Power is a most persistent taxman. As interesting as those examples are of the bodily tariff that attends tapping into extreme power (see Rock Lee’s Lotus taijutsu in his examination fight with Gaara in Naruto, the Elric brothers losing limbs in an attempted resurrection in Fullmetal Alchemist), I am much more fascinated by the intangible requisitions. Sure, you may be willing to sacrifice an arm or perhaps even your eyesight to wield the power necessary to defend/avenge your loved ones, but would you sacrifice your goodness? Would you sacrifice your sanity? In Robert Jordan’s masterwork series, The Wheel of Time, it is a question asked of every male channeler who wields saidin. Go ahead and tap into the One Power, energy powerful enough to manipulate the universe. We kindly ask that you leave your mental health at the door. That way lies madness.
(Note: That way also lies spoilers for the Wheel of Time series.)
***
Comm. Jamison: I must admit, his battle prowess is very impressive. He may be our answer.
Ringo: Yeah. Or our destruction.
(Teknoman, Episode 2: “Invasion”)
Sunday mornings in 1995-6 were a race against time. That was when UPN Kids aired an anime series known in the US as Teknoman. A heavily edited version of the Japanese anime Tekkaman Blade, it told the story of a war between Earth’s defenders, the Space Knights, on the one side and a race of giant arachnids called Venomoids and their overlords, the armored Tekkamen, on the other. At the story’s center is a mysterious young man named Slade who, with the help of a special crystal, can transform into his own Tekkaman and fight off the Venomoid invasion. It turns out that Slade is a sort of unfinished or incomplete version of the evil Tekkamen, his memories having been wiped when he crash-landed on Earth near the beginning of the series. It later comes out that being in Tekkaman form drains the host of its bio-energy, taxing the body and the mind. If Slade maintains his armored form for more than 30 minutes, he goes feral. It was the first time I’d seen this trope, a scenario repeated with Majin Vegeta in Dragonball Z and again when Uchiha Sasuke allows antagonist Orochimaru to possess his body in order to gain the power he believes he needs to avenge the death of his clan in Naruto. Not even Naruto is immune. Should he try to draw too much on the power of the Nine-Tailed Fox inside him and perform jutsus impossible for a shinobi of his age, he would eventually cede his entire will to Tailed Beast. When Jordan’s Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, Shadowkiller, He Who Comes With Dawn, first hears the voice of Lews Therin Telamon, the deceased leader of the forces of Light, in his head, that was as sure a sign as any that we had met our hero. Look for the man with the crown woven so tightly around his head, the thorns poke straight through the skull.
Saidin and saidar, the male and female halves of the One Power in The Wheel of Time, seem to hew, in their usage by characters, to stereotypes along the male-female binary, saidin use characterized by menace and brute force while proficiency in saidar is a reflection of a character’s dexterity and connection with others. Saidin is a rough torrent. One seizes it or wields it like a weapon. Its usage gives off a sense in those who perceive it of awe and menace. By contrast, one surrenders to the river of the One Power in order to use saidar. It is a thing to be embraced. Perhaps the most evident and consequential difference, however, lies in the Taint. Saidin has been afflicted by the Dark One and sets off a process of decay in the mind and body of the male channeler who accesses it. The physical rotting is twinned to a derangement that gobbles up greater and greater chunks of the mind. The channeler will hear voices, destroy the world around them, go feral. To prevent a second Breaking of the World, the Red Ajah of the Aes Sedai hunt down and “gentle” male channelers, severing their connection with the One Power. That a sort of castration is deemed necessary to save the world makes sense in a universe of gendered magic where hysteria wobbles precariously on a foundation of XY chromosomes.
The Latin word monere means “to warn.” Add a suffix and you have monstrum, a portent. A word winds its way through Old French, monstre, to give us what we know today as monster. Monster as Mayday signal (M’Aidez!). Monster as instruction. As injunction. Do not do as we do. Do not try to become us. That way lies madness.
