The third season of The Wheel of Time recently came to a close, and while no adaptation from book to screen passes muster with all fans, this third season seems to have won over some former critics. Several episodes such as “The Road to the Spear,” “Goldeneyes,” and the finale, “He Who Comes With the Dawn,” have garnered very strong reviews, and many fans are waiting anxiously to see if/when Amazon greenlights Season 4. (One must admit that the Pattern has seen fit to bestow noticeably more fantastic costumes upon us as the show goes on—like my personal favorite, this jewelry piece worn by Lord Gaebril, royal consort to Queen Morgase Trakand of Andor. With bling like that, who wouldn’t experience a compulsion to wonder if he’s been around for a month, a year, or even a decade?)
And unless you’ve been living under a rock the size of Shai-Hulud, you’ll be aware of the success of Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptations of Frank Herbert’s Dune, with Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two grossing well over a billion dollars worldwide. Signs are that Dune: Part Three will begin filming this summer, despite earlier comments that Villeneuve wanted to pursue other projects, as well as letting the actors age up a little bit. I’ve written previously about the cultural appropriation of Islamic history and theology in the Dune series (both books and films), especially in the depiction of the Fremen, a group of fierce warriors who have managed to survive and thrive on the vicious desert world of Arrakis. There is lots of writing on this, including previous pieces here on Reactor that came out closer to the release of Dune: Part One, focusing on the ways that Frank Herbert drew inspiration from Lawrence of Arabia, as well as exploring the “Muslimness” of the series.
One of the things that jumped out at me through watching this season of The Wheel of Time is just how much the TV adaptation uses the same types of visual cues with the Aiel, echoing what we’ve seen in the on-screen portrayal of the Fremen. This in turn made me reflect on how the original novels for each series depict the Fremen and Aiel, respectively. In this article, I’ll be focusing on the recent screen adaptations, rather than the original scenes in the relevant novels simply because these visual adaptations are the main ways that new fans are discovering both of these beloved franchises. The more I thought about these parallels, the more I found myself growing curious about what other types of messages we fans—both new and old—are consuming through these adaptations.
The depiction of the Aiel, especially their homeland, the “Aiel Waste,” is a key plot line this season. They are presented as strange, at times savage and uncivilized, possessing a sense of honor and obligation (ji and toh) that strikes the Wetlanders (non-Aiel, whose perspective is the main one through which we, as viewers, have seen this world up until now) as confusing at best. We got a glimpse of this in Season 2 through Perrin Aybara’s interactions with Aviendha. In “Damane,” he is perplexed by her response to his saving her from the Whitecloaks (a religious extremist faction that rivals the folks who run Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in terms of brutal misogyny), and Aviendha explains that she has toh, that “ji-e-toh is the Aiel way. You saved my life. My water is yours.” Two episodes later, in “Daes Dae’mar,” he is horrified when Bain and Chiad, her fellow Maidens of the Spear, almost beat Aviendha to death. When Perrin asks her about it afterwards, she tries to explain that she had toh to a fourth Maiden, Jolien, who died in battle while Aviendha was protecting herself. Can Dune fans think of any other warrior races from desert environments who talk about their water in similar ways? Hmmm.
Season 3 takes us much deeper into the Aiel Waste. Wetlanders Moiraine, Lan, Rand, and Egwene are beyond confused by the Aiel practice of taking gai’shain, enemies who are touched during combat and are put into a form of servitude as a way to work off their shame at failing as warriors. We will eventually learn that this custom connects to millennia old Aiel practices. In Dune, Paul Atreides and Lady Jessica’s experience joining the Fremen on Arrakis has similar dynamics. They don’t understand the rules of the amtal challenge between Paul and Jamis until Stilgar explains they are going to fight to the death. Haris Durani has argued that Herbert’s rendering of the amtal duel represents its own type of Orientalist romantic depiction of “qadi justice,” here meaning a legal system lacking the rule of law, which I would also argue could interpret as a riff on “might makes right”—a concept that seems to be making a comeback in global politics lately as part of our cultural shift back towards authoritarianism.
In thinking about both franchises, I am struck by the fact that both Jordan and Herbert wrote epic sagas in which young white men arrive as messianic figures to save the world. In both cases the young white men in question understand on a visceral level that in order to fulfill their destinies, they must convince these warrior desert races that they are indeed the car’a’carn or mahdi, respectively. In turn, these communities each have prophecies about the coming of an outsider who will lead them into the future—though that future may be the end of the world as they know it. We know that Paul Atreides needs the Fremen as the embodiment of “desert power” in order to defeat his enemies and fulfil his destiny. Season 3 of The Wheel of Time mostly serves to set this up for Rand al’Thor, and future seasons will hopefully make clear what book fans already know: that without the Aiel at his side, there is no way that Rand can defeat the Dark One.
