Welcome back to the Wheel of Time. This is a 14-book (+1 field
guide + 1/3 prequel) that runs to about a zillion words and was a high school
favorite of mine. I just reread the fourth one and am sharing stuff about how I
now find it. If you want the first half, click here. If you simply wanna get
into it, read on. Here’s a glossary.
Quick
Glossary
Rand: The basically messiah, super-magic user, and central
character. Is also ta’veren, meaning
he has plot powers.
Mat: His buddy. Also ta’veren.
Perrin: His other buddy. Also ta’veren. Dating
Faile.
Faile: Noblewoman in secret searching for adventure. Dating
Perrin.
Berelain: Queen of tiny country. Pursuing Perrin.
Moiraine: A magic user who found Rand before he was known to be
the messiah.
Aviendha: an Aiel (basically super-Bedouin) who tutors/hates/will
eventually love Rand.
Elayne: Future queen, current magic user, has the hots for Rand.
Egwene: Magic user, has dreaming superpowers, used to be with
Rand but now ain’t.
Nynaeve: Magic user.
Min: Also in love with Rand.
Thom: Rand’s advisor.
Siuan Sanche: Head of the female magic users.
Lanfear: Rand’s evil ex from a past life. Shut up.
MAJOR SECTION II: How the Characters Work
The Stranger at the Door
Everyone in the series is constantly in the position of being
introduced to new things. Rand, Mat, Perrin, Nynaeve, and Egwene are from a
tiny backwater farming town and are totally unsophisticated. We see things from
their perspective, and we see a lot of new things; in Shadow alone,
Rand is introduced to the extremely complicated culture of the Aiel, and
there’s even a whole subplot about how ignorant he is. Perrin constantly
reminds everyone that he’s an unsophisticated blacksmith that doesn’t know
jack, even as he’s transforming into a leader of men (and refusing to admit it,
which is more annoying than I remember it being). Mat’s entire plotline
in Shadow is about finding answers related to things that have
happened to him in previous books, Nynaeve and Elayne are trainee Aes Sedai who
spend much of their time trying to learn new things, and Egwene is being taught
by her own bunch of strict taskmistresses.
We rarely see things from the perspective of an authority figure
who knows what’s going on unless that authority figure is in the process of
wondering what someone else is doing; examples include
Moiraine waiting impatiently on Rand in the Stone of Tear, Thom being jerked
around by Moiraine in the Stone, and Siuan Sanche being suddenly upended by a
rebellion. Moreover, not only are characters constantly learning new things,
but the way the world works continually shifts underneath them. Look at the
Aiel; the test for becoming a leader of the Aiel is a very intense version of
“This is what you thought your people’s history was. Here’s what it actually
is, and it cuts to the heart of everything you believe. Now adapt to the new
reality, or else kill yourself”. There is a constant sense of shock at meeting
people who do things differently, from Aiel in a water-rich country to Seanchan
shocked at the mainlanders’ squabbling, and people get over it only very slowly
and sometimes not at all.
Eventually the series will begin to shift its tone. The core
group doesn’t stop learning new things, but they do gain experience in
positions of power and authority, stop being so wide-eyed at the world, and
start making decisions that impact the lives of others. However, although the
core group and many other characters get a lot more experienced and adept at
manipulating people over time, it hasn’t happened in Shadow. You
can sort of categorize the Wheel of Time books that way. Books 1-3 show these
characters as people who are essentially on an adventure story, traveling
unobtrusively and affecting events with deeds of heroism. Books 4-7 move to the
level of nations; although there’s plenty of adventure-story individual
missions, characters start leading and affecting events on a wider scale,
maneuvering with other powerful players. Rand in particular stops being a
refugee and begins to affect the destiny of whole nations; this is the last of
the table-setting. Books 8, 9 and 10 feel sort of scattered, with new plotlines
being introduced and old plotlines stagnating, before the rolling-boulder
downhill plunge that begins with Book 11 and carries past Jordan’s death all
the way to A Memory of Light. Shadow,
Book 4, is a transitional one; everyone’s still learning, but Rand and Perrin
begin to lead, and others will follow them.
Emotional Intelligence/Communication/Theory of Mind
“Why did you let her go in
that way?” [says Egwene].
Puzzled, [Rand] stared at
her. “She wanted to go. I’d have had to tie her up to stop her. Besides, she’ll
be safer in Tanchico than near me—or Mat…”
“That isn’t what I mean at
all. Of course she wanted to go. And you had no right to stop her. But why didn’t
you tell her you wished she would stay?”
“She wanted to go,” he
repeated, and grew more confused when she rolled her eyes as if he were
speaking gibberish. If he had no right to stop Elayne, and she wanted to go,
why was he supposed to try to talk her out of it? Especially when she was safer
gone.
How hard is it to understand that Elayne wanted to be wanted
here? But Rand doesn’t get it, and what’s more, he doesn’t think it over and
understand later on. He just chalks that up as one of the unknowable mysteries
and moves on with his day. This is something that everyone does,
particularly as it relates to gender. Everyone in this entire series has the
emotional intelligence of a dog.
