A year ago I finished 'Wheel of Time' by Robert Jordan. I liked the complexity of it all, and thought Sanderson tied it up very well (with the exception of a couple of minor loose ends). But after finishing it, I couldn't help but think about the plot and the underlying reality in Randland. So I re-read the last volumes and wrote down my analysis. If there are any WoT afficionados here, I am curious what you may think of my analysis.
Keep in mind that a) this is full of spoilers, and b) this is based on the actual books and what Robert Jordan himself said. My own views of right and wrong / religious views have no relation to this.
Like most people after finishing MoL, I’ve been thinking about whether leaving the DO alive was the right call or not. If the DO is indeed an independent conscious entity, then leaving it alive wasn’t necessary. If on the other hand it was the anthropomorphism of the concepts of chaos and destruction (like the discworld Death), then leaving it alive was necessary. It seems that the latter was indeed the case, which is why Rand did what he did. But that also started me thinking about the nature of the bore.
It’s about balance
Consider the following: at the end of the AoL, the civilization had turned into a regime where even the slightest misbehavior was suppressed by force (using oath rods and binding chairs), and the civilization had evolved to one of extreme pacifism, where even the concept of violence was considered weird. You can see this in the rhuidean flashbacks where the ‘way of the leaf’ was considered the highest standard. They were pressed by solinda to never give up their precious ways.
When the male Aes Sedai went mad, the ridiculousness of their ways was plain for all to see yet they still clung to pacifism. The female Aes Sedai had all the AoL knowledge, and they had all the ter angreal, angreal and sa ‘angreal. They also had the knowledge to use all those things. We know for a fact that they had the access keys to the CK and light knows what else that has now been lost.
But when Jaric Mondoran (TSR 26) went mad in the city of Tzora, did they try to shield him and sever him? No. Did they use any of the AoL goodies they no doubt had available? Strike him with the power? No. Perhaps an arrow to the back then, if no Aes Sedai were available? No. Instead, tens of thousands of Aiel start singing to distract him, not minding at all that they’re killed by the hundreds in order to allow the citizens to flee before he kills the last of them and then commits suicide. And what does solinda say? ‘she asks him to see that the Aiel keep to the Way of the Leaf even if all else is lost’. The amount of sheer patheticness and inability to minimize casualties boggles the mind. At the end of the AoL, the human race had almost evolved to the human equivalent of cattle, unable to make any kind of decision between difficult choices.
Now let’s think about the creator of the pattern, who was no doubt more powerful than Rand. We know for fact that Rand could have killed the DO quite easily in the end. The creator therefore also had this option. Yet he put the DO in a prison that is outside the pattern, yet reachable. Imo, he was put there on purpose. Time and again Jordan stressed that the pattern is about balance. This means that when the DO breaks free, the Dragon will be reborn to counter him. But it also means that when the people evolve themselves to human cattle, the pattern is designed to allow the DO break free in order to restore balance. If balance is the goal, then swinging too far towards ‘light’ isn’t better than swinging towards ‘dark’. From a balance pov, both options are wrong.
The patch and the taint.
But what about the specific situation regarding LTT? Why was he not able to close the bore and why did the DO succeed in tainting saidin, effectively insuring that no one would be able to put the DO back in his prison?
There I say again that the time was not right for him to do so, for 2 reasons:
From the Tzora example I gave, we know that after patching of the bore with the seals, the people were still at the pathetic scale of pacifism, unable to even comprehend the rightness of taking out Jaric Mondoran. These people were simply unable to win the war of power. We know from quotes that they were on the brink of being overrun. They needed a timeout (because under the balance theory, the dark side cannot be allowed total victory either), which is why LTT was able to patch up the bore.
The DO could not yet be put away completely, because balance was not yet restored. The pattern could not allow the DO total freedom because the light was not able to win. But the DO still needed to have influence in order to slowly restore the balance. The pattern needed the patch to be temporary and saidin to be tainted. Or if not Saidin, Saidar. The specifics don’t matter. The pattern just needed to get to a state where the DO still had influence and the Aes Sedai were handicapped to prevent a full path on the DO’s prison.
I believe that this even explains why Ishamael periodically reappeared to bring destruction. He was the DO’s philosophical champion; the Dragon’s counterpart. The pattern needed a way for the DO to touch the earth, hence the periodic release of Ishamael.
The pattern
I see the pattern as a self correcting framework that is meant to be balanced, and which has safety features to enable it to correct itself when the balance is off in either direction. The ta’veren are the safety valve on the light side, and the DO is the safety valve on the dark side. The pattern also does not allow one side to win.
This is why the taint –while being unique to this particular age - does not matter, and why callandor didn’t matter, and why free will and prophecy are not mutually exclusive. Free will exists but the pattern will work through ta’veren to make sure that what will be, will be. Verin’s inability to travel to anywhere but Matt is a perfect example. Callandor’s properties being production flaws another example. The flaws were there because the pattern needed them to be there, and then spawned the prophecies necessary to inspire Rand to use Callandor.
If Callandor had not been flawed precicely so, and prophecy had not been foretold, this outcome would not have happened. But something else would have, one way or the other. Like a pebble rolling downhill, if it does not roll this way, it will roll another. Somehow it will reach the bottom.
Rand was able to close the bore because balance was restored and he was allowed to do so. Had he killed the DO, Mordeth would have somehow replaced the DO and become the DO. And had Rand failed, then something else would have happened that would have made it inevitable for the DO to be sealed away again, just like the circumstances of the AoL made it inevitable for the DO to be released.
In other ages, the Dragon had lost, or switched sides, or whatever, but it wouldn’t have mattered because the pattern will always correct itself. We know the DO sometimes won, and still the pattern exists. The DO winning does not destroy the pattern. It just swings the balance to the negative, making the rise of a new dragon inevitable.
You can even see how these things are like a marble falling through a marble maze. The level of pacifism lead to the bore but also to the need for a timeout, which led to the imperfect patch and the taint, which also led to Rand’s madness which just happened to give Rand the information he needed when there was no one left on the light side who had access to that information. Despite all the free will and the myriad of details that could have gone differently, we see large scale inevitability to how things progress to their conclusion.
It is very telling that on the field of merillor after one of the battles, Raen and Ila look for survivors (MoL 37), and ‘Raen tells her that in the future he will not think so poorly of those who don't follow the Way of the Leaf. She sees Hanlon looking for arrows and wonders who is worse, those that fight, or those that avoid it because they are cowards, or seek to exploit the dead and injured’. Coming from those 2 people, it shows clearly that the time of the way of the leaf has passed and balance has been fully restored. Granted, the handful of tinkers wouldn’t have mattered to the balance, but after the balance was close to restored, the right circumstances needed to come along for the Dragon to be reborn and the seals to weaken. It is fitting that the way of the leaf should be cast in doubt at the end of the last battle, given that that attitude is in my opinion what ultimately led to the DO being released in the first place.
Ishamael
I also think the role of Elan needs to be reexamined. It is far less obvious than the initial impression he makes.
He’s the only one who didn’t side with the DO for mundane reasons. He was also a distinguished philosopher and well aware of the nature of the pattern. He would have known about the need for every side to have their champion. This is a bit conjecture on my part, but it does not seem a stretch that he would have realized that the DO’s influence was needed to rebalance the pattern, and that he realized that he was the only one to see this.
He said originally that he thought it was the logical choice, for in the end, the DO must win. However, we know this is not true, because we know from arguments between Rand/LTT and Elan/Ishamael/Moridin that there have been plenty of times when the Dragon lost (I win again, Lews Therin). Winning more than once implies that no victory is final.
When Rand met Ishamael, the latter one was already quite mad and thought he was the DO himself, which is why he tried to kill him. But as Moridin, he had plenty of opportunities to snuff out Rand with balefire (such as in Shadar Logoth) and chose not to do so and even protect Rand. It seems quite clear that he did his best to assure that Rand would meet the DO. As a philosopher, he knew it had to be that way. He even knew (or was bound to know) that for the balance mechanism to work he had to make this confrontation ‘all out’.
And I think this is where his tragedy comes from. We’ve heard plenty of times that ‘Duty is heavier than a mountain, death is lighter than a feather’. Both Rand and Elan know they have to play their role. It is in their bones, so to speak. Both know they’re spun out again and again for that purpose. Yet while Rand has the ‘comfort’ of knowing he is on the side of light, Elan knows (at least in this cycle) that he will be spun out for the purpose of standing with the dark one every single time, just for the pattern to be balanced.
During MoL, we see many times that Elan is just sick and tired of it all. And he is caught between a rock and a hard place. Because not only is his duty heavier than a mountain, death is NOT lighter than a feather for him, because he knows that he’ll just be spun out again to go live through all the death and destruction one more time. And this is why in MoL he is trying so hard for the pattern to unravel. He says quite literally that he seeks oblivion.
We get the picture of him as a nihilist who thinks the struggle against the DO is futile. And that is true in a way. Not because he thinks that DO is destined to win, but because the pattern will always be ready to bring the DO back again AND make him the champion. When Rand first tells him he intends to kill the DO, Elan says that ‘You cannot possibly comprehend the magnitude of the stupidity of your idea’.
In a way, I feel for the man. He is destined for en eternity of being reborn and being the champion of suffering and misery. One could argue then: well, why does he not just betray the DO? The answer is that he can’t. Because if he does not fulfill his role in the balancing operation, he’ll just be spun out faster and faster while the balance goes further out of whack and the amount of ‘dark’ needed to bring the balance back will be even greater. Besides, he may not always be the genius philosopher who figures out what’s going on. His only way to minimize suffering is to play his part to the best of his abilities whenever he is spun out, and he knows it. Quite a bleak prospect indeed, and guaranteed to drive a man insane.
Keep in mind that a) this is full of spoilers, and b) this is based on the actual books and what Robert Jordan himself said. My own views of right and wrong / religious views have no relation to this.
Like most people after finishing MoL, I’ve been thinking about whether leaving the DO alive was the right call or not. If the DO is indeed an independent conscious entity, then leaving it alive wasn’t necessary. If on the other hand it was the anthropomorphism of the concepts of chaos and destruction (like the discworld Death), then leaving it alive was necessary. It seems that the latter was indeed the case, which is why Rand did what he did. But that also started me thinking about the nature of the bore.
It’s about balance
Consider the following: at the end of the AoL, the civilization had turned into a regime where even the slightest misbehavior was suppressed by force (using oath rods and binding chairs), and the civilization had evolved to one of extreme pacifism, where even the concept of violence was considered weird. You can see this in the rhuidean flashbacks where the ‘way of the leaf’ was considered the highest standard. They were pressed by solinda to never give up their precious ways.
When the male Aes Sedai went mad, the ridiculousness of their ways was plain for all to see yet they still clung to pacifism. The female Aes Sedai had all the AoL knowledge, and they had all the ter angreal, angreal and sa ‘angreal. They also had the knowledge to use all those things. We know for a fact that they had the access keys to the CK and light knows what else that has now been lost.
But when Jaric Mondoran (TSR 26) went mad in the city of Tzora, did they try to shield him and sever him? No. Did they use any of the AoL goodies they no doubt had available? Strike him with the power? No. Perhaps an arrow to the back then, if no Aes Sedai were available? No. Instead, tens of thousands of Aiel start singing to distract him, not minding at all that they’re killed by the hundreds in order to allow the citizens to flee before he kills the last of them and then commits suicide. And what does solinda say? ‘she asks him to see that the Aiel keep to the Way of the Leaf even if all else is lost’. The amount of sheer patheticness and inability to minimize casualties boggles the mind. At the end of the AoL, the human race had almost evolved to the human equivalent of cattle, unable to make any kind of decision between difficult choices.
Now let’s think about the creator of the pattern, who was no doubt more powerful than Rand. We know for fact that Rand could have killed the DO quite easily in the end. The creator therefore also had this option. Yet he put the DO in a prison that is outside the pattern, yet reachable. Imo, he was put there on purpose. Time and again Jordan stressed that the pattern is about balance. This means that when the DO breaks free, the Dragon will be reborn to counter him. But it also means that when the people evolve themselves to human cattle, the pattern is designed to allow the DO break free in order to restore balance. If balance is the goal, then swinging too far towards ‘light’ isn’t better than swinging towards ‘dark’. From a balance pov, both options are wrong.
The patch and the taint.
But what about the specific situation regarding LTT? Why was he not able to close the bore and why did the DO succeed in tainting saidin, effectively insuring that no one would be able to put the DO back in his prison?
There I say again that the time was not right for him to do so, for 2 reasons:
From the Tzora example I gave, we know that after patching of the bore with the seals, the people were still at the pathetic scale of pacifism, unable to even comprehend the rightness of taking out Jaric Mondoran. These people were simply unable to win the war of power. We know from quotes that they were on the brink of being overrun. They needed a timeout (because under the balance theory, the dark side cannot be allowed total victory either), which is why LTT was able to patch up the bore.
The DO could not yet be put away completely, because balance was not yet restored. The pattern could not allow the DO total freedom because the light was not able to win. But the DO still needed to have influence in order to slowly restore the balance. The pattern needed the patch to be temporary and saidin to be tainted. Or if not Saidin, Saidar. The specifics don’t matter. The pattern just needed to get to a state where the DO still had influence and the Aes Sedai were handicapped to prevent a full path on the DO’s prison.
I believe that this even explains why Ishamael periodically reappeared to bring destruction. He was the DO’s philosophical champion; the Dragon’s counterpart. The pattern needed a way for the DO to touch the earth, hence the periodic release of Ishamael.
The pattern
I see the pattern as a self correcting framework that is meant to be balanced, and which has safety features to enable it to correct itself when the balance is off in either direction. The ta’veren are the safety valve on the light side, and the DO is the safety valve on the dark side. The pattern also does not allow one side to win.
This is why the taint –while being unique to this particular age - does not matter, and why callandor didn’t matter, and why free will and prophecy are not mutually exclusive. Free will exists but the pattern will work through ta’veren to make sure that what will be, will be. Verin’s inability to travel to anywhere but Matt is a perfect example. Callandor’s properties being production flaws another example. The flaws were there because the pattern needed them to be there, and then spawned the prophecies necessary to inspire Rand to use Callandor.
If Callandor had not been flawed precicely so, and prophecy had not been foretold, this outcome would not have happened. But something else would have, one way or the other. Like a pebble rolling downhill, if it does not roll this way, it will roll another. Somehow it will reach the bottom.
Rand was able to close the bore because balance was restored and he was allowed to do so. Had he killed the DO, Mordeth would have somehow replaced the DO and become the DO. And had Rand failed, then something else would have happened that would have made it inevitable for the DO to be sealed away again, just like the circumstances of the AoL made it inevitable for the DO to be released.
In other ages, the Dragon had lost, or switched sides, or whatever, but it wouldn’t have mattered because the pattern will always correct itself. We know the DO sometimes won, and still the pattern exists. The DO winning does not destroy the pattern. It just swings the balance to the negative, making the rise of a new dragon inevitable.
You can even see how these things are like a marble falling through a marble maze. The level of pacifism lead to the bore but also to the need for a timeout, which led to the imperfect patch and the taint, which also led to Rand’s madness which just happened to give Rand the information he needed when there was no one left on the light side who had access to that information. Despite all the free will and the myriad of details that could have gone differently, we see large scale inevitability to how things progress to their conclusion.
It is very telling that on the field of merillor after one of the battles, Raen and Ila look for survivors (MoL 37), and ‘Raen tells her that in the future he will not think so poorly of those who don't follow the Way of the Leaf. She sees Hanlon looking for arrows and wonders who is worse, those that fight, or those that avoid it because they are cowards, or seek to exploit the dead and injured’. Coming from those 2 people, it shows clearly that the time of the way of the leaf has passed and balance has been fully restored. Granted, the handful of tinkers wouldn’t have mattered to the balance, but after the balance was close to restored, the right circumstances needed to come along for the Dragon to be reborn and the seals to weaken. It is fitting that the way of the leaf should be cast in doubt at the end of the last battle, given that that attitude is in my opinion what ultimately led to the DO being released in the first place.
Ishamael
I also think the role of Elan needs to be reexamined. It is far less obvious than the initial impression he makes.
He’s the only one who didn’t side with the DO for mundane reasons. He was also a distinguished philosopher and well aware of the nature of the pattern. He would have known about the need for every side to have their champion. This is a bit conjecture on my part, but it does not seem a stretch that he would have realized that the DO’s influence was needed to rebalance the pattern, and that he realized that he was the only one to see this.
He said originally that he thought it was the logical choice, for in the end, the DO must win. However, we know this is not true, because we know from arguments between Rand/LTT and Elan/Ishamael/Moridin that there have been plenty of times when the Dragon lost (I win again, Lews Therin). Winning more than once implies that no victory is final.
When Rand met Ishamael, the latter one was already quite mad and thought he was the DO himself, which is why he tried to kill him. But as Moridin, he had plenty of opportunities to snuff out Rand with balefire (such as in Shadar Logoth) and chose not to do so and even protect Rand. It seems quite clear that he did his best to assure that Rand would meet the DO. As a philosopher, he knew it had to be that way. He even knew (or was bound to know) that for the balance mechanism to work he had to make this confrontation ‘all out’.
And I think this is where his tragedy comes from. We’ve heard plenty of times that ‘Duty is heavier than a mountain, death is lighter than a feather’. Both Rand and Elan know they have to play their role. It is in their bones, so to speak. Both know they’re spun out again and again for that purpose. Yet while Rand has the ‘comfort’ of knowing he is on the side of light, Elan knows (at least in this cycle) that he will be spun out for the purpose of standing with the dark one every single time, just for the pattern to be balanced.
During MoL, we see many times that Elan is just sick and tired of it all. And he is caught between a rock and a hard place. Because not only is his duty heavier than a mountain, death is NOT lighter than a feather for him, because he knows that he’ll just be spun out again to go live through all the death and destruction one more time. And this is why in MoL he is trying so hard for the pattern to unravel. He says quite literally that he seeks oblivion.
We get the picture of him as a nihilist who thinks the struggle against the DO is futile. And that is true in a way. Not because he thinks that DO is destined to win, but because the pattern will always be ready to bring the DO back again AND make him the champion. When Rand first tells him he intends to kill the DO, Elan says that ‘You cannot possibly comprehend the magnitude of the stupidity of your idea’.
In a way, I feel for the man. He is destined for en eternity of being reborn and being the champion of suffering and misery. One could argue then: well, why does he not just betray the DO? The answer is that he can’t. Because if he does not fulfill his role in the balancing operation, he’ll just be spun out faster and faster while the balance goes further out of whack and the amount of ‘dark’ needed to bring the balance back will be even greater. Besides, he may not always be the genius philosopher who figures out what’s going on. His only way to minimize suffering is to play his part to the best of his abilities whenever he is spun out, and he knows it. Quite a bleak prospect indeed, and guaranteed to drive a man insane.
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