To be clear, even though Jordan published the first book of the series, The Eye of the World, in 1990 (some 25 years after Herbert published the first Dune novel), I’m definitely not arguing that Jordan was directly inspired by Herbert. In fact, Jordan was questioned about this in various interviews, and gave very clear responses, using the Aiel as a specific example in response to a question about how specific historical eras influence his stories:
They have some bits of Japanese in them. Also some bits of the Zulu, the Berbers, the Bedouin, the Northern Cheyenne, the Apache, and some things that I added in myself. They are in no way a copy of any of these cultures, because what I do is say, “If A is true, what else has to be true about this culture? If B is true, what else has to be true?” And so forth… To me, that in itself is a fascinating thing—the design of a culture. So that’s how the Aiel came about. There are no cultures that are a simple lift of Renaissance Italy or 9th-century Persia or anything else. All of them are constructs.
Beyond the archives of interviews that Jordan gave over the course his life, one great starting point for fans looking to learn more about Jordan’s life—especially his service in Vietnam—and an analysis of the influences on the creation of Randland is Michael Livingston’s Origins of The Wheel of Time. Livingston also goes into great detail regarding Jordan’s debt to the works of Tolkien, the 15th century Le Morte d’Arthur, and Robert Graves’ 1948 The White Goddess. Livingston’s take is that while “Tolkien is said to have aimed to create a ‘mythology for England,’ Jordan aimed for something even more daring and profound: a ‘mythology for humanity.’”
In Herbert and Jordan’s respective work, as well as Livingston’s summation of The Wheel of Time, I see the seemingly innocuous white colonial gaze. SFF communities have long debated issues of cultural appropriation and the troubling tradition of white, Western authors using elements of other cultures in their fiction in ways that romanticize or exoticize those cultures. No one can doubt the level of research that Herbert and Jordan did for their respective worldbuilding. That said, there is also a cringe factor when authors (and fans) see this borrowing as innocent while it reinforces stereotypes of the “other,” such as the invocation of the noble savage that we see with both the Fremen and the Aiel.
In light of all this, the last line of Jordan’s response quoted above, that “all of them are constructs,” really jumps out at me. Of course Herbert, Jordan, Tolkien, and other speculative fiction writers are constructing these fictional worlds. But the question has to be asked: constructing them out of what? What are the raw materials that these authors feel emboldened to use in order to tell their stories? Rebecca Roanhorse’s incredible Between Earth and Sky trilogy, for example, draws on Mesoamerican history and cultures to tell a story that is no less epic than anything happening in Middle-earth, Arrakis, or the Aiel Waste (and if you think dragons are cool, you should check out supersized corvids!).
As Elizabeth Gilbert argues in Big Magic, sometimes there are just ideas floating out there in the ether, something traveling across these energetic pathways between creative people. But what does it say about this particular magical ether that we have two white American male authors working in different sub-genres of speculative fiction who build these epic universes that both just happen to have a key plot line where a young white man discovers he has magical powers and just happens to be the messiah and saving the world really depends on our hero’s abilities to take control of a ferocious group of desert warriors? Paul Atreides and Rand al’Thor have so much in common, it can’t just be coincidence, can it? As I noted above, there’s been a fair amount of criticism written about Herbert’s use of Islamic references in Dune. I am not aware of similar critique of Jordan’s use of various non-Western religious and cultural references, I think in part because he drew on a much more eclectic set of influences for his worldbuilding. As a trained Islamicist specializing in Arabic and Persian, it is impossible for me to not see and hear the Arabic and more broadly Islamic references in Dune. By contrast, last I checked there are no native speakers of “the Old Tongue” created by Jordan for the Wheel of Time.
Before we proceed, let’s address one important question: what does the “white savior” trope refer to, and how does it relate to science fiction and fantasy? The term usually refers to situations where a white person or group of people descend from on high (metaphorically or literally) to rescue non-white people through the use of tools (technological but also ideological) to which the non-white people lack knowledge or access. The trope is easily identified in the history of European imperial expansion from the 16th through the 19th centuries, where British and French governments in particular adopted the view that they were lifting peoples from all over the world out of ignorance by completely restructuring other societies in terms of politics, religion, and language. But critics have identified it in lots of other contexts from much more recent times. In terms of contemporary films, The Blind Side (directed by John Lee Hancock, 2009) and The Help (directed by Tate Tylor, 2011) are two examples that use the stories of Black characters to valorize white characters in a way that suggests that cultural progress and the hard-won successes of people of color are made possible by the benevolent support of white people. Philip Caputo’s 2005 novel Acts of Faith raises a similar type of critique of Western humanitarian aid efforts in Africa generally, and Sudan specifically.