And long-running plot threads depend on it, which is really frustrating!
Perrin plans to go home and give himself up to the Whitecloaks (who will kill
him) so they’ll leave the Two Rivers, which is stupid, but, whatever. So he
tries to drive his girlfriend-later-wife Faile away by feigning interest in
another woman named Berelain. A) that doesn’t work, B) that fight with Faile
lingers for another 250 pages, and C) the subsequent Faile-Berelain-Perrin
triangle persists for another SEVEN BOOKS. It could have been resolved with two
or three adult conversations early in Shadow, but it wasn’t, was
it?!
Oh, does Jordan love his
conflicts that are created or exacerbated by a lack of communication and an
inability to get inside other people’s heads. The Wheel of Time is peppered
with characters observing other characters and saying “oddly”, “puzzled”, “peculiar”,
or “for some reason” because they can’t suss out why the other person did something,
when the why is glaringly obvious
to the reader. What moves it from frustrating to maddening is that
characters will muse internally about why someone else is acting that
way, hit upon the right answer, and then think to themselves ‘No,
that’s crazy, that couldn’t possibly be it’ and abandon the idea completely. It
used to make me crazy—it still makes me crazy! Important plot threads that last
four or five books are founded entirely on these miscommunications and
misinterpretations. When Jordan died and Brandon Sanderson took over the Wheel
of Time, one of the first things he did was to extinguish most of these
slow-burning threads, putting feuding characters in the same locations and
essentially writing “And then they hashed it out” half a dozen times.
Gender Roles
Hoo boy.
In some ways, the Wheel of Time is pretty modern-looking for a series that
began in the ‘90s and was written by an old white guy in the pre-Game of
Thrones era. Female characters such as Elayne, Egwene, Nynaeve, Siuan
Sanche, Moiraine, and plenty of others have political, magical, and personal
power of varying degrees. Women lead armies, nations and peoples. When women
are not formally in charge, they tend to have soft power that equals the hard
power of the men: examples include the Women’s Circle in Emond’s Field or the
wives and Wise One advisors of male Aiel clan chiefs, both of whom hold degrees
of power over the men who nominally lead. Women pursue dangerous missions,
advance within their professions, fight in battles magical and physical, and
generally display bravery, spunk, and the desire to be just as much a part of
the story as any man.
However, Shadow is
still very old-school. Modern feminism, as I understand it, is very much about
equal opportunity: women can and should be able to work on oil rigs, in law
offices, hold political office, and so on without consideration of their
gender. But although both sexes can hold power, Shadow and the
rest of Wheel are all about specific gender roles.
Sure, women can be powerful Wise Ones, but a Wise One is not a clan chief;
that’s a man’s role. Aiel women fight in the warrior society Far Dareis
Mai, Maidens of the Spear, but there are twelve warrior societies and the
rest are exclusively male. The source of magic, the One Power, is divided in
half; men can use the half called saidin, and women the half
called saidar, and neither can use the other one’s half without
help. Men and women are equal, says Jordan, but very definitely separate.
The One Ain’t The Other
Saidar and saidin are illustrative in another
way, too. To use saidin, a man has to wrestle it into submission;
it’s often compared to riding an avalanche. To use saidar, a woman has
to surrender to it and open herself to be filled by it; Aes Sedai in training
imagine themselves as a slowly opening rosebud. Ignore the uncomfortable sexual
resonance for a second. The point is that men are fundamentally wired
differently than women; when Elayne and Egwene try to teach him the
Power, Rand compares it to a bird trying to teach a fish to fly. And the Power
is far from the only area where this is voiced. On practically every other
page, a character throws their hands up and declares that they’ll never
understand the opposite sex, and they never will. Hey, look, it’s the emotional
intelligence thing again! Nobody can cross the gender barrier and figure out
the other side because they’re just so freaking different from us. Women are
mysterious and desirable in their femininity, say the men; they’re dumb, say
women, but we love ‘em anyway. And that’s all.
But, of course, it isn’t all. In some ways women have plenty of
power, but in other ways they fall into the kind of norms or male-gaze-ness
that would make several of my exes tear their hair out. Heteronormativity is
almost absolute, minus some talk about “pillow-friends” that appears in later
books, but a) it seems to be only women (remember this) and b) I don’t remember
any openly gay or lesbian characters, much less trans ones. Everyone is set in
their sexual and gender identity. More to the point, in traditional fantasy
style, nobody is single or casually dating; everyone has a Love Of Their Life that
they wind up with. Women (Elayne and Min, probably Aviendha, Egwene, Nynaeve,
and several others) fall in love with their men immediately upon
meeting them. And, well, this happens.
Bechdel Dies
“Perrin Aybara belongs to
me,” [Faile] snapped. “You keep your hands and your smiles away from him!” She
flushed to her hairline when she heard what she had said. She had promised
herself she would never do this, never fight over a man like a farmgirl rolling
in the dirt at harvest.
Berelain arched a cool
eyebrow. “Belongs to you? Strange, I saw no collar on him. You serving girls—or
are you a farmer’s daughter?—you have the most peculiar ideas.”
