survived the evil of the dagger and grew to be immune to it… I guess, but there wasn’t any actual character growth in there: it’s all lore with no deeper meaning. Mat was never stupid enough to pick up the dagger if he’d known how terrible it was, he hasn’t really learned to be any more cautious or respectful. Fain, himself, just didn’t really go anywhere. There were so many directions Fain could have gone, blending what we know of Mordeth with the evil of Shai’tan. Whereas the two wounds in Rand’s side maintain their duality, Fain could have shown what happens when a servant of Shai’tan, twisted and changed by him, merges with the evil of Shadar Logoth. He even had an encounter with Machin Shin in the Ways, potentially adding yet another mysterious, extra-dimensional evil.
But, nope, he was just Mordeth, re-solidifying into Mashadar again, simply moving Shadar Logoth to a new location. Fain’s personality is entirely gone. There’s no last encounter with Rand or Shai’tan. Even Perrin doesn’t get to do anything about Fain having killed his family. Why even bother having Perrin find out that Fain killed his family if it never matters at all?
And the bit where Siuan and Bryne split up. I mean, why? Siuan has lived nearly half her life at this point focused on prophecy, understanding that it’s never quite as simple as it seems. They could have just asked Min if the vision was still there. Bryne didn’t even have a good reason to leave her side! He was her Warder, why split them up? Bryne couldn’t even be trusted to give advice, what good was he as a simple Warder, separated from his Aes Sedai? Even if not for the vision, why split up on a battlefield? The Warder bond is a tremendous boon, but it comes with a major risk in that, if either person is killed, the other is incapacitated by it. Staying near your Aes Sedai has got to be literally the most important part of being a Warder. It really just didn’t make any sense, it felt like it was in the book completely arbitrarily.
I could go on like this. Honestly, part of me wants to. I mean, Faile’s portrayal in A Memory of Light was absolutely terrible. Everything she does technically makes a kind of sense, but the telling just makes her look like a paranoid fool. I mean, I get it, she had every reason to suspect a Darkfriend in her group – if anything, she was too trusting in only considering people she didn’t know – but what we actually experience is that Faile is just constantly scared, doesn’t really know what’s going on, and only really gets one even half-way heroic scene in the book.
Part of me wants to praise this for being somewhat realistic. Robert Jordan often did things like this, having characters fall flat rather than shine as heroes. But, A Memory of Light is also, frankly, kind of over the top when it comes to heroics compared to the rest of the series. The battles are too cool. Robert Jordan took a great deal of care in making sure that badass scenes of violence were negated, at least to an extent. We see them from a limited perspective, often one that focuses on how random death is. I always got the strong impression that this was inspired by his time as a soldier. It reminded me of several interviews from the Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary where soldiers try to express that one of the greatest shocks for them in combat was how completely random death was. The bravest, strongest, most-disciplined soldiers don’t live to be heroes while the weakest, most cowardly, dumbest soldiers die. Who lives and who dies is often a matter of simply who happened to be standing where. Shigeru Mizuki’s Showa series emphasizes this as well, showing that the author survived WWII more because of his incompetence than anything else, surviving battles only because he got lost or was too sick to participate.
But, in A Memory of Light, characters we like get heroic deaths or else survive despite all odds. Even Bela gets a heroic death. Look, I like Bela, but couldn’t a Trolloc literally just stop a little boy on a shaggy old mare with its bare hands? If we were going to get a nod to Bela, why not have her survive to carry Rand off at the end of the series? Showing that, after everything she’s been through, Bela isn’t afraid of Trollocs was cool, but why is she a good sprinter now?
So, with the extremely cinematic, Hollywood-rules portrayals of our characters, why give only Faile the gritty, realistic scenes of looking like a fool?
Oh, and while we’re talking about battles, what was up with Sanderson just straight-up stealing the Battle of Austerlitz for the Last Battle? I went over this in detail in the summary video, but if you skipped it, Sanderson literally just took the Battle of Austerlitz, rotated and flipped the map, and reproduced it for the Last Battle. Robert Jordan often pulled from real battles for inspiration, but – to my knowledge – he never just took an entire battle to save himself the work of writing one of his own. It’s not like the battles even have any thematic connection. There’s no meaning in the connection, it was just a way to make the battle feel real without having to do more research.