Things get a bit more slippery when we get into science fiction and fantasy, although perhaps a bit easier in the case of Dune and Wheel of Time because (1) the people involved are all human, and (2) arguably both franchises take place in humanity’s hypothetical far future. Herbert clearly conceived of the Dune-iverse as the outgrowth of our present-day humanity flung thousands of years into the future, while WoT fans debate online what Robert Jordan’s vision really was. Are we in the First Age, just before the Age of Legends? In “The Road to the Spear,” Rand experiences visions of thousands of years into his past, including advanced technology on the level of literal flying ships… that visually resemble some of Villeneuve’s depictions of shuttles for transporting people from interstellar ships to the surface of planets like Arrakis.
The white savior trope itself is a common topic of discussion amongst pop culture critics, now more than ever, but it can also feel hard to pin down, depending on the work in question. Critics debate whether or not Dune falls into this category, with some arguing that the recent Villeneuve films double down on this trope while others disagree. I think the fascinating thing for me in watching these two adaptations is that the Freman and Aiel are coded as foreign in an Orientalist way (the desert, the veiling, the presentation of these cultures with very different conceptions of honor) from the default normative white Eurocentric point of view. So Herbert and Jordan both create these worlds, universes even, that share this fairly important plot point. In many ways, Herbert’s reliance on this plot line makes more sense to me than Jordan’s. After all, Dune is centered on a desert planet and the specific desert culture that develops on that planet, in that environment. Herbert’s engagement with climate change and human efforts to shape the climate is tragically undersold in Villeneuve’s films. The entire name of the franchise is inspired by a government project Herbert studied in Oregon about combating the encroaching dunes along the coast! He could have chosen a different cultural database to draw from when creating the Fremen, but I think global politics around oil exports from the Middle East led him to focus his story on a group of very Muslim-esque warriors and mystics from the desert. What then is Jordan’s explanation?
The argument could be made that key aspects of American culture in the mid- to late-20th century led both of these authors to dig into this trope of desert warrior race being led to their salvation (and ruination) by these young white saviors. There is America’s post-WWII soft-ish colonial expansion, along with the rise of OPEC and the concomitant realization that the US economy relied on the ability to import oil from abroad. The trope of the noble savage who lives in an uncivilized space—such as a desert or jungle—was, of course, well established in Western countries well before Herbert and Jordan were writing. Much of the fiction written by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard in the early 20th century draw heavily on the trope, from their Tarzan and Conan stories to less well-remembered works. Films such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) helped to perpetuate the popularity of white savior narratives, and reportedly inspired Herbert while he was working on Dune; he was also influenced by Lawrence’s memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom. What would mythology scholar Joseph Campbell say about all this—is there a part of the Hero’s Journey that rests on the hero going into a literal/metaphorical desert or otherwise untamed land?
Is it fair to say that Paul is to Rand as the Fremen are to the Aiel? These two main characters have so many similarities, it is helpful to lay them out side by side.
Depiction of Desert Fighting
One shared visual cue in depicting the Fremen and Aiel is the use of blades rather than projectile weapons (although to be fair in The Wheel of Time we don’t see the development of projectile weapons until much later in the novels, and even then it’s more artillery than it is pistols or rifles). We learn in “The Road to the Spear” why it is that the Aiel see spears as the weapon of choice, that swords are forbidden to them because spears have utilitarian uses such as hunting, while swords are only for violence.
Coincidentally, there is an eerily similar depiction from the 2002 version of The Four Feathers (starring Heath Ledger, Kate Hudson, and Djimon Hounsou), based on a 1902 novel by A.E.W. Mason, as well as the 1939 film adaptation directed by Zoltan Korda. There was a 1955 adaptation (also directed by Korda) titled Storm Over the Nile, and even a 1978 TV movie also titled The Four Feathers. Who knew that The Four Feathers would show up so much, with a new version coming out roughly once every twenty years, just like with Dune?!?!? The Four Feathers is set in Sudan during the late 19th-century war between the British and an army led by a man who claimed to be a messianic figure who had come to lead his people to liberation, also known in Islamic theology as the Mahdi. Sound familiar?