The Taint on saidin presents monster as prophecy, a genetic predestinarianism bonded to what presents as an adamantine gender binary. But the taint is not all there is, and not all monsters are men. The Forsaken Semirhage knew how much pleasure she derived from using her healing powers and medical training to inflict pain. She did not need a covenant with the Dark One to tell her that.
***
“Hear me, X-Men! No longer am I the woman you knew! I am fire! And life incarnate! Now and forever—I am PHOENIX!”
(X-Men Vol. 1, Issue 101)
In October of 1976, the X-Men found themselves in space, as they are wont to do. At the tail end of a rescue mission, depicted in Uncanny X-Men #101, they lose control of their shuttle. Jean Grey, at the helm, attempts an emergency landing. Distraught at the thought of losing Cyclops, she wordlessly calls out for help. And thus begins one of the most heralded, controversial, and revered stories in American comics.
The being Jean beseeched during the shuttle’s descent was none other than the Phoenix Force, a sentient, formless energy, the immutable and immortal manifestation of life. When the Force becomes flesh and succumbs to the influences of others, it turns Jean into the most destructive being in the universe. As Phoenix, she consumed a star, setting off a supernova that obliterated a nearby planet, incinerating its five billion inhabitants.
During the final battle in issue #137, between the X-Men and Jean’s captors, the Shi’ar, the Dark Phoenix reemerges. Struggling to remain in control of the most powerful force in the universe, Jean begs Cyclops to end her life. Frightened at what she has become, she confesses that a part of her liked having the power of the Phoenix. A part of her, Jean, thrilled to it. In the end, Scott can’t bring himself to do the deed, so Jean sets an ancient Kree weapon on herself, ashes to ashes.
Much has been and remains to be written about societal pathologies toward female power (Dark Phoenix couture: big BDSM energy), of sex and lust and control, of logic and desire and the desire for logic and the logic of desire, of responsibility and irresponsibility, of mastery of magic and gender, of who gets to be god, consequences be damned. But I am far from the most qualified scribbler to put that book together.
It is all to say that sometimes when I think of Jean Grey’s prayer into the void and that answer that took the form of the Phoenix Force, I think of Mierin Eronaile, an Aes Sedai researcher during the utopian Age of Legends dissatisfied with the gender split in the use of saidin and saidar, who felt the division was an impediment to scientific progress, and who, during her research, stumbled upon a source of power outside of the Pattern, an energy source that could be touched by male and female hands alike. Mierin Eronaile, who loved the social cache of being Lews Therin’s lover without loving Lews Therin himself but who lived in an age when immorality bore no rewards. Mierin Eronaile, one of the most powerful female channelers of her time, driven by the marriage between ambition and scientific inquiry. Who, in thrall to the charm of discovery, ended up boring a hole straight to that unknown energy source, allowing the Dark One to leak into the world and bring about the Collapse. Mierin Eronaile, who would submit herself to the Shadow, become one of the first Aes Sedai to betray humanity, and bestow upon herself a new name: Lanfear, Daughter of the Night. She haunts the dreams of Rand and Perrin, urging them to take glory for themselves. “Dreams were always mine, to use and walk. Now I am free again, and I will use what is mine,” she says to Ba’alzamon in Chapter 36 of The Dragon Reborn, the chapter titled after her. And that is how she hunts. Though the Age of Legends is cast in the nomenclature of utopia, humans were not without their worst selves. Perhaps the Dark One’s greatest power move against the forces of Light was to give people permission to be. Lanfear chases power through a paramour. The difference between that and what Mierin did is simply a matter of scale.
I think of Jean Grey wanting to save the lives of her friends and being granted the power of a god. And then I think of Lanfear wanting to recapture the affections of the lover who spurned her and being granted one of the most prestigious posts among the Forsaken in the War of Power. She spends the rest of that life hunting Rand al’Thor, sensing him to be her once-lover reborn, seducing him with her beauty, with the promise of power and glory, visiting him in his dreams. But power breeds addicts. Jean tasted it. Lanfear had as well. The Shadow offered access to an energy source that operated beyond the restrictions of sex, a promise that there existed a roaring ecstasy too angry and powerful for the prison of a gender binary. The Forsaken became the Forsaken for diverse reasons—avarice, nihilism, jealousy—and they warred amongst each other and schemed and plotted in order to become the one whom the Dark One would choose as Nae’blis and allow to touch the True Power. How that must have looked to Mierin.