Which is particularly ridiculous because the armaments involved are so completely different. Channelers are so powerful that I think there’s a real chance that the Seanchan empire, if transported into modern times, could threaten a modern military. They can teleport! Demandred could kill hundreds with a single motion. What good is the high ground when the enemy can just destroy the ground itself?
Mat’s plan to have the Seanchan pretend to retreat didn’t make any sense at all. They could have been a huge help in the battle! I get that Sanderson wanted to push the metaphor of playing cards, but a metaphor like that is only clever when it actually makes sense. What was the advantage of fighting for hours with the Seanchan away? The surprise of their return didn’t actually accomplish anything. Sure, the Seanchan were a help when they returned, but the element of surprise didn’t do anything at all. Also note that Mat knew, the whole time, that Fortuona might just not return. Why take the risk? It wasn’t out of trust, we see from Mat’s own thoughts that for reasons that are never explained, he just really wanted to hold something back, like in cards. Even in a card game, you don’t lose the game just to hold one card back!
He didn’t even really need to bait out the Shadow’s attack: they wanted it as bad as he did! We might be able to say that Mat didn’t know that, that he was sincerely concerned that the Trollocs and Sharans would break away to pillage the south, but… once they started actually marching, it would’ve been too late for a clean disengagement. Again, Mat has raken and channelers. Trollocs might be able to escape him from a great distance, scattering in all directions, but once the ranks were formed and sent at him, there wasn’t any more reason to intentionally lose a bit, just to look weak, which is what we’re explicitly told that he does.
Look, if you liked the Last Battle, then great. It was certainly a long chapter, and some of the individual scenes were cool, but it seems incredible to me that it was stolen – directly – from a real battle and still managed to make no sense.
Just… the part about Hinderstap. Sure, it was funny, but did it make any sense at all? How did they manage to reclaim the river after respawning? The Shadow had dreadlords there. What good did it do to send the children? Other than giving the Trollocs a snack, I mean.
Okay. Okay. I told myself when I first started making these videos that I wasn’t going to just be another snarky, smug critic. It’s easy to poke holes, it’s much harder to see the value in something flawed.
No, wait, one more thing. Alivia. How much was her role built up? Remember, back in Knife of Dreams, when Cadsuane notes that Alivia is watching and learning from the Aes Sedai’s weaves. “‘So you watch’ ‘And remember what I see. I must learn somehow if I am to help the Lord Dragon. I have learned more than you are aware of.'” Good to see her putting all of that knowledge to use by leaving Rand some money to “help him die.” This stings almost as bad as Fain.
That’s why I wanted to really talk about the themes before getting into my personal thoughts.
Still, I do want to try to explain, plainly, what I think went on here. Again, I haven’t looked into other fan opinions yet, so maybe everyone else just loved the book, but… I dunno, it seems like it needs some apologetics.
Whose story is it anyways?
So, I think that much of my shock at the ending is just that I wanted a different story from the one Robert Jordan was telling.
Look, I was raised Catholic. I like Christian symbolism. Outside of funerals, I haven’t been to a church in over a decade, but I don’t bear Christianity any ill-will. I like Christian stories, especially when there’s a unique spin. Trigun, for example, is one of my favorite manga and anime series.
But, I also grew up in America and I’m far better at reading English than any other language. Most stories I’ve read have been inspired by Christian values. Part of what I liked about The Wheel of Time was the Eastern influence. The series is a blend of tropes familiar to me and tropes that are not.
So, I was really hoping for something new in the ending. Something cosmic or unexpected. Not just Weird fiction, though I do love that genre, but something really new and different. I was honestly a little worried when I started noticing all of the black tentacles, grabbing at Lanfear in the dreamshard, grabbing helpless people in Moridin’s, and emerging from the ground during the Last Battle. If Shai’tan had just been Cthulhu, I also would’ve been disappointed. Frankly, I’m still a little annoyed at the random dark tentacles: it’s overused and doesn’t have anything to do with anything we know about Shai’tan.