More to the point, the 2002 film features scenes where the British soldiers (who think very highly of themselves because… well, they’re British soldiers in the late 19th century, arguably at the height of the good ol’ imperial days) are ambushed in the desert by Mahdist fighters in a style that would make Stilgar and any other Fremen proud: they are buried in the sand then erupt upwards and outwards to decimate their foes, who are completely unprepared to fight in this desert environment against such tactics. Maybe it’s because I grew up partially in Sudan and heard stories about the ferocity of the Mahdi’s movement and fighters, but when I watched the recent Dune films in the theater I found myself transported back to watching this much earlier film over twenty years ago.
Visual Cues: Face Veiling
The Fremen and Aiel both veil their faces, which in a superficial reading of things is simply a function of living in the desert. That said, one key feature of “The Road to the Spear” is that viewers learn the Aiel’s true history. They weren’t always warriors at all, instead they were the “da’shain Aiel” who were the Aes Sedai’s servants. This group would eventually evolve into the committed pacifist group known as the Tuatha’an who practice “the Way of the Leaf.” The similarities in both name (da’shain/gai’shain) and action (both groups committed to pacifism, although one as a form of punishment) demonstrate that the two are linked within Aiel culture.
As Rand marches through the psychic hellscape of Rhuidean, he experiences flashbacks to the distant past. In one episode, a group of ancient Aiel young men discover that women from their families have been kidnapped. Despite being told to accept the tragedy and move on, they go to rescue the women. As the young men enter the camp of the kidnappers, one says to another “keep your dust veils up so they don’t see their faces.” Lewin (Rand), commits violence, their friend gets killed, and this is origin of the ban on swords because they can only be used as weapons, while “a spear can put food in pots.”
Lewin’s grandfather banishes Lewin and friend for killing, even if it was in the act of rescuing their sisters. The ancient Aiel commitment to pacifism is brought into sharp focus when Lewin calls out to his mother, who turns to him in response: “Who are you that calls me Mother? Hide your face from me stranger. I had a son once with a face like that. I don’t want to see it on a killer.” Obviously this is an important point in Aiel history—at least, the Aiel as we know them in the present day depicted in the show. It is also where we see them begin a practice—veiling their faces, especially right before they engage in warfare or other violent conduct—that makes them look—especially to a majority Western audience—as if they are Arab/Bedouin/Middle Eastern. One thing that stands out to me in watching this episode is that the actors chosen to depict the Aiel (in any era) don’t seem to reflect the usual range of appearances we might expect from people of Middle Eastern or North African descent in terms of phenotype (skin tone, facial features, other physical characteristics). Instead, since the Aiel appear to be mostly red-haired, it feels a bit like a bunch of Irish folks with spears camped out in the desert. How these gingers are surviving without sunblock is a mystery we can explore in another turning of the Wheel. I should add that in the season finale we see a much more ethnically diverse depiction of the Aiel.
“Savages” Thriving in the Desert
In both franchises, there are scenes where Paul and Rand learn about how Fremen and Aiel are able to live in inhospitable environments, going well beyond mere subsistence to thriving. In “The Shadow in the Night,” Aviendha shows Rand that the Aiel grow food in the desert through a finely tuned understanding of how and when to capture moisture. When Rand looks amazed, she chides him: “We know more than just how to dance the spears.”
On Arrakis a major part of the Fremen’s wielding of “desert power” is that they are able to thrive in an environment that their colonizing overlords (both Harkonnen and Atreides) find completely unbeatable. Not only do they have advanced technology like the stillsuit, but they also have developed tools that allow them to harvest the scant amount of moisture available in the planet’s atmosphere. Paul’s claiming of Muad’Dib as his name is taken from the mouse-like creature with especially large ears (there’s a Red Riding Hood joke there for sure!). The mouse is known as “muad’Dib” because the Fremen see it as a “teacher of the desert.” In Arabic today (and more importantly, in the time period during which Herbert was first writing Dune), it really just means teacher, and even more specifically “one who teaches adab,” with adab referring to knowledge of right conduct, ethics, correct behavior, and so forth.
Core Relationships: Stilgar and Chani, Rhuarc and Aviendha
Both characters lose their fathers only to gain father-like figures who guide them through the next steps in their heroic journeys. In the characters of Rhuarc and Stilgar, Rand al’Thor and Paul Atreides find mentors who serve as surrogate father figures to instruct them in the ways of the desert as these relatively untested young men prepare for the great trials they know await them. In both the novels and more recent film adaptations, Stilgar is Paul’s biggest fan and truly his most ardent supporter, to the point where we got those lovely memes mocking Stilgar’s constant amazed and enraptured state whenever Paul does anything remotely interesting. I’m not sure how much of a role show-Rhuarc will have down the road, but throughout Season 3 he plays a type of “gentle giant who could kill you at any moment” type that reminds me of Javier Bardem’s depiction of Stilgar to some degree. Looking at his counsel to Rand during the show down at Alcair Dal to see whether the Aiel will acknowledge Rand or the Shaido rival Couladin as car’a’carn, however, he diverges from Stilgar in some important ways. Rhuarc implores Rand not to tell the Aiel about their history, that they are in fact descended from the “Oathbreakers” that they detest so strongly. Rhuarc fears that the Aiel won’t be able to handle this revelation, but Rand insists, “this is what I was born to do.”
Paul’s love interest is Chani, a Fremen charged with guiding and protecting Paul when he first arrives among the Fremen. Book-Rand ends up in a type of polyamorous relationship that apparently somewhat mimicked Robert Jordan’s lived experience, but one of his partners is Aviendha, an Aiel Maiden of the Spear who becomes a Wise One (the Aiel term for women who can channel and who play an important role in Aiel society). While the TV series introduced Aviendha in Season 2, so far in Season 3 we only see her romantically involved with Elaine Trakand (who in the books is another of Rand’s partners). The books depict Aviendha and Elaine as so emotionally intimate that many readers have felt that their relationship would naturally develop a physical component. Both Chani and Aviendha are skilled warriors who aren’t rushing to endorse this outworlder/wetlander’s claim to be special. Zendaya’s portrayal of Chani differs from the books in that she is doubtful of Paul’s messianic status. Chani’s character in the books is much more focused on supporting Paul in embracing his role as Mahdi. Aviendha appears to believe early on that Rand is the car’a’carn, but she does not see him as being worthy of the role… yet. There is clear resentment that this wetlander is supposed to save the Aiel when he knows nothing about their history and culture. The Wise Ones don’t appear to need any help or guidance from anyone, let alone Rand who doesn’t even know how the Aiel grow food in the desert.
The throughline connecting these examples is that Rand and Paul have that special messiah-in-training quality, but they both require a lot of help before they can achieve their prophetic destiny. One could argue that this is just part of a generic hero’s journey arc, but the fact that in all these cases—Rhuarc, Stilgar, Aviendha, Chani—the guides in question are from factions coded as non-white means that our white saviors are relying on their respective versions of the “noble savage” or “magical minority character” trope.
The protagonists do diverge in terms of how they process their conflicted sense of belonging vs. alienation from these new cultures. For example, there is a scene where Rand is sparring with Lan, talking about his life growing up with Tam al’Thor, the blademaster turned shepherd. Ran understands that Aiel blood flows through his veins, but he also recognizes that “I will never be one of them.” Rand goads Aviendha about how she can’t make up her mind as to whether or not he is really Aiel. Later on, when Rand finds Aviendha in Rhuidean, he tells her, “I’m sorry I didn’t understand about the sword.” She replies, “and now you do?” His response, “I understand enough to know I’ll never fully understand,” expresses volumes about the challenges in front of Rand. While Rand expresses doubts about his ability to earn the Aiel’s trust, I don’t see the same in Paul Atreides. He may initially doubt that the prophecy of mahdi and lisan al-gaib is real, but over time he feels he is qualified to wield the Fremen (and their deified sandworms) as weapons to further his agenda and ultimate revenge against the Harkonnen.
Prophetic Destinies: Roads to Oblivion?
Both Paul and Rand come to understand that they will lead these people, they will be somewhat adopted by them as insiders even though they will always also be outsiders, and that they are essentially leading their followers to a form of destruction.
The Wise One Melaine tells Rand that “[t]o lead is to know where you come from, to understand the blood in your veins.” This is a key phrase, not just for understanding Rand and his connection to the Aiel, but also in comparing Rand and Paul. Both characters have to learn how to connect with the past. Rand connects with his literal past, and later on in the series we will hopefully see how Rand comes to know Lews Therin’s actual memories, that Lews is actually part of Rand’s mind. Paul comes to understand the pasts of all of humanity, as well as humanity’s future. The visions of the past are equally powerful, and Jordan decided to craft this part of the Pattern with much more specificity than Herbert, who leaves it much vaguer in the main books.
When Paul arrives on Arrakis with his family and the rest of House Atreides, he asks his mother what the Fremen are shouting towards him. She explains they were saying “Lisan al-Gaib, Voice of the Outer World. It’s their word for messiah. It means the Bene Gisserit have been at work here.” Paul responds with a derisive “Planting superstitions,” but Lady Jessica corrects him: “Preparing the way, Paul. These people have waited for centuries for the Lisan al-Gaib. They see you, they see the signs.” Paul doesn’t buy it, responding in kind: “they see what they’ve been told to see.”
