In my very first essay for Reading the Wheel of Time, I referenced something a writing teacher once told me about stories—that they all begin with either a boy leaving home, or with a stranger coming to town. In that first piece I observed that, when it comes to The Lord of the Rings-style questing narratives, these two types of story are actually one type, in which a stranger (usually a wise guide, sometimes an enemy, and often both) comes to town, and it results in a boy (or a girl, or a group of young people) leaving home.
What I find so interesting about this structure is the concept of change, and the catalyst of that change, within a narrative. Of course, all stories are about change. Sometimes this change takes place over a moment or a day, other times over years or even a lifetime. The change can be small or large, external or internal, but it is always there—without change nothing has happened, and there is nothing, as they say, for the gleemen to recount. Thus, when we categorize a story into “a stranger comes to town” and “a boy leaves home,” we are actually considering where the catalyst for change comes from, and we are considering where the change, the arc of the story, takes place. In the first example, the world of the story has change brought into it from some outside force. In the second, the protagonist(s) go out into the world and both are forever altered by the experience.
Obviously this is somewhat of an oversimplification, but I find it useful when discussing questing narratives like The Wheel of Time, because the “quest” of these stories is the catalyst that induces the change. For Frodo, change comes to him when Bilbo departs from the Shire, leaving the ring in Frodo’s care. The arrival, first of Gandalf and then the Black Riders, precipitates Frodo’s own departure from the Shire and the beginning of the quest that will eventually take him to the slopes of Mount Doom. For Richard of the Sword of Truth series, change comes with the murder of his father and the arrival of Kahlan in the Westlands—what he learns from her, along with his naming as the Seeker, propels Richard to leave his home and go with her across the boundary. And in The Wheel of Time… well, you all know what happens there.
In all three of these examples, there is something more than chance at work, and more, even, than the machinations of the stranger. The wise guide’s arrival in the hero’s sleepy countryside home is not the precipitation of events, but rather the first fall of dominoes laid in place by some other—more ethereal and unseen—hand. Fate, chance, the Wheel of Time, these are the true agents of the change that occurs in the world, and in our protagonists.
A wizard is never late, one might say. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when destiny means him to.
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The Eye of the World: Book One of The Wheel of Time
Sometimes I feel like I am belaboring the question of fate in The Wheel of Time; it’s a facet I touch on often in the read, but I keep coming back to it because the subject remains endlessly fascinating to me. Take Mat’s last coin toss in The Shadow Rising, for example. Unsure of whether or not he wants to accompany Rand into Alcair Dal, he leaves the decision up to his ta’veren power, trusting that his luck will tell him the right thing to do. But the coin lands on its edge, rolling downhill and falling over only when it’s too far away for Mat to see which side it has landed on. He attributes this strange result to Rand’s superior ta’veren power, which indeed it might be, but whatever the cause, the ultimate result of the coin toss is that Mat has to make his own decision whether to stay or go. Fate, ta’veren power, and even the random direction of chance was denied him, and he had to make a definitive choice.
I feel like this scene taught me something important about free will in The Wheel of Time. Whether it was by Rand’s desire or the Pattern’s, Mat wasn’t just granted the ability to choose for himself—a choice was actually demanded of him. This is significant in a character who doesn’t like to admit to his own investment in events. But it’s also significant because of what it says about the Wheel, and the Pattern it spins of people’s lives, especially that of the ta’veren. When we were first introduced to the concept of ta’veren, it was through Loial, who explained that there “is always room for small changes, but sometimes the Pattern simply won’t accept a big change, no matter how hard you try.” Rand agrees with this, adding that he could choose to live on a farm or in town, but that he couldn’t become a king. If you think about it, though, these choices aren’t something you’re making despite the Pattern, but because of it. The Pattern places you in the world, presents you with options for your life, and asks for you to choose. After all, you can’t avoid making a choice about where to live, and your choice of town or farm will affect other people’s lives, thereby affecting the Pattern.