But, thinking things over, I had to remind myself that this isn’t my series: it’s Robert Jordan’s. Sanderson helped at the end, but The Wheel of Time belongs to Jordan, it’s his vision. And I don’t think he brought in Eastern mythology and religion because he wanted to present a non-Christian worldview. Rather, I think he wanted to bolster the verisimilitude – the sense of realness – of his story by making the world bigger than what we often see in traditional fantasy stories. So, we have references to Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and many other belief systems just as we have different styles of clothing and different political structures. It makes the world feel more believable, more solid.
But, at the end of the day, it’s still a story and a world built from Robert Jordan’s worldview. We’re all free to love it or hate it, but to appraise it, we need to judge it on its own terms. From that perspective, I think that the ending was – for the most part – really good. I mean, Fain was still a major letdown, but the confrontation between Rand and Shai’tan was just perfect for the story Robert Jordan wanted to tell.
Which brings me to the other point we need to keep in mind: Sanderson had to finish the series.
Now, I really don’t know for sure how Sanderson worked on the last books. I also haven’t read any of Sanderson’s other work. But, based on my understanding of the series, I do not think that Sanderson changed anything major about the worldview or the end of the series. I actually get the impression that he took immense care in respecting Jordan’s notes and the existing world.
Which… if you think about it, sounds incredibly difficult.
Bear in mind that when Robert Jordan sat down to write a new Wheel of Time book, he didn’t consider his own notes on future directions to be sacred. I mean, Taim was obviously Demandred in disguise when we first met him. He just was. Lord of Chaos both begins and ends with Demandred talking to Shai’tan, and it’s clear that he did something great for Shai’tan during the book. But, he doesn’t actually do anything during the book, Taim does. It’s not until A Memory of Light that we learn that, apparently, he just sort of recruited Taim in some vague sense that never matters. That’s not how books work!
But, Jordan clearly decided that just making Taim and Demandred be the same person wasn’t actually what he wanted to do. Maybe he saw that fans picked up on it a bit too easily and wanted something a bit more subtle.
Or, consider the “Eye of the World” and all of the references to Shai’tan as “Sightblinder.” Livingston’s Origins of The Wheel of Time explains that, originally, Jordan was going to have each seal protected by another Eye of the World, and Shai’tan’s servants would go and put out these eyes. But, that would’ve been a lot less interesting than what we got, wouldn’t it? So, Jordan changed his mind.
Imagine being Brandon Sanderson, hired to finish the series and given notes. You could probably ignore some of them, if only because there were probably inconsistencies, but you can’t ignore too many without feeling like you’re disrespecting Robert Jordan.
I think this explains some of stranger things from the last few books, stuff that makes sense in the larger context of the series, but doesn’t really flow well with story. Siuan and Bryne dying due to Min’s vision makes sense, broadly speaking, but it felt like Sanderson just didn’t really know how to work it in. Same for Moiraine and Thom’s marriage. As I argued before, I think their relationship makes sense, but the scene where it happened felt like it came out of nowhere. Moiraine doesn’t really act like herself at all in that scene.
I’ve also mentioned before that Sanderson, at least in these books, just didn’t seem to have the same mastery with prose that Jordan had. Sanderson struggled to narrate in-character, and he flanderizes some of the characters.
Just… that scene where Mat makes backstories for everyone. I can’t get over it. It was so bad. I don’t think I even need to explain that, do I? It was one of the worst scenes in the entire series, completely different, tonally, from everything else. It was out of character for both Mat and the world as a whole.
Same thing for Talmanes’ sense of humor. Since fairly early on, there was a bit of humor in Talmanes being kind of deadpan and sarcastic, but it always felt very common and relatable to me. I can remember being a young man and being kind of obnoxious, then encountering older men who seemed, at first, to be completely boring and humorless, until I learned that they were simply working on a different level of wit than I was, poking fun at me so subtly that, in my youth, I didn’t even realize it.
In Sanderson’s writing, Talmanes’ sense of humor is practically his only defining trait. It comes up constantly and explicitly, completely ruining the point.
But, again, remember that Sanderson was finishing the series for someone else. His more cartoonish and overt, rather than subtle, depiction of characters probably wouldn’t have felt strange if it had been consistent, it only stood out because it was a change, and a change just as we entered the more serious and important part of the series. I don’t even know if this is his usual style, it might have just been the best way he could manage to handle Jordan’s universe and characters. Perhaps he felt that he had to make sure that the characters still felt like themselves and decided that it was better to go too far than to fall short.
Moreover, though I didn’t particularly like Sanderson’s take on characterization and I thought that this prose lacked some of Jordan’s subtlety, the description of Shai’tan breaking the world was fantastic. Much of the descriptive language used for the scenes near Shayol Ghul was absolutely incredible. Despite my complaints about Mat and Talmanes, reading the last three Wheel of Time books actually has me really wanting to read some of Sanderson’s other work.
Anyways, my point here is that I think we got the ending that Robert Jordan wanted: I don’t think that Sanderson changed anything significant, or worked his own worldview in in any intentional way. I also think that the ending was very good, with just a few exceptions, for the worldview and message that Robert Jordan wanted to present to us.
The Wind
The very end, in particular, stood out for me.
There’s a part of me that really wanted Rand to announce himself, rather than sneaking away. There’s so much good he could do for the world! Even if he steps down as a direct leader of people, the things he remembers from the Age of Legends and the things he learned outside of the Pattern could be invaluable. At the very least, go tell Tam that he doesn’t need to grieve.
But, that’s me. That’s what I imagine doing, but it’s not what Rand would do.
The Wheel of Time was, in some ways, an unusual fantasy adventure. It’s far more complicated than a simple swashbuckling adventure. Yet, for all its characters, high-concept themes, and worldbuilding, it’s still an adventure. A journey. Each book begins with a wind, sweeping through the world, on an endless journey, with no beginning or ending. How else could Rand’s story have “ended” except by the start of a new journey? As he notes, he hasn’t even seen all that much of the world: mostly just the inside of palaces. When he lights his pipe without channeling, we see that there are still mysteries left in the world: perhaps even new mysteries, born of the new Age.
The Wheel of Time isn’t a literary work to end all works, but another step in a series. Just as other works, such as The Lord of the Rings and the stories of King Arthur, inspired The Wheel of Time, so too does it hope to inspire new works.
To go back to our main themes, the series ends with Rand having overcome a great hardship. For all of his suffering, for everything that’s changed, he has learned to put it all behind him and look forward to the next adventure. “He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone.”
Phew
Alright, that pretty much covers what I have to say about The Wheel of Time. Before I sign off, I’d like to spend a few minutes just sort of chatting about this project, the channel, and I’ll close out with some final, informal comments.
What’s next?
Before I lose anyone: yes, I am going to continue making videos.
I’d actually like to just be completely transparent here for a minute and explain my thought process on choosing a next project.
It’s been more than a year since I quit my job to focus on more creative and meaningful projects. Right after I quit, I just tried a little of everything: sketching, painting, playing guitar and piano, writing fiction, writing reviews, and probably some other stuff I don’t even remember. After a couple months of this, I started to see that my time working in tech had made me a bit rusty at dealing with anything artistic and I decided that, before I could try creating anything, I really had to spend some time reading, listening, watching, and playing to expose myself to more sources of inspiration.
But, I didn’t want to just lounge about passively experiencing things, so I started a blog to force myself to really think each thing I experienced through to grow my perspective. After writing several long essays, I found that it’s really hard to get any feedback on long written essays, so I started making videos.
It’s been about nine months now and I’m finding that I really enjoy making these videos, and I’d like to spend more time doing this.
Long term, I have a couple of directions I’d like this to go.
First, I really like the sense of community I feel from reading and responding to all of your comments. I don’t think I can stress this enough. I don’t have a huge following, but a few of you have posted so many comments that I’ve come to really look forward to seeing what you have to see about each new video. Seriously, if Ek Sh or Anonymously Opinionated don’t have something to say within a few days of a new video, I start to worry, and just in the last couple of months I’ve picked up a couple of new followers that are watching and commenting as they do their own re-reads of the series. I have a hard time not clicking the heart on every single reply. Most of the comments I get are really well thought out, often presenting an idea I didn’t think of or a correction to something I misunderstood. I’ve yet to receive a single mean comment, and everyone has been careful not to post any spoilers. If I haven’t responded to one of your comments, it’s just because I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say in response.
Again, I quit my very cushy, lucrative job to do this. Friends and family occasionally ask me if I ever feel like this was a mistake or if I consider going back. Of course I do! It’s been more than a year and I still have little moments of panic where I ask myself “what the hell did I do?” pretty much every day. Then, I’ll check my phone to see if I have any new comments or subscribers, or I’ll scroll through some of my old comments. It doesn’t just “help,” it completely dispels any sense that I’ve made a mistake. Your feedback and support make this worthwhile.
Honestly, I don’t really watch many other booktubers myself. I’ve tried! But, most channels I’ve found just don’t talk with the sort of… intensity that I’m trying to provide here and that I’m receiving in turn from your comments. That probably comes off as arrogant, but I really don’t mean this as a value judgement. Reaction videos, lore analysis, and reviews are all perfectly fine content, but as you’ve come to see, I really like to get into the broad themes, tying fiction back to matters of philosophy and psychology, building a network of meaning between works of fiction but centered on reality. Part of me wants to go into academia to get more of this, but I just can’t stand the bureaucracy and egotism that would require. I’m pretty sure that most people would say that my videos are far too serious or even dry. Well, that’s fine with me. That’s the great thing about the internet: I can find the handful of people who want a long section on the civil rights movement or role of ambiguity in fiction when talking about an epic fantasy series. I’ll talk about swords and make some silly faces and snarky comments from time to time, but it’s not the point. I don’t even know what the point is, to be perfectly honest. I sometimes feel like I’m digging around the edges of some really important ideas, too big to be approached directly, so we can only glimpse them indirectly, through metaphor and fiction. If I have to, I’ll keep digging alone, but it’s a hell of a lot easier with friends.
So, long-term, I’d love to grow this community. Maybe some of you are interested in making your own videos. I’m still an amateur myself, but that kind of puts me in the perfect place to give tips to other people who are just getting started, so you can skip some of the mistakes I’ve made over the past year. YouTube comments are great, but maybe a discord server would be even better. I could just start a discord server right now, I already have a couple for other social groups, but I feel like that would be premature (and it would overly focus on just The Wheel of Time, whereas I’d like to go further than that.) But, again, I’m figuring this all out as I go, so maybe I’ll spin something up soon.
There are a lot of exciting ideas here, but again, before I get into that, I feel like I need to push past working solely on The Wheel of Time. I love The Wheel of Time, but I want to go further than that.
Which brings me to the problem I’m facing.
No matter what I pick next, it probably won’t be appealing to everyone watching me right now, and even if I could find something that fit, that would only delay the issue, as I’ll eventually want to branch out to something new and different. I’ve frankly been feeling a little bit stuck: I really don’t want to lose anyone currently watching, especially not any of you who leave comments. It probably sounds a little bit silly, but it would feel like losing a friend to lose any of my frequent commenters.
But, I started this whole project by taking a huge leap. I can’t chicken out now. But, I can be intentional in how I branch out from where we are.
Which brings me to the second direction I want to take things: I still want to focus on looking at literature as a source of inspiration for creating my own work. Really, our own work. Nothing would make me happier than hearing that someone who watched my videos went on to write their own book, inspired – in part – by something I said.
With that in mind, I think I know… generally where to go from here.
To simultaneously grow this community and keep from losing anyone, I plan on mixing things up more. Rather than spending most of a year on just one series, I plan on jumping around more, so even if you’re not interested in one video, you’ll hopefully be interested in the next one.
To focus on critiquing literature as a source of inspiration for new work, I want to choose things that I feel would have value as a source of inspiration or understanding.