Similar to the status that the Reverend Mother plays in Fremen society, the Aiel have Wise Ones. This all-female group of sorcerers are the only Aiel who can “channel” (using the magic system that predominates The Wheel of Time universe). Rand’s relationship with Moiraine is similar to that of Paul to his mother Jessica in that Jessica has been working to prepare Paul throughout his entire life to be far more than the head of House Atreides. Moiraine can be seen as a motherly stand-in (although a few of the visions she has during her trip to Rhuidean might cross the line!).
We learn more about the Aiel prophecy about the Car’a’carn in “A Question of Crimson.” Upon meeting Rand al’Thor, Wise One Bair says: “He will come from the west, beyond the Spine of the world. Of the blood but not raised by the blood. He will tie us together with bonds we cannot break. He will take us back home, and he will destroy us.” This sounds a bit like a messiah, but kind of a scary messiah? Like, you want him to show up, but you’re also kind of worried that he will really show up? Because that’s actually very on brand for the way the books and TV series depict the Dragon Reborn. Another important piece of The Wheel of Time universe is that male channelers all eventually go insane, while female channelers do not. So having a super powerful male channeler isn’t safe for anyone involved, not over the long term. They might kill everyone around them, they might create a mountain range where previously there was a grassy plain, and so forth. Moiraine, and later on, Cadsuane (we really need Cadsuane to show up!), work to mentor the young Dragon Reborn so that he is ready for The Last Battle against the Dark One (I know, it’s all apocalyptic intrigue, all the time), but they are also on the lookout for signs that Rand is succumbing to the madness. In The Wheel of Time it is men who are the weaker sex, no doubt. Herbert wasn’t laboring under any pretense of swapping around gendered hierarchies in his worldbuilding, but for Jordan this is a major theme for The Wheel of Time.
But our heroes learn the hard way that there are limits to their powers. During the climax of “In the Shadow of Night,” after defeating one the Forsaken in battle, Rand discovers he accidentally killed a young child. Distraught, he attempts to revive her, desperately channeling again and again in a vain attempt to undo the tragedy. He sobs “I bring destruction but also creation.”
In the Season 3 finale, Moiraine acknowledges that Rand was right to bring them to the Aiel: “This is a nation of warriors. Even the Forsaken will fall against a hundred thousand spears,” and goes further to tell him that he “…bring the Aiel under your control alone. No Aes Sedai strings at your back.” I see a parallel here between Rand and Paul in that both have to demonstrate their independence from the powerful women who have helped bring them to their respective points in the story.
Rand raises the prophetic stakes in telling the Aiel that he “shall spill out the blood of those who call themselves Aiel as water on sand, and break you as dried twigs. Yet the remnant of the remnant the car’a’carn shall save and they shall live.”
In a scene that will strike a distinct heavy metal power chord with fans of David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune, Rand shows all the Aiel just how powerful he is, drawing on the One Power to literally make it rain in the desert. The signs are clear: this guy can make the clouds dance, he knows the truth about the Aiel’s past as pacifist servants, and the odds are that the “break you as dried twigs” line is more literal than rhetorical. Overawed by this display, and with Rhuarc loudly declaring for Rand, the Aiel (well, most of them) kneel to their messiah. That the audience sitting at home can literally see the darkness enveloping Rand, and his refusal to let go of that power even when Egwene asks him to, serves as all manner of foreshadowing. There’s a reason some of the Aes Sedai are out to box Rand in, to literally contain him—he’s dangerous! Turns out most saviors, once they finally arrive, don’t do their job exactly as you hope.
My goal in this essay is more than simply to draw our attention to these similarities between these two hugely popular franchises that have built up global appeal but whose creators are also deeply rooted here in the U.S. What does it say about our cultural milieu that we draw upon these tropes time and time again to tell these stories? What would it look like if epic fantasy and science fiction were to operate with a different type of source code?
I join with millions of fans from around the world in enjoying these science fiction and fantasy tales. But it would be naive to pretend that they have nothing to do with our own world. There are consequences to perpetuating the ideas and ideology underlying white savior mythology, and it would be good for all of us—especially us fans who identify as white—to think about the impact it has on our understanding of how our own world functions when so many of the heroic narratives we consume seem to work from remarkably similar templates.
Adjacent to this, see also: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/
The Aiel are redheads though, and Rand is one of them. I think that the white savior view falls flat in WoT.
He may be Aiel by blood, but he isn’t culturally Aiel. So I feel there is some merit to the discussion of an outsider coming to rescue a culture they aren’t part of.
Well, he was only half Aiel to be fair, but I was thinking the same, falls a bit flat due to that fact.