[Faile fumes internally
about being raised at Court in Saldaea]
She was surprised to see
the knife in her hand; she had been taught not to draw a knife unless she meant
to use it. “Farm girls in Saldaea have a way of dealing with women who poach
others’ men. If you do not swear to forget Perrin Aybara, I will shave your
head bald as an egg. Perhaps the boys who tend the chickens will pant after you
then!”
It goes on like that. You see? These are two strong-willed
women. One of them runs a country, the other will be revealed as a noblewoman
who’s had all sorts of battle training. But they’re in this conflict because of
a man. Berelain’s trying to hook a member of Rand’s entourage so he will think
well of her country, and Faile is old-fashioned-ly in love with Perrin. If this
was Jordan’s idea of strong female characters, he misses the modern idea so hard
it’d make Bechdel barf.
Most female activity in Shadow
fits this pattern on a macro level. Nynaeve and Elayne are ostensibly on an
independent mission, but they’re acting to remove a danger to Rand. Moiraine is
presented as this wise and unknowable figure who wields immense power (and boy,
do they talk about avoiding her manipulations A LOT), but almost all she does
in Shadow is bitch at Rand and follow him around. Ditto
Aviendha, who is made to act as his tutor; ditto Lanfear, who holds off on killing
him because she is still in love with him. He is the basically messiah, and
part of his power is that all sorts of people are pulled towards him without
knowing why, but… man. There are women doing things for their own sake—Egwene
studying Dreaming with the Aiel Wise Ones, for example—but they are far
outnumbered by the ones doing what they do for men.
Male Gaze
I mentioned the male gaze up above. Jordan was kind of a dirty
old man, and there aren’t many circumstances where men are told to get naked in
his books, but women? In Shadow alone, we see topless
Sea Folk women, naked Aiel women plus Moiraine, Aviendha and Egwene, naked
Moiraine and Aviendha going to Rhuidean (an Aiel holy place), naked Seanchan
servants (men and women), Egwene in her bath (and Aviendha naked again in the
same scene), Nynaeve and Elayne and their friend Egeanin in revealing
nightclothes (multiple times), Elayne falling out of her dress to impress Rand,
and I’m sure there are plenty of others I’m forgetting. It’s delicately done
and never explicit—Jordan will say “She wore not a stitch” and leave it at
that—but it’s also damn near omnipresent.
Even as a teenager I noticed this (I mean, of course I did). Often
in-book it’s at a female-only ceremony, like the Aiel sweat tent that Egwene
visits, but the overwhelming sense is that it’s for straight male readers to be
titillated by—remember the female-only pillow-friends? And of course there’s
sex. I think the first sex scene comes in Book 5, and many others follow. Mind
you, Jordan usually cuts away from the action, but will describe the afterglow
in fairly rapturous detail. It’s hard not to conclude that these books are
written precisely for the sort of teenage me that found them, blending
sword-and-sorcery stuff with naked this and naked that while throwing in enough
strong (ish) female-ness and sanctimonious cutting away to maintain some
respectability.
Anti-Conclusion
Conclusion
I didn’t write this to render a judgment or draw a grand
conclusion on Shadow or on the Wheel. Sometimes you go back and read a
thing from childhood, or see a TV show or watch a movie, and think Man, I can’t get into this now. I tried
watching Jackie Chan Adventures,
which used to be my favorite Saturday
morning cartoon, when they put the whole series on YouTube. No dice. It’s paced
too slow, the jokes fall flat on adult ears, and Jade is somehow right about
everything because preteen girls always are. Even in a movie like Mulan that’s
still enjoyable, the jokes tend to be just a little slower, telegraphed a bit
more so that young eyes will catch them. And it’s depressing because you know
you’ll never again like it as much as you did; it'll never have that special magic that once caught your eye. “By the time I got back to music, the
season had passed,” says Daniel Baker in Collateral.
The Shadow Rising doesn’t hit me like that.
Sure, I probably wouldn’t be into it today. Somewhere along the line I lost my
taste for epic fantasy; I couldn’t finish even the third book in Terry
Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series,
and while I enjoyed A Song of Ice and Fire,
I didn’t get into it in the same way
that I did the Wheel of Time. I have
friends who know every name of every minor House, get into all the fan
theories, have instant memory recall of every half-glimpsed prophecy. Nope.
When I was 16 I spent hours on Wotmania.com arguing with chat room denizens
about who killed Asmodean or whatever; it was my first experience in an online
community. Even though Reddit exists now, I haven't come close to doing that today.
My point is that Shadow
makes me think. Reading it over again makes me think about the me that read it
nine or ten years ago, and the me that’s reading it now, and how I’ve changed.
A book is like a time capsule that way, or maybe a mirror. The words in the
book stay the same no matter which you is reading them. And if it’s a good
book, you’re going to get a different meaning from it every time you try. If
you’re reading it like I did with Shadow,
you end up reading yourself, too. This is
what I used to value. I missed this, but I caught that. This is what the book
meant to me then, and this is what it means now. It’s like the old saying:
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