Though I don’t have anything like a schedule at this point, I have a few ideas for the near future. The Wheel of Time was heavily inspired by mythology and folklore. I’m planning on doing some videos that dig into old myths that we’re all vaguely aware of, but applying a great deal more scrutiny. Plenty of other channels already explain old myths (and do so very well,) but I think we can go deeper, analyzing not just the lore of the myths, but also digging into themes and characters similar to what we’ve done with The Wheel of Time. I won’t just ask who Galahad was, but why he’s that way, what that meant for people at the time and what it means for us now. Of course, I don’t want to stick just to King Arthur and Norse mythology, there’s a whole world of stories out there, each with their own perspective to offer. I absolutely love old Japanese ghost stories, for example.
There are also other genres. I’ve mentioned before how much I’d love to talk about some of William Gibson’s work. I’d also like to discuss some horror and weird fiction. One of the first essays I wrote on my site was about M. R. James and Lovecraft, there’s a lot to talk about there!
But, I also really like fantasy, and after finishing The Wheel of Time, I really do want to read some more Sanderson. I do plan on getting to the Cosmere at some point. I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll do a video per book, or if I’ll lump a few books together. For example, I might just do one video for the first Mistborn era. I’ll really need to actually read some of the books before I’ll know the best way to do this. Of course, we don’t need to stay too close to The Wheel of Time. Tolkien’s extended works, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Dying Earth… there’s a lot of fantasy out there to read.
And, as I’ve mentioned before, I’d also really like to cover some video games. In particular, I’d like to cover some games that I think are missing the kind of analysis I can offer. My first thought is to cover something like Final Fantasy V with an emphasis on themes, references, and cultural impact, looking at the game as a work of literature.
So, again, I don’t have a schedule ready, but I plan on rotating between these different types of video. This way, we can grow our community to bring in people who might not care about The Wheel of Time in particular but are interested in the sorts of discussions we’ve been having, but I can also ensure that nobody watching right now is left without something they’re interested in for too long.
So, short term, it’ll probably be a couple of months before my next video, as I’ll need some time to branch out and try some different things. There are a couple of series that I’ve been really wanting to read but I’m not sure whether they’d make good videos, so I’d like the time to see what works and what doesn’t. But, I’ll definitely have some new videos before too long, and I’m pretty sure that you’ll like what I come up with.
To help me out, I’d really appreciate it if you use comments to provide feedback, both when I do something you like, but even more importantly, when I do something you don’t care for. If I put out a few videos in a row that you don’t care for, let me know in a comment. I’ll do my best to keep everyone happy if I can. I don’t want to cover anything that I’m not personally interested in, both for my own sake but also because that would likely result in a passionless video, but I’m interested in a lot of stuff, I’m sure we can find enough overlap in our interests.
Alright, with that out of the way, let’s close out the series with some less formal comments.
Chattin’
So, I’ve got to say, I get the impression that people think I don’t like Egwene. Here, at the end of the series, I want to make it clear: I actually like Egwene a lot. My league-start sorceress in Diablo II: Resurrected both this season and last was named “Egwene.” In terms of personality, she’s probably the Wheel of Time character most like me when I was her age. When I say something like “Egwene would have been a terrible peace-time Amyrlin,” I also believe this about myself when I was her age.
Of course, I have kind of a hard time not identifying with Rand the most. I mean, he’s the perspective character, we spend a lot of time in his head. But, I also grew up in a place where there really weren’t many people with red hair, so I’ll always identify with a tall redhead. Though, I’ll admit, as a treat for anyone who stuck around for all of this, that learning from The Wheel of Time Companion that Rand is a couple inches taller than me did make me completely lose any sense of empathy for him at all whatsoever. Seriously, how many men in The Wheel of Time are exactly 6’6″? It’s at least three. Bael is 6’10”. At least I’m taller than Logain (yes I checked), but good god, is this genetic engineering from the Age of Legends? Practically every significant male character not given a specific height is just “tall.” Even Mat, the runt of the Emond’s Field boys, is 5’11”. Are Bashere, Talmanes, and Ituralde the only short men in The Wheel of Time?
Anyways, it’s really hard not to love all of the characters from The Wheel of Time. I think I mentioned before that I also really like Verin. I like to think that she’d like my videos. Well, they’d probably actually be too shallow for her. Maybe after a few decades as a Brown I’d be able to make something properly comprehensive.
And, yeah, I’d definitely go for the Brown. I respect the Yellows a lot, and I’d definitely consider it, but, come on, centuries to read and write, and magical abilities to aid in research? Traveling to libraries around the world without the need to fly. I hope the Black Tower establishes its own Ajahs. I really want Flinn to be First Weaver.
I also really want to emphasize how much I like Nynaeve’s character growth. Pretty much every main character in The Wheel of Time is great, but Nynaeve is unique in how slow her growth was and in how quietly she became one of the wisest characters in the series. Perrin’s growth was similarly slow and steady, but Nynaeve didn’t get the same sort of crystalizing moments that Perrin got when he forged Mah’alleinir or accepted his dual nature in the dream. The closest Nynaeve gets is her test, but even there, the real point of that scene – to me – is what she says to Egwene afterwards. To see her grow from being an arrogant, insecure, chauvinist into the sort of person capable of real critical introspection, but without ever losing her passion to heal the world no matter what anyone says… I mean, Rand calls this out too: the Aes Sedai didn’t ruin her.
Alright, I don’t want to just have a long sequence of characters that I liked, as we’d be here all day and most of what I’d say is stuff I’ve already said, but I do need to call out that Min is best-girl. She’s just got a real strength to her, a sort of ambition without ego. She’s capable of amazing bravery and dedication, but never really for herself. She understands things on a level that no one else comes close to. If she could have taken Rand’s place, she would have accomplished everything he did with ease, but she knows that it’s not her story. I think she’s got a fair bit of trickster spirit in her, maybe even more than Mat, in a way. For all the wanna-be wise mentors in The Wheel of Time, Tam and Min are the only two who really manage to pull it off.
On a completely different topic, part of me has wanted a whole spinoff for Mat and Perrin since really early in the series. Their powers are just so different from everything else we see in The Wheel of Time. It’s incredible to me that Robert Jordan was able to build so many different wonders into the same world coherently, without it feeling like a season of American Horror Story. The way Perrin and Mat’s thoughts worked reminded me so much of my own thoughts in different moments. When I’m feeling introspective, I’m Perrin. When I’m feeling bored, I’m Mat. I’ll really miss all of these characters.
Did I ever really get a chance to talk about how Thor was split across Rand and Perrin? I don’t want to go too deep into that right now, but basically, I think that Rand takes some of the more religious or fantastic aspects of Thor while Perrin has more in common with what we see Thor do in myth. If you want to see lightning bolts thrown down to destroy the enemy, then you get Rand. If you want to see someone pick up a big hammer and head out to slay a bunch of giants, you get Perrin.
The comparison with Mat, as Odin, is also interesting. Though both Thor and Odin have a lot of history to them, one interpretation of the two characters has them representing different classes, with Odin representing nobility and Thor representing more common people. I mean, they’re both gods and worship of Thor didn’t, to my knowledge, really reflect this split much, but from myth, we can see that Odin generally winds up looking cool and smart whereas myths of Thor often make him the butt of a joke. The clearest example of this probably comes from The Lay of Hárbarðr, where Odin – in disguise as a ferryman – denies Thor passage and the two have an argument. Odin ridicules Thor’s peasant diet and clothing while bragging about his sexual conquests, magical powers, and tactical skill in battle. Thor mostly brags about killing giants. In the end, Odin tells Thor to walk around the river and Thor is stuck looking like a fool.
As a scene, this really brings to mind Mat and Rand’s bragging contest, but as a theme, I can’t help but notice that Rand and Mat both take to fancy coats and palaces after a while, but Perrin maintains his dislike of riches throughout the series. He’s rather have a hunk of meat and the time to hit something with his hammer than drink wine in a palace. I wonder how he’ll fare now that Faile is set to be Queen of Saldaea.
What else is there… did anyone else notice that Loial married Aeris from Final Fantasy VII? I mean, they’re both just named “Earth,” but still, I couldn’t help but say “Erith” as “Aeris” in my head every time I saw the name.
Oh, I never got to talk about Egwene making Leilwin her Warder!
So, this is a fairly minor point that didn’t really fit into any of my analysis sections, but I think it’s worth considering why Egwene made Leilwin her Warder. In that moment, Egwene was wounded from Gawyn’s death, but she wanted to be a strong Amyrlin. To be a strong Amyrlin, Egwene refuses to let herself wallow in misery when she should be out fighting. But, she doesn’t take Leilwin as her Warder as a show of strength, and I don’t think it was really even about practical necessity. Just before Egwene announces that she’ll need a new Warder, she thinks to herself “Gawyn had not been a weakness to her.” From this, I think we can say that Egwene taking Leilwin as Warder was an expression of grief. She wants to prove that Gawyn wasn’t a weakness, so she must show that – without him – she is less than she was with him. What better way to do that than to take a new Warder?
I also wanted to briefly touch on some of the parallels that pop up between everyone who goes out to fight Demandred during the Last Battle.
I’ve already talked about Gawyn a fair bit, and how I think he’s actually an important perspective for us in The Wheel of Time. Gawyn can see greatness. He’s surrounded by great people and he’s often in positions where a great deed could prove him to be their equal. But, he’s just never quite good enough. He’s good looking… but not an object of worship like Galad. He’s good with a sword, but Mat beats him with a quarterstaff and Lan’s the one who kills Demandred. He’s in a position to support his sister as Queen, but then he watches as some stupid peasant comes in, steals her heart, and goes on to be far more important than her, leaving Gawyn behind in near obscurity, at least in comparison. He comes to focus his frustration at always been just barely not good enough on Rand, the man who just walks in and wins everything without even wanting it.
He’s actually a lot like Logain. “The Pattern demanded a Dragon! And so I came! Too soon. Just a little too soon.” Much earlier, in Knife of Dreams, when Lews Therin seizes saidin from Rand and prepares to kill himself with it, Logain notes “Why are you still holding the Power? And so much. If you’re trying to show me that you’re stronger than I am, I already know it. I saw how large your… your Deathgates were compared to mine.” Logain’s even a few inches shorter than Rand, though still tall. Like Gawyn, he’s actually pretty amazing. I mean, the “average” person in The Wheel of Time is a farmer or spinner. Even the Asha’man fall short compared to Logain, just as the best Warders couldn’t stand against Gawyn with a sword. Yet, neither was quite as good as they thought they had to be. They both come to accept this in the end, at least, for the most part. I suppose it’s debatable whether Gawyn truly accepted this, given that he died in a mad effort to kill Demandred… but, really, it wasn’t a bad plan. With just a bit more luck, he could have saved tens of thousands of lives. Don’t let survival dictate the moral of this story for you. Gawyn died, but he died in an effort to do the right thing, and he died with a mind clear of envy and hate.
Taim, on the other hand, certainly doesn’t grow past his jealousy. He’s in a very similar situation, but he never accepts that he’s just not as powerful or important as Rand. Instead, Taim goes looking for power among the Forsaken, and he even becomes one of them… only to find that Demandred still outclasses him. Ironically, Demandred himself falls to the same trap, never accepting that he’s not the Dragon. As Elayne sees, Demandred – with his full circle and sa’angreal – does surpass Rand’s strength, but Rand doesn’t even join the battle. Demandred comes off looking like a fool, spending nearly all of his time in the whole series just begging Rand to come out and fight him. Powerful, yes, but to what end? Logain nearly succumbs as well, desiring the power to ensure that no one can ever make him feel powerless ever again, but Logain succeeds in growing past this by looking to other people.
I really like how we see Demandred almost do the same with the Sharans. He recognizes that there’s a place for him. A really good place, as a hero. He could have done so much good, if he just wasn’t obsessed with having the most power. Logain accepts his still very lofty position as leader of the Black Tower. Gawyn came to accept his position as Amyrlin’s Warder, at least, for the most part. Demandred finds that even having the most power brings him no peace, as he can’t prove it without Rand’s willing cooperation in a duel, and Taim finds that he can’t even be the best villain.
…alright, part of me wants to just keep going, but if I really want to branch out into new things, then I’ve got to start some time. So, let’s call it here for today. I should have a new video out on something within a few months. I hope you enjoyed my coverage of The Wheel of Time!