You only briefly touch on it in the last section, but despite all outward similarities the main difference between Fremen and Aiel – at least in the books – is that Fremen’s prophecy is most likely fake yet they basically jump at it with fervor, while Aiel’s prophecy is as real as it gets in WoT, and they try to subvert it as far as possible.
Hard to believe this wasn’t deliberate on Jordan’s part.
Thoughtful and detailed analysis here. So many similarities between the two works, and teasing them out with this level of detail is impressive.
I am convinced that Jordan was heavily influenced by Dune, much more so than him being the product of the same broader cultural tropes (whatever he may have alleged about his sources). It beggars belief that he came up with so many on-the-nose imitations 25 years after the original. Not all of those imitations as closely linked to desert-cultural and white-savior aspects (Bene Gesserit -> Aes Sedai anyone? I won’t go so far as to claim a link between some other features, such as Kwisatz Haderach and the Dragon Reborn, which appear to be based on more general tropes). And so I do wonder how the author might have analyzed the stories if they were approached not as parallel developments but instead as sequential ones (which I think is much more accurate). Maybe it would not have made much impact, but I’m curious. The aspects highlighted within these stories are at least as much the product of a particular literary lineage (maybe best described as Lawrence of Arabia -> Herbert -> Jordan) as they are a pair of creators drawing from the same cultural milieu (or cultural melange, perhaps?). Now, the way these literary legacies were translated into the visual medium (which took place contemporaneously), is a slightly different question.
I agree that Jordan was heavily influenced by Dune in creating the Aiel. I also think that The Eye of the World was heavily influence by Tolkien. Regardless, Jordan continued grow and embellish the stories far beyond their inspirations !
Agree completely. By recognizing Dune’s strong influence on Jordan (or the influence of Tolkien, the Arthurian Romance, or other sources) I am by no means trying to diminish Jordan’s achievement. Herbert and Tolkien both had their strong influences as well. And as other commenters note, Jordan took some of what he borrowed from Dune in a very different direction—the very trope that is the subject of this post was used very differently in the two narratives. One deviated from playing it straight by showing the dangers of the white savior trope, while the other deviated from playing it straight by there not really being a “white savior” in the typical sense at all—as noted below, Rand was one of the desert people, who were white themselves.
At the end of the day, for those readers who are sensitive to the white savior narrative popping up from time to time, both of these works should be examples of how to do it right (that is, they aren’t actually guilty of “perpetuating the ideas and ideology underlying white savior mythology”). For my part, I think it’s too simplistic to posit “white savior narrative bad” (or good), and that the use of such tropes are welcome tools in a literary tradition—morally neutral, but able to serve a positive message or negative one. Or simply be entertaining.
The Hero’s Journey and it’s place as the centerpiece of Eurocentric mythology and storytelling inevitably lead to the repetitive use of white male savior tropes in popular modern fantasy and science fiction stories written by white men before the Internet, like Herbert. I don’t know what Jordan’s excuse is. It feels like reading up on that would help the author elaborate their ideas on this subject. I very much like where they are going with this!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
Not only are there many books about this concept, it was the centerpiece of this really great Star Wars museum exhibit that traveled around the US back in the day. There’s a PBS documentary about it.
https://www.jcf.org/learn/star-wars
Jordan started writing and planning the structure of the Wheel of Time in 1984, long before the modern Internet (World Wide Web) was available.
There’s a reasonable point to be made about a white savior trope in both works. It’s a bit of an obvious point, though, which makes it not a particularly interesting point, IMO.
Consider: The initial books were published 60 and 35 years ago. They were written by white males, for whom a large portion of their education would have been centered in European history and literature. The writers target audiences were at the very least perceived as being predominately white and male.
So, yes, the point is true, in sort of an “they are of their era” sort of way. This should not be a surprise. Writers tend to write what they know, reflecting their formal and informal education. And they tend to write for their target audience. There’s no rule that says they must, of course, but if one aspires to make a living of writing, it’s a (slightly) better bet than, say dumping a stream of consciousness onto the page for anyone who happens across it.
Rather than wondering, “What does it say about our cultural milieu that we draw upon these tropes time and time again?”, here are a couple of ideas for questions that (to me) would have more interesting answers:
1) What *should* Herbert and/or Jordan have done to make their respective “chosen saviors” acceptable? Probably not just keep their white saviors in a white society. Somehow having the savior more obviously coded as of the “mysterious other” race seems off the table as well – coming from a white male author, that smacks a lot of a “Magical Indigenous” trope. *Is* there a correct answer? Why or why not?
2) What parts do you feel Herbert and/or Jordan did well? What are acceptable, and “worthy of emulating”, and what are the criteria used to decide? Somehow, especially for the aspiring writers among us, it feels like showing us “how to do it well/acceptably” may be more useful than a million examples of “how to do it poorly or insensitively”, if you get my meaning.
Keep in mind that Herbert wasn’t trying to make his savoir acceptable. He was trying to warn of the danger of blindly following the alleged savior. “Dune Messiah” and “Children of Dune” make that a lot more explicit, with body counts in the billions.
That’s one of the misses in the latest Dune movies, probably driven by the (IMHO unnecessary) decision to compress the timeline from several years down to one.
Question for the author:
Are you sure that both Jordan and Herbert didn’t just take a look at cultures from the other side of the world and think “holy shit, this is so cool. I need to have my favorite character (the one I’m writing) interact with a similar group in my favorite story (the one I’m writing)”? It’s my opinion that’s closer to the truth. These stories came out in the 70’s and the 90’s, and I don’t believe either Herbert or Jordan were trying to perpetuate a “only the white man can save all peoples” sort of thing. If these stories came out either today or 100 years ago, I think you could read into it a little bit more. I think two goofy guys wanted to write stories about messiahs and also thought sand was cool and the people—imagined or no—who lived in such harsh environments were cool.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding the article. I’m not sure if you think the white savior trope is a bad/problematic thing or not. Clearly, you and I both enjoy these stories, I just can’t parse out if this is an article where you compare two stories that might use this trope or if it’s a condemnation of this trope that happens to be in these stories. Any reply would be appreciated.
According to Rhuarc in a later book, something like 1/3 of the Aiel joined Rand’s cause, 1/3 joined Couladin and the Shaido and 1/3 was neutral in that conflict or became Tinkers. Rand’s display of knowledge and power didn’t sway most of the Aiel. It broke them, as was prophecized. But a remnant of a remnant was saved. What’s the remnant is a good question that involves Aviendha’s vision of the future, which was very bleak.
“I am struck by the fact that both Jordan and Herbert wrote epic sagas in which young white men arrive as messianic figures to save the world.”
I hate to say it, but I think this whole piece of analysis or comparison between WoT and Dune falls flat because WoT explicitly is not doing what the author suggests. In WoT, Rand isn’t a white man arriving to save a desert people — he IS one of those desert people. His parentage is central to his backstory and the overall plot. His father was an Aielman, and his mother was a non-Aiel who emigrated there years before his birth (and so had integrated culturally). He was raised by non-Aiel, but even before his parentage was revealed, the series repeatedly dropped allusions to his resembling Aiel, with many characters mistaking him for Aiel. So this isn’t an external white man coming to save the “savages” — they’re his own people.
Culturally, he wasn’t Aiel. But he quickly begins adapting large parts of their culture — which Paul also does, so the comparison works in that regard. But Paul is non-Fremen and Rand isn’t.
Both then must have drawn some inspiration from <i>Greenmantle</i> by John Buchan. Also Lawrence of Arabia is very much similar too.
Neither of these are actually good examples of the White Saviour trope. Rand is actually Aiel by birth…just raised elsewhere. And the Aiel are portrayed as having significantly FEWER issues than the rest of the known world in the Wheel of Time.
Dune on the other hand is actually a deconstruction of the White Saviour trope. Paul, and his successor Leto, are given power amongst the fremen because of an artificially constructed myth. And rather than saving the Fremen, they destroy them.
Robert Jordan is on record as saying he was heavily influenced by Dune. He took the same elements and went a different way with them, that’s all. Nothing new under the sun.
I have to disagree. Hard. At least concerning the written books of Wheel of Time.
Less because Rand has Aiel heritage . That can (and should) be waived away because he comes and brings with an altogether different culture Furthermore it can be argued, that the blueprint for his character is a contemporary white American.
But Rand al’Thor is the savior of the world, not the savior of the Aiel. The Aiel are in no special need of saving. No more than any other human, no more than the Sharans fighting against him. Neither is his culture depicted superior. Rand is the embodied trope of the Chosen One, here taken to the extreme. This trope can overlap with the White Savior, here it does not.
If You want a typical White Savior, try Joel Rosenberg Guardians of the Flame – or any adventure book of the old times (I grew up in Germany with Karl May).
That out, orientalism is a far more complicated affair. I agree with the author, that there are overlaps between the depiction of Aiel culture and Western perception of Arab culture.
And promotion and fannish perception is a different matter too. Anybody remember the original cover of The Dragon Reborn. I just checked. The Arab-looking savages keep their place on the backside, clearly depicting the Aiel as anything but blond.