Now, the differences spun out by that choice may very well be slight, but there is really no way to see how far the ripples of your small stone will spread, to use the common pond metaphor. And of course, if you are someone with more power in life, you ostensibly have more ability to influence the Pattern. A ruler choosing to go to war will affect many lives, for example, and therefore affect a great deal of the Pattern. And a ta’veren will be presented with even greater choices than that, and so their effect on the lives of others will also be that much greater.
But wherever you are situated in the Pattern, and however relatively big or small your sphere of influence is, I think it’s a mistake for Loial to suggest that the Pattern is only accommodating people’s desire to make choices. You can’t unbecome who you are, of course, which is the part of the Pattern that truly is fated, decided for you without your input or consent. But the fate of birth doesn’t mean you don’t have choices in your life. Rather, the Pattern presents you with choices, continually, demands that you make them, and spins on through your decision.
It’s striking to realize that this can be both a very religious and a very secular observation. Whether the Pattern chose where someone’s soul would be born or whether their birth was truly a random occurrence, these facts about their subsequent choices remain true. And unless they are directly part of the fight against the Dark One, the difference has no actual bearing on how they choose to live their life; the consequences are important, not the design by which they come about. There is something oddly comforting for me in that, both as it pertains to the universe of the story as well as just considering a philosophy for living in my own.
Now, there is obviously more to being ta’veren, such as Mat’s manipulation of odds that ensures his survival in a fight, or the way that Rand pulls people to follow him. But as I watch every step of Rand’s journey as the Dragon be about specifically making choices and decisions that others can’t anticipate, his actions feel to me as though they are very much about free will, rather than him believing that he makes choices while the Pattern pushes him along track that has already been laid out.
Perhaps the best way to think about it is Moiraine’s decision to go after the Eye of the World, back in the first novel. After everyone reunites in the Queen’s Blessing and all the various threads are revealed to her and she realizes that there are three ta’veren, not just the one, she makes a startling observation:
“We cannot remain in Caemlyn, but by any road, Myrddraal and Trollocs will be on us before we have gone ten miles. And just at this point we hear of a threat to the Eye of the World, not from one source, but three, each seeming independent of the others. The Pattern is forcing our path. The Pattern still weaves itself around you three, but what hand now sets the warp, and what hand controls the shuttle?”
She worries in that speech that it is the Dark One touching the Pattern and directing their feet, but on the very same page she also has a much more optimistic thought:
“The Pattern presents a crisis, and at the same time a way to surmount it. If I did not know it was impossible, I could almost believe the Creator is taking a hand. There is a way.”
Moiraine could have decided not to act upon her own authority and gone first to the White Tower to deliver this information. Or she could have chosen to break up the group, perhaps only bringing the three boys to find the Eye, or made some other choice based on the information she had at her disposal. The Pattern brought her, brought all of them, to this point together so that they could choose what to do next, and not only Moiraine but every one of them made a choice to go to the Eye. And when Moiraine says she almost sees the hand of the Creator in how events have unfolded, I think she’s right. The Creator isn’t directly interfering in what’s happening, but by creating the Pattern to work the way it does, the Creator is part of events.
The Pattern is a mysterious entity, and I think I can often forget how little the “experts” we encounter actually understand about it. Modern Aes Sedai are working with so little information, the remnants of knowledge from the Age of Legends is like a single candle in a dark tunnel.
Take Verin’s explanation of the World of Dreams that she gives to Egwene in The Dragon Reborn. She is explaining what she knows about parallel worlds, how in the Age of Legends they believed that there were more worlds, almost a whole other layer, outside of those reachable by the Portal Stones, that perhaps the Wheel weaves an even greater pattern from the many worlds than it does from the lives it spins into the Age Lace. She doesn’t know, of course—no one does. But she does explain to Egwene that there are variations in how different the worlds are from each other, and that the only constant is that the Dark One is imprisoned in all of them.
Egwene takes this to mean that there is a Dark One for every world, and has to be corrected.