In both the Phoenix Force and in the Dark One’s promise of the True Power lies the promise of ego-death, a beyond. I can’t believe that electric currents ran through both Jean and Lanfear merely at the prospect of obliterating planets and coercing ex-boyfriends into taking them back. When Jean confesses to Cyclops that a part of her enjoyed being the Phoenix, one imagines nestled somewhere in the pit of Scott’s stomach past the horror, the question “why”.
Ask Lanfear why she chose what she chose, why she adopted monsterhood, and I don’t know that getting Lews Therin back would be her answer. I’d like to think she would spread her arms to indicate the world around her and say, quite simply, “because.”
***
“I thought I could build. I was wrong. We are not builders, not you, or I, or the other one. We are destroyers. Destroyers.”
(Lews Therin Telamon to Rand, Winter’s Heart, prologue)
The trope demands that, should the character’s arc not end in death, there must at least be a maiming. Teknoman Slade defeats Darkon but at the cost of his memory and his ability to walk. Sasuke, newly empowered, finds the brother who murdered their clan and kills him only to discover that this brother had spared Sasuke not out of contempt but out of love. Uchiha Itachi’s final act is to pull from Sasuke the curse that had tainted him, the evil Orochimaru, and to seal the villain in his sword. The mission that had defined Sasuke’s life is revealed to have been a manipulation and dying in front of him is the man who had perhaps loved him the most in the world. Jean Grey and Majin Vegeta both choose self-immolation, sacrificing themselves to save their beloveds.
Rand, however, in concert with Nynaeve, cleanses the Taint. Using access keys to the most powerful male and female sa’angreal, the Choedan Kal, Nynaeve links with Rand. But when she recoils in horror at the chaos and rage of saidin, Rand takes control of the link, at first trying to bully saidar the same way he wields saidin and only later understanding that saidar must be guided, that it was something one must surrender to. Creating a conduit with saidar, Rand funnels Tainted saidin through it straight into the maw of Mashadar, the malevolent, unthinking entity coating the city of Shadar Logoth in evil. The Taint and Mashadar annihilate each other, leaving a massive crater where the city once stood. Both Rand and Nynaeve survive, and the impossible has been accomplished, even though the female Choedan Kal was destroyed in the process. That is the note on which Winter’s Heart, Book 9 in the series, ends.
It isn’t until Knife of Dreams, Book 11, that we discover that the Amayar, an island people who lived near what had been Shadar Logoth saw what happened, saw the breaking of the female Choedan Kal on their island of Tremalking, and, believing this sign to have heralded the end of days, committed mass suicide by poison.
A people had been sacrificed so that male channelers might wield saidin absent the threat of madness. But who could do what Rand did, learn of this consequence, and not feel as though they had been asked the questions posed at the outset of this essay? Would you sacrifice your goodness? Would you sacrifice your sanity?
What if the Taint, singularly afflicting male channelers, is simply a refracted prism of the notion that not only does power corrupt indiscriminately, it taxes without quarter?
If men are the easy mark, they aren’t the only. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen to you.” No matter what that voice sounds like, it is always the Devil’s.
***
“What makes you think you can keep anyone safe?”
(Lews Therin to Rand in Crossroads of Twilight, Ch. 24)
Cleansing the Taint doesn’t inoculate male channelers from committing horrors any more than kicking an addiction to drugs and alcohol cures a person of their existing defects of character. Before the series’ end, Rand will have tortured his lover, Min Farshaw (albeit under mind control). He will have nearly murdered his father (no mind control). He will have destroyed an entire building using the Choedan Kal, wiping the entire palace out of time, in pursuit of one of the Forsaken (no mind control here either).
During the final battle, Rand and the Dark One show each other competing futures, what would happen were either to win and destroy the other. After dueling visions, Rand presents a reality where there is no Shadow, no Dark One. But therein lies the nightmare. In Rand’s world, people would have no choice but to do good. In what way does that differ, the Dark One posits, from a world in which people are uniformly compelled toward evil?
Therein lies the key to my appreciation of the Deal with the Devil trope in the Wheel of Time and elsewhere. It implicates choice. At every stage, it implicates choice. In that respect, the Taint is scaffolding. Does the Taint on saidin make men more uniquely dangerous? Yes. Are men still uniquely dangerous without it? Yes. A capacity for hurt is not a chromosomal certainty. A penchant for bedlam does not discriminate. What happened to Jean Grey is not an outgrowth of a unique perversion but rather a unique outgrowth of a universally personal perversion.
The monster tells you what it is, issues the warning, saying “if I give you this, you will become it,” and you take its hand and think no, I will do differently. What could convince someone so completely of that assertion, that they will escape consequence, other than madness?
Tochi Onyebuchi’s fiction has appeared in Panverse Three, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Obsidian, and Omenana Magazine. His non-fiction has appeared in Nowhere Magazine, the Oxford University Press blog, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, among other places. He holds a B.A. from Yale University, a M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, a J.D. from Columbia Law School, and a Masters degree in droit économique from L’institut d’études politiques. His debut young adult novel, Beasts Made of Night, was published by Razorbill in October 2017, and its sequel, Crown of Thunder, was published in October 2018. His next YA book, War Girls, will hit shelves on October 15, 2019, and a novella, Riot Baby, will be available from Tor.com Publishing in January, 2020.
Therein lies the key to my appreciation of the Deal with the Devil trope in the Wheel of Time and elsewhere. It implicates choice. At every stage, it implicates choice. In that respect, the Taint is scaffolding. Does the Taint on saidin make men more uniquely dangerous? Yes. Are men still uniquely dangerous without it? Yes. A capacity for hurt is not a chromosomal certainty
This seems contradictory. If men are uniquely dangerous, both with and without the Taint, doesn’t that imply “chromosomal certainty”? Especially in context where Rand “sacrifices” the Amayar to cleanse saidin (not at all an accurate representation), or where his attempts to understand saidar are conceived of as “bullying,” with the female manner of accessing the Source being portrayed as superior by dint of not being an active struggle, when the text makes it clear that neither saidin nor saidar are inherently good or bad.
Long story short, this article comes off as assuming that the Wheel of Time was meant to be a commentary on toxic masculinity or patriarchy, when the exact opposite is the case. It would have been far more interesting to read a comparison of how power corrupts in the WoT universe. That women channelers are corrupted through their desire for material or political gain, while male channelers are often tempted in a Faustian bargain to trade their souls for their sanity, for protection essentially.
I also feel this article is lacking nuance. One thing to note is that Rand, and other male channellers with the spark, will start channeling and will do mad. They don’t have a choice in the matter. I don’t know if other men, when they find out they can channel still have a choice.
Also, Rand is quite mad during the Gathering Storm. He may not have been under Compulsion but he was still under the influence of hostile forces. His choices during that time were not entirely his own.
The Amayar don’t know anything about Shadar Logoth/Aridhol, it was founded long after they retreated to their islands. They live near the female Choedan Kal and have a prophecy about it. Rand probably didn’t know the Amayar exist.
Right, and that is why it would have been more interesting to explore the nature of choice in how people in this universe are corrupted. Because being born with a Y chromosome very much does represent a fundamental capacity, and even inevitability, to hurt others. Or rather, it does for channelers. There are all sorts of interesting ways to interpret that within the context of the magical and political systems in the books, which are obviously extremely intricate. If I am a man born with the spark, I am 100% guaranteed to go mad and cause WMD-level destruction unless I (a) kill myself or am killed, (b) have myself magically castrated, which in and of itself is admitted in-universe to be merely a slower, drawn out death sentence, or (c) exile myself permanently away from any other human being in a stedding. Given that, it’d be great to see someone grapple with the ethical implications of going Evil (which provides protection from the Taint, for non-readers), or going insane evil. And, of course, this article implies that the female channelers as a whole don’t turn to the proverbial Dark Side, with the one exception. Which of course is not true. Huge swathes of them do, often for extremely minor pretexts.
And none of that addresses the Source of the Taint. Which is that a bunch of male channelers essentially sacrificed themselves and their sanity to defeat Evil, while the women refused to help because they thought it was too risky. And while I am aware that the Strike at Shayol Ghul and that whole story is meant to reflect that when men and women don’t act in concert, shit happens, it’s also incredibly difficult to read that short story and not gawk at the female point of view. The women are afraid of the consequences of a certain action and prefer to stay the course, despite that current course being an abject and obvious failure which will result in definite and inevitable defeat, while the men are willing to take a chance that might or might not work. One of those is obviously right, even outside of fantasy tropes. And for that, the men are condemned to 3000 years of madness and inevitable insanity, destroying what they love. I think there’s a fascinating analysis there, being left on the table in favor of “men bad! women not as bad!” we get here.
The women supported the Choedan Kal plan, which the men refused to join. If the Choedan Kal hadn’t been lost in enemy territory it might have been the better plan. LTT’s plan is not “obviously better”, it is just the one that was tried while the other had no chance to prove how good it was.
@andrewrm: Thank you. You don’t know how many times I’ve heard people discuss variations of what this article posits and ignore everything you said. And ignore that Aes Sedai and the White Tower are hardly infallible symbols of goodness and wisdom. Most Saidar-wielders in the WoT series are actually rather horrible people, full of ego and lust for power.
It is strongly suggested that Mierin knew what she was getting into when she opened the Bore. She was interested in power before she started to be influenced by the Dark One, and this was part of what led to her split from Lews Therin.
I agree with the comments above on the lack of nuance and, I feel, some wrong assumptions in this article. The taint was not normal or a condemnation of men in general. It was the result of the choice and pride of one man, Lews Therin, and the group of men with him at the time. Moraine makes clear early on in her discussions with Egwene that the men channelers aren’t inherently bad, and the women aren’t inherently good, they’re all human, good, bad, and indifferent, the taint is an outside variable on top of that. It was 3000 years of that taint and inevitable madness that made the culture link saidin with evil. And I don’t think the Amayar were “sacrificed” to cleanse the taint, their actions may have had nothing to do with the taint. I saw what they did as similar to what the Ogier were debating to do – making the choice as a group to avoid the Last Battle. The prophecy they followed seemed more about the destruction of the Choedan Kal being a sign of the Last Battle coming, not necessarily about the taint being cleansed.
The moral of the Wheel of Time is that when men and women cooperate, great things can be done. When they are at odds with each other, bad stuff happens (like the slog).
@@@@@ 5 – This is a deliberate mis-framing of the argument.
The women supported the Choedan Kal plan, which the men refused to join. If the Choedan Kal hadn’t been lost in enemy territory it might have been the better plan. LTT’s plan is not “obviously better”, it is just the one that was tried while the other had no chance to prove how good it was.
Latra Posae and her faction supported a plan that could not work. LTT’s plan was “obviously better” because the women’s plan was physically impossible when it was being discussed. The relative merits of each plan are almost immaterial; that being said, it was also thought of the Choedan Kal plan that it might crack the world open like an egg. However, that isn’t the main thrust of the argument. The point is that arguing for an impossible plan is the same as arguing for no action at all. As well argue that they should create a time machine and stop the Bore from being opened!
If you haven’t gotten a raise in years despite asking numerous times, and you think it’s because your boss is discriminating against you, who are you going to think has a more workable plan – the person who says to suck it up and hope you win the lottery so you can quit, or the person who says to report that asshat to HR, even if it means you might get fired? Obviously the first person doesn’t have your best interests at heart, while the second person may be advocating something suicidally risky for your career, but also the only real option open to you.
That’s the Strike at Shayol Ghul debate. One group is so paralyzed by fear and indecision that they’d rather let the world succumb to Ultimate Evil, in the hopes of a deus ex machina, whereas the other is willing to take some action to change an otherwise inevitable outcome. And to tie it back in to this bogus original article… male channelers saved their world at the cost of their collective sanity. And then people like this author hold up this non-voluntary curse, literally a curse from the Devil, as evidence that men are somehow more corruptible or deranged?
@5 birgit – The Choden Kal plan was not an option. It was dead in the water. And the female Aes Sedai still acted like a deer in the headlights and refused to act. That’s not to say that Lews Therin’s plan was fully in the right, as if both men and women had acted in concert, both haves of the True Source would likely have been tainted. But it was really the only option at that point, from what we are told.
@9 Ryamano, I agree that this is very much one of the take-aways of the tale.
Also, I disagree very strongly with the posit the the Amayar were ‘sacrificed’ to cleanse the taint, as next to no one knew about this particular aspect of their insular and isolated society, and it was a ‘choice’ on their part to follow through with their belief system and commit mass suicide. In order for something to be a ‘sacrifice’ one has to consciously choose to sacrifice something.
I’ve always seen the Amayar’s deaths as part of the growing horror of the Last Battle looming. These people have prophecies about the Last Battle that led them to decide mass suicide is a good idea.
I enjoyed reading this. Hopefully we’ll get to read more posts like this one when the show airs.
Don’t let the criticism get you down. It’s always nice to hear different viewpoints, especially when they’re worded so elegantly. It shows people care about the subject matter. The danger is thinking that your view is the only possible way to interpret things.
That way also lies madness.
So, this reads like: Men=icky/Women=less.icky.
Which is strange, because the books spend a lot of time on the differences between individuals and “people” and how icky/less.icky has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with the person.
The Amayar were not sacrificed, they were an unforeseen and, ultimately, invisible collateral loss. But also, they were a few thousand lives. Losing them for untold millions to survive? For the potential of a future, where without is only the certain extinction of time? Even if Rand had known, his choice, whilst hard, was never really going to be a choice.
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Except the men didn’t make a sacrificial choice to attack the Dark One. They didn’t know the result would be a counter strike that would drive them insane. They went to stop the issue facing their world the best way they could see how. If they had some clue of the consequences the conversation would be different. As for men, specifically Rand, using Saidin in the modern age, there is no debate until Rand opens the Black Tower. Half the White Tower wanted to cage the dragon until the Last Battle. And Rand knew he was going to die at the Lady Battle anyways so he really didn’t see a choice with using Saidin. He had to hone his skills before TG. Choice with using Saidin is only really talked about in the Black Tower sections and most of those guys talk as if they just want to go down swinging against the DO, in the same sacrificial manner as Rand. The male channelers show a surprising lack of personal agency. They talk as if they really had no other choice but to learn magic and become soldiers in the LB as a responsiblity and the price for touching Saidin. Most aren’t showing the choice to use Saidin, they carry the burden. I’m not as smart as the author of the article but I don’t think choice is a topic that Jordan uses Saidin or it’s male channelers to illustrate.
Time to try again, since my previous comment was removed, I guess for disagreeing with the author?
One of the fundamental underlying premises of the Wheel of Time is that men and women are stronger when cooperating and working in harmony, not working alone or at cross purposes.
There is no “Deal with the Devil” trope in Wheel of Time, or not in the sense that Tochi Onyabuchi seems to think there is. The Taint is not a “deal,” it is an unasked for punishment and curse. Men do not get the option of access to power and magic in return for eventual madness; they are born with that power and will inevitably go mad. It’s akin to making the statement that someone with Asperger’s Syndrome has asked to be highly proficient in one area in return for having impaired ability everywhere else.
Moreover, even aside from the general, it seems as though the author doesn’t understand particular instances, either. For example, this:
Cleansing the Taint doesn’t inoculate male channelers from committing horrors any more than kicking an addiction to drugs and alcohol cures a person of their existing defects of character. Before the series’ end, Rand will have tortured his lover, Min Farshaw (albeit under mind control). He will have nearly murdered his father (no mind control). He will have destroyed an entire building using the Choedan Kal, wiping the entire palace out of time, in pursuit of one of the Forsaken (no mind control here either).
Rand is insane. Unmentioned, of course, is the fact that the Taint has already driven Rand mad, and that cleansing the Taint doesn’t reverse existing effects. But here is a man who is literally insane, being blamed for the consequences of a mental illness he did not ask for and could not stop. Of course, when Lanfear tortures entire cities or literally feeds millions to hungry monsters, that’s downplayed as “chasing power through a paramour,” as if men are the only gender capable of committing true evil, and women have to work through them to achieve that. Or that in a previous life as Mierin Eronaile, unleashing the Personification of Evil on the world was because she was just so, so interested in scientific inquiry. And not, as the narrative makes abundantly clear, interested first and foremost in power and prestige, and thought that the True Power was a source for her to achieve both. Again, the strong implication is that men are fundamentally flawed as a gender, while women are only flawed as individuals.
Good article though I disagree and good discussion!
always interesting topic![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
An interesting article, some bits I agree with, some I don’t. And some that are just flat out wrong and insulting.
“Cleansing the Taint doesn’t inoculate male channelers from committing horrors any more than kicking an addiction to drugs and alcohol cures a person of their existing defects of character. Before the series’ end, Rand will have tortured his lover, Min Farshaw (albeit under mind control).”
First, implying that as soon as you are no longer addicted to drugs/alcohol the only issues you will have are “existing character defects” is deeply, deeply flawed. There is very real and lasting damage that can happen in the real world, and in WoT as a result of drug addiction and this does not magically go away. Rand is clearly not sane but that was hardly an “existing character defect”. This is victim blaming, Rand’s mind has been damaged by the effects of the taint in ways that have dramatically changed him from who he was and this had significant effects on his behaviour throughout the whole series.
The second, and even larger problem with this paragraph is calling Rand strangling Min a “character flaw”. This is beyond ridiculous. Adding, “albeit under mind control” sounds like you’re blaming him for this act (and you wouldn’t have included it if you weren’t blaming him) and you are trivialising the fact that he was very literally not in ANY control. Have you read this passage? The lack of power and his helplessness is part of what makes it powerful and devastating. Trying to twist that to make it Rand’s fault is.. I have no words.
There are enough terrible things he did of his own free will that trying to twist this as a “character flaw” is mind boggling victim blaming.
Interesting article. Thought-provoking comments. I honestly didn’t expect this level of disagreement on an article like this. Great points all around.
To the author – I REALLY like how you brought up the vision Rand has near the end of the final book. It was spot on. The world devoid of choice that Rand sees is horrifying, and for good reason. I wish you had delved into this bit a little further, as it is one of the most profound and well-masked themes in the series.
Also, I would have liked to hear your thoughts on Rand’s redemptive arch in the last few books, after he finally gains internal balance. I think Jordan put a lot on the line digging his Dragon into a deeeeeeep hole for eleven books for the subsequent climb-back-out-for-a-breath-of-fresh-air to be ignored. Cheers!
Why are people still caught up on the divide between Lews Therin and Latra Posae?
Neither plan posed by either party was correct because neither realized that the bore needed to be sealed with the True Power not the One Power.
If Latra had gone along with Lews Therin the bore would have been temporarily sealed, but the Dark One would have been able to access Saidar and taint BOTH halves of the One Power and there would be no future at all. The Breaking would have been the end of mankind.
The way things worked out was actually the best way things could have gone with no one realizing how to truly fix the problem. The bore was sealed temporarily and half of the power was still available to people untainted.
Great discussion!
I agree that Tochi Onyebuchi is overlooking or misinterpreting some of the WoT subtleties (but makes some good points nevertheless). That’s easy to do with such a massive work. I’m still picking up nuggets after being involved in this fandom for decades and having read the series…so many times I’ve lost track.
I. too, have read the series more times than I remember. And I learn new things…or catch different things, I guess…every time. And I’ve changed some of my assumptions from the narrative due to the piece above, and even moreso due to the comments. Bravo to all, and thanks.
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@22: Yeah, blaming Rand for something he does under mind control, the ultimate form of duress, feels exceptionally wrong. No one in their right minds would blame Morgase for what she did under Rahvin’s Compulsion, so why should Rand be held culpable for someone violating his mind in a similar fashion?
So I have to agree with others here, there is a “Deal with the Devil” trope in WoT, but it has little to do with men’s dealing with the taint. It is blatant when discussing the use of the True Power, and even Rand’s use of it in later parts of the series. The concept is touched on with Rand’s communications, and dealing with Lews Therin in his own mind, the sort of negotiations he makes are those of a desperate man, though the fact that both identities consider the other the “devil” in the bargain is a nice touch. And of course there are the Darkfriends and Forsaken. But the Devil’s Bargain in Wheel of Time, is about the wielding of power, and the using of it, and what you tell yourself to excuse those actions. Which may be what the author was tapping into.
The way that Rand or Nynaeve see themselves constantly shift from their starting moral positions when it comes to the wielding of the One Power, and the authority that comes with it(for good or ill), the way lives, and choices matter differently to them by the end, with Rand becoming a stranger to himself as he gets closer and closer to fulfilling his destiny, all the while bargaining with himself “I can do this because it is needful, I can take this pain, or harden my heart, because of what is coming.” is an exploration of giving in to what you need to do, and being changed by that. This is why he’s so obsessive about the lines he won’t cross regarding the killing of women and other taboos, because from day one, he was making little concessions towards things the young man from chapter one would have been horrified over. It of course makes it all the more horrible when even these lines are crossed, and the ways in which he justifies it to himself are a signal that things will be lost if he doesn’t wake up.
This is explored time and again, through all the characters, Matt, Perrin, Egwene, Elayne, Moirane, Lan, and even Min to a lesser degree, are all having to reckon with their idea of themselves and the person circumstance and their choices are causing them to become. All of them toe the line with personal darkness, and making too many bargains with themselves, running the risk of betraying their own character. The Devil’s Bargain is with the self, it is always a negotiation with your circumstance and the person you think you are. The lesson of the books, is that those visions of yourself are often illusory, and the concessions you make may even be to the good yet you must be wary that you don’t give up too much of yourself, or you will become something terrible and alien to yourself. All the main characters learn who they really are, and in so doing renegotiate their devil’s bargain. I mean one of Rand’s big revelations is that he and Lew Therin are one person across time, he was always negotiating(frantically arguing) with himself.
As an aside, something I find interesting, that hadn’t occurred to me before, is a facet of the language around the two aspects of the One Power. Saidin having to be wrangled and mastered into control, saidar having to be surrendered to, the concepts on the surface as portrayed in the novels (for the most part) would suggest that the male half is more powerful, and that is why it must be so rigorously controlled, but obviously we know this isn’t true. If things are a balance one side cannot be more powerful than the other, though the display of their equal power may be different. The books also show us this, even if some characters never quite seem to grasp it. The point being, while I understood that essentially saidin is directed power, it is an explosion, a rushing torrent, a flame, an active thing. Saidar is an omnipresent power, a constant force encompassing things, passive but always evident. It suddenly occurred to me that saidin is “smaller” than saidar, being more concentrated, all the power in one place and you have to grip it and direct it or it explodes in chaotic directions, the other is huge and spread out, like the ocean, or the atmosphere. You cannot really grab it at all, if you tried it would just crush you, you have to be submerged in it and then direct yourself. Obviously both are the same “size”, or mass, but the behavior is very different, and they fill the space in opposite ways. Not really a big or new revelation, but more just a sudden picture that formed in my mind.
I think the madness is a little genetic. Androl says that his father saw things in the shadows, just like he did, and Rand Al’Thor remembered his past life, which no one else did. It might be possible that the type of madness is genetic. It doesn’t really matter, just wondering