Towards the end of Towers of Midnight, the penultimate volume in Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time fantasy series, there are two chapters that are from Aviendha’s perspective: In them, Aviendha has gone to Rhuidean to become a Wise One among her people, the Aiel. To do this, she must walk through ter’angreal, magical constructs that will cause her to see visions; every one of them through the eyes of a different person. At first, she is a young girl, starving and trying to sneak into enemy territory to find some food. They mention carriages that don’t need horses, and light that needs no fire—presumably cars and electricity. Gradually, Aviendha realizes that she’s not seeing the world’s storied hi-tech past, but an unspecified point in the future.
The girl is shot and killed by a Seanchan soldier as she rummages through the trash for food. As she dies, they call her “Bloody Aiel.”
Aviendha is understandably confused. How could that scrawny, hungry girl be of the great warrior race Aiel? At first she refuses the reality of what she sees, but each progressive vision shows her that these are her people fallen and broken, a shadow of what they once were. And in each successive vision, Aviendha inhabits a generation (or three) closer to her own. She sees the whole train of how the Aiel end up becoming next to nothing.
And it was so depressing for me to read. These are not books that usually make me cry—I mean, deaths and all, I don’t think they’ve ever made me even tear up. But this short section of Aviendha’s perspective… I first read it on a train and had to force myself to keep it together.
I don’t know that it was the writing. I think it was more that it took me back to every Jhumpa Lahiri book I’ve ever read.
Jhumpa Lahiri, author of books like The Namesake and Unaccustomed Earth, is a beautiful, beautiful wordsmith. I love her and I can’t stand reading her all at the same time because her stories make me feel so bleak. Much of her writing explores the idea that if you’re born of two cultures, you’re not really of either one. You have no place in the world. You are, effectively, without any sort of home or community.
Sidenote: When I told my fellow Wheel of Time reader, Jenn, what I was thinking about, she made this amazing Venn Diagram:
The degradation of the Aiel brought to the surface fears I have about my relationship with my Indian culture, being a first generation born, and living in America. There is a moment in Towers of Midnight where Aviendha hears her great-great granddaughter’s family completely misuse and over-simplify a cultural term. What’s terrifying is the implication that this seemingly innocuous thing can mean, in just a few generations, that a culture will fall. Things my mother intrinsically knows, I have to google. What if in the next generation, there’s too much disconnect to do even that?
While a lot of the cultural deterioration in the Wheel of Time is a direct result of generational gaps and intermarriage between cultures, much of it is accelerated by the invasion of the Seanchan. I had a vague sense of unease while reading about the Seanchan, who are essentially colonizers in Robert Jordan’s epic. For the Seanchan it is better for other countries to be broken and governed by a superior culture—their own—than it is to allow those cultures to govern themselves. Because, in the Seanchan’s eyes, this group of children just doesn’t know any better. This is who the Aiel are fighting against.
Colonization, cultural dilution and in some cases, eradication…these are a part of my past and my present.
Lahiri is a little more dedicated and ruthless with cultural dilution and irrelevancy as a theme, while Jordan and later Brandon Sanderson speak of it more optimistically. All of the races and cultures that are written of in the Wheel of Time series are fiercely loyal to their people. Whether it’s the Aiel or the Sea Folk, they are suspicious of those outside. With Egwene’s proposal of training women in all three, and Rand’s pulling of the Aiel back into society, it seems that Sanderson and Jordan are striving to depict a happy medium of cultural loyalty and progress by demonstrating how those societies collaborate and learn from each other.
I don’t know if Egwene’s proposal will be successful or not, or if it will lead to so much change within each respectful culture that they’ll break and morph into something unrecognizable. This may not be a bad thing. I don’t think that culture and identity are something that should remain stagnant, but there are beautiful parts to these cultures and it’s sad to see them disappear along with the bad. I think of my fears of cultural loss, and I know that most of it stems from not being Indian enough for India and not American enough for America. A diluted culture is more than just acclimating to a new one; it changes your very identity. Where do you belong if you don’t fit anywhere?
After reading Aviendha’s chapters, [my] fear is that you wouldn’t belong anywhere. You (in this admittedly fictional and extreme case) die out. With this in mind, I can only conclude that, like in Lahiri’s writing, maintaining any part of your culture while immersed in another is not a possibility.
In Wheel of Time, after speaking to the Wise Ones, Aviendha asks Rand to include the Aiel in his peace treaty as a way to possibly ensure their survival. We, as readers, don’t know if this ploy works. Will that survival be at the cost of their specific cultural identity? The books don’t have an answer for us. So perhaps the biggest takeaway in all of this is that despite the future she’s seen, Aviendha continues to fight for her people and her culture. And that is the most I can hope to do in my own life.
This article was originally published in March 2013 on BookRiot.
One oversight in this article is that the ter’angreal was shown to work in reverse, namely showing people the past, which was also traumatic for the Aiel, because they couldn’t imagine their existence as a warrior race came from a past where being peaceful to the point of death was their true honor.
I’m not sure if it was explained why Aviendha got the visions of the future, that might have been some unique function, or a gender issue.
It does seem to be a theme that Jordan uses a lot, consider the Testing among the Aes Sedai, and the Portal Stones.
@1 – It was a unique event – she went through it twice, where everyone else had gone through once. First pass shows you the past, and second pass shows what the future could be. I believe, after the others finish criticizing her for breaking tradition and doing a second pass, which I think she did because she knew before entering her first pass what it would hold, she recommends everyone of the Wise Women be required to take a second pass, so they can see the future to avoid, and try to guide it away from disaster. Which she does by asking for the treaty inclusion.
yes, it makes sense that the ter’angreal would work different on a second trip, though that does lead to questions of how it was used in the Age of Legends and if it can be configured.
Trying to think of other examples, Frank Herbert’s Dune comes to mind, and maybe Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, but I’m sure there are others.
One of the other Wise Ones (Bair) went through for a second time after Aviendha and saw the same thing (through her own descendant’s eyes, of course), so it does seem to be a function of going through the second time.
Reading this makes me so sad. I always hoped that Aviendha was given this information to try to prevent it from happening. I can relate as well. I left my country about two years ago, to be with my husband; I’m from Sweden and he’s American. I definitely don’t have an easy time embracing “the American way” of things and miss my homeland so much that I can almost feel my heart breaking sometimes. Yet I know things couldn’t have been done any other way, this is the happiest I can be with the options I was given. I think about how much our future children will miss out on, culture wise, by not growing up in Sweden. Don’t get me wrong, America isn’t a bad country to live in, just quite different. Sweden is such a small country (Sweden’s population equals about one third of the population of Texas), I feel I have to do whatever I can to preserve the Swedish culture and language. I’m like a wild plant that has been uprooted and put in a pot. It functions just fine, but it will never really be the same.
I got the impression that it was not going through a second time that the ter’angreal showed the future, but because something was changed when Aviendha visited Rhuiden again. I thought that, should a new Wise Woman come here, she would only see the future, and the past is no longer available. That made it especially heartbreaking, as the Aiel were in the past so united, and then recently so divided, because of the past that could no longer be seen.
It was mentioned they weren’t sure if Avi had broken it or not. The plan was to send a new apprentice who hadn’t been to see what happened but we didn’t get a result by the end.
@1 It hadn’t occurred to me how the future Aviendha saw mirrored the past that Rand saw. The big exception, of course, is that the future ends in degradation and extinction where past resulted in a powerful and vibrant culture.
8, the thought I’m having is did the Aiel change in the future Aviendha saw, or was it necessary for them to change to prevent that future?
Umm, not to be a bother, but isn’t the picture at the top actually Elayne, not Aviendha?
In the full Path of Daggers artwork, I believe that Aviendha is the one on the left (or Elayne’s right), identified by her red hair.
@9 I have to assume the future has been changed. It’s just too awful otherwise.
I can’t believe that the author of this article has never even “teared up” whilst reading The Wheel Of Time books. I have to have the tissue box handy during a re-read whenever I get to Perrin’s scenes where he first hears of his family’s murder, cannot process it and finally breaks down. Strangely enough the scene where Nynaeve (just about my favorite character) finally breaks her block also affects me this way.
10, I believe you are correct on that score.
11, sorry, I wasn’t talking about that future changing, which is probably not-fixed (though the Portal stones may indicate that they may still be a reality of sorts, just a washed-out one, so to speak), so much as did the Aiel change in that future, or were they just pursuing their natural course, which meant they had to change themselves to avoid it?
@10 No, that is Aviendha. In the full cover, you can tell this by their clothes in the scene, which I believe are described in the book. Elayne (who is often described as having red-gold hair – I personally always pictured her more blond, but I suppose it could be more red) wears the fancier gown with the cutout design on the bodice, whereas Avi is wearing her simpler “wetlander” dress with a knife belted at her waist. I can’t remember how her hair is described in the books, but I know the Aiel tend to have red or fair hair, and this artist went with a more blond look for Avi – though, if you look closely, there are hints of red there, giving her a bit of a strawberry blond look.
While certainly not to the extent you describe here Preeti, I feel that loss of history and cultural context with the death of my parents (and their siblings). All the family history that was just a conversation away is now stored only in my mind. You can’t even google that.
14, as I recall, Aviendha is supposed to look like Rand’s cousin, so red-hair is definite, while Elayne is supposed to have Red-Gold curls.
It may be a bit of a mix-up, especially since Elayne is more important in that scene.
At least Nynaeve has her braid.
Aviendha knew what the crystal spire ter’angreal would do because of her talent that allows her to know what those things do. I think the tradition to only go once is likely due to the few that tried did not come back out early on. (Though I figure one of the last Aes Sedia of the age of legends that could make ter’angreal had to be living in Rhuidean by the end, pretty sure the crystal spires were not one of the one brought in the wagons so maybe she told them not too)
A lot was left specifically vague I feel because RJ always intended to write more books that took place after the Last Battle. That we will never get those books is what makes me sad!
I’ve been a fan of Robert Jordan’s books for a long time and am just now doing a reread of the series. Rather than discuss what happens in the books, I’d rather discuss the issues of cultural deterioration and the effects on the future that they present in the world we now live in. I have traveled outside the United States and I found that culture exist in a much different way in other countries then it does here. Is there any culture that is predominant in the United States? You can’t even say that white culture is the predominant culture because that changes from the East Coast to the West Coast and from the southern perspective. And then you have an entirely different perspective from the Midwest. America is culturally disenfranchised. It has become that polyglot of nothingness. I believe that this search for culture explains the huge interest in genealogy and DNA studies. People can’t identify who they are by where they are in the United States so are turning to the Past to find some definition of self. I think this is pertinent to the story in that the first test for the wise ones just to see where they came from and the second is to see if they can accept the future. The thing about divination though is that the future is always what could be, not what will be. So then one could ask do the wise ones bear the onus of change were there people? And do we not bear the onus of change for our descendants? Pardon any discrepancies. I use voice to text because I’m legally blind and often times what I say is not what Google hears..
Answering that question depends a lot on what you consider to be American culture, but it was actually a bigger issue back in the past, when immigrant communities were often less integrated than many people who now believe in the great melting pot may realize.
Maybe not in the WOT universe, it’s a bit hard to be sure, but prophecy does exist.
Well, I’m going to speak for the Wise Ones, but that does seem to be the position of many, if not most of them, they want to preserve as much of their people as possible. It is interesting how they are a remnant of a remnant already. After all, the original Aiel were a group of survivors from the time of the Age of Legends, and now they’ve become the current Aiel, which will be inevitably changed by leaving the Three-fold land.
These chapters mostly reminded me of what happened to the Native Americans between about 1700 and 1890: the dilemma of giving in versus resisting, knowing that the result of either course would probably be the same; the (eventual) technological and population imbalance; the loss of key elements of a culture, to the point where it becomes almost unrecognizable… Considering that the “present-day” Aiel have a lot of parallels to some of the plains and desert tribes (raising corn, tomatoes and turkeys, egalitarian or merit-based social structures, “vision quests,” lifetimes of knowledge about finding and using resources in harsh environments, etc.), I’m convinced this was at least partly deliberate.
That said, you make a really good point about how cultural knowledge can easily be lost in the present day, even in the absence of active attempts to suppress it. My grandmother remembers what Japan was like before the war hawks took over, before the atrocities and the bombings and the occupation–and she’s forgotten more of the language than I’ll ever know. I know absolutely nothing about her family beyond the generation before hers; I don’t know if there are any surviving members over there, and I suspect if there are any, I’ll never meet them.
The problem is this; culture doesn’t exist in vacuum it is created as a response to a particular environment and the survival challenges faces by the humans in it. The Aiel are no longer in their environment. The prophecies that ruled their ideological life are fulfilled and they’ve learned some uncomfortable things about their past. They have no choice but to change. Aviendha’s vision shows blind reaction and clinging to the past is not the way to go. Do the wise ones grasp that?
I think I’ve spent my entire life looking for home.
I was born in Russia, grew up in America and have now moved back to Russia. I’m too Russian for the US, too American for Russia.
Russia is a huge melting pot of different nationalities, and most of those nationalities, though they date outside of their spesific group, rarely marry outside it. The main reason being that cultural belief systems are too different to surpass in order to build a sound marriage.
This led me to thinking- if Armenians marry Armenians and Kozakhs marry Kozakhs, then who am I supposed to marry? Who speaks my language? Who shares my culture?
And then one day I knew: all of my friends, all of my most important partners were, like me, children of two or three or even more cultures. And they are the people that think like me and speak like me and share my values. That’s why it never feels quite right when I date someone who has spent their entire life in one Place and feels like fate when I meet someone who hasn’t.
Maybe it’s not about having no nationality. Maybe it’s about a different nationality built off different belief systems and about finding people that have lived like you.
I don’t think we’re a dying breed. With the ease of travel and boarders opening up, every generation will have more and more of us. And who knows, maybe therein lies the key to the friendship of nations- people that are in the middle, bridging the divide.
Every generation of a family loses a portion of the culture of its forebears. My family has been in the U.S. since the early 1800s (not boasting — we crossed on the Coffin ships,) and there are things my father didn’t know which his father did, and things which I dearly wish I’d asked about before…or remembered, now.
That said, every generation of a family also creates and integrates a portion of its ongoing culture. As the old fades, the new replaces. Who we were isn’t the same thing as who we are. And that’s…okay, in the same sense that it’s okay that the old folks die to make way for the new folks to be born — it’s not okay to lose them, but it’s a necessary thing. Part of what’s needed to adapt, else we’d die for a lack of letting go of our old ways and habits — fond of them and set in our ways as we tend to get.
An important thing, I’ve thought, is to be aware of this fact. So that in our awareness of it we can do more choosing of what to intentionally remember and what to forget, and perhaps blend the best of what was with what is, and with what we’re creating, to make something even better for the future.
It doesn’t always work as well as one might like, but it generally works better than just letting the process run without any attention given to it. Doesn’t make us miss what’s been lost any less, though, in my experience anyhow. (Of course, we only tend to long for the things we liked about the past. There are parts of both past and culture that are well rid of, and better buried.)
This is such a thoughtful piece. As an assimilated U.S. citizen of Celtic-white descent, the current “white pride” movement has horrified and amused me because WHO CARES if your descendants are brown or if our culture morphs into something completely different and new? You won’t be here to be offended by it. OF COURSE I didn’t think about the the cultures of color who are being diluted and assimilated into that whole, of other types of traditions disappearing.
We’re all so inspired by Star Trek and its multicultural federation but could distinct cultures and traditions truly remain unchanged by a unifying government that includes such a wide range of inhabitants? Maybe that’s what the Klingons are so hot about in Discovery. Wow to all.
I am reminded of the scene in American Gods where the priestess asks her god how to protect her people. The god’s provided a solution but the priestess was not going to like it. It involved the children being accepted into a new tribe/god and the old god dying. People live traditions die off.
@16 I also always pictured Aviendha with red hair, but, in the original article you link to, the artist herself actually posts in the comments and confirms that the woman in the center is Aviendha, and that the red-haired woman is Elayne.
26, what’s very curious is the unconscious Phoenix like appearance…and Nynaeve almost looks like the Wolverine…if you squint your eyes a bit.
Thank you for the thoughtful piece – my grandparents were immigrants as well and I can see the way things have changed even within our generations, but at the same time – to be human is to change and evolve. So there has to be some kind of balance between the two…