“No, child. There is one Creator, who exists everywhere at once for all of these worlds. In the same way, there is only one Dark One, who also exists in all of these worlds at once. If he is freed from the prison the Creator made in one world, he is freed on all. So long as he is kept prisoner in one, he remains imprisoned on all.”
I glossed over this passage the first time I read it, not really understanding anything of what Verin was talking about, but came back to it recently when I was considering all the new information we’ve since learned from Amys and the Wise Ones about how Tel’aran’rhiod actually works. The existence of a Creator and a Dark One who are in every world at once seems like a pretty clear metaphysical concept, and explaining Tel’aran’rhiod as a third constant between worlds is also fairly understandable. But Verin’s assertion that, as long as the Dark One remains imprisoned in one world, he remains imprisoned in all of them gave me pause.
If there is no real free will in the world of The Wheel of Time, then the possible escape of the Dark One is outside anyone’s control—whether or not he will eventually break free is preordained. But if free will is possible, if it is a series of choices in the manner I have outlined in this essay, then one wonders how this logic plays out.
If one person, one iteration of the Dragon or his allies, actually allows the Dark One to break free, allowing the Dark one to touch and remake the Pattern, does this suggest that every other world will suddenly be unmade even though there is no logical reason for the Dark One to break free in their reality? Does the threat of suddenly winking from existence hang over every person and every universe in The Wheel of Time? Or are all these choices so inexorably linked that all events must unfold in harmony with each other in order for the Dark One to break free on all planes?
“That does not seem to make sense,” Egwene protested.
“Paradox, child. The Dark One is the embodiment of paradox and chaos, the destroyer of reason and logic, the breaker of balance, the unmaker of order.”
But until the Dark One touches the Pattern, his powers of paradox cannot effect the outcome. So, if what Verin is saying is true (to be fair, we have no way of knowing if she is correct here) then that means that the Dark One has never, in any world on any plane, for all the history of Time, broken completely free of his prison. And this is interesting to me because it changes the odds, puts them more in the favor of our heroes. All this time the Dark One has seemed this impossible, unrelenting force, a tidal wave against which our heroes have only the slimmest of chances. But this makes it seem very different, I think; surely the stakes have been this dire before, worse even. And yet the Light has always prevailed.
This is a bit of a tangential observation, I suppose, but one I am going to hold onto as I begin The Fires of Heaven and step into the next chapter of Rand’s story. Tarmon Gai’don they call the confrontation that is coming, but it can’t be the Last Battle. Unless the Dark One breaks free and undoes Creation, there will always be another Last Battle, and another, and another, as the Wheel continues to turn and nothing ever ends.
Questing narratives are about leaving home. They are about a hero or heroes who step out into the wider world for the first time, and are changed by the experience. Rand struggles with the weight of responsibility as the Dragon Reborn. Mat learns that he is a part of the world, part of events, and cannot deny that fact, at least when it comes to his actions. Perrin has to learn that making the right choice does not mean there will not be consequences, often painful and difficult ones. Nynaeve struggles with her fear of herself, and must learn to take control of her own choices rather than let that deliberate lack of self-awareness direct her actions. Egwene must learn patience so that her actions and their consequences are not out of control. And Elayne grapples with the knowledge that the weight of her choices will change when she becomes Queen.
There is a reason questing tales usually feature young people—they are coming of age narratives told on a grand stage, across the whole map of a world and through the mythic devices of Good vs Evil and fighting for the fate of the world. Sure, a stranger came to town, but it is the leaving, and the stepping into one’s destiny, that makes the true tale. And it is the choosing that shapes our destiny, as well as the destiny of those around us. Pattern or no, Creator or no, learning this is the true growing up, I think.
Sylas K Barrett is also really into The Umbrella Academy right now, and can’t stop thinking about something Diego Hargreeves says in season two. Everyone changes the world…. Everyone. And it’s scary but that’s kinda the deal.
Herein Sylas starts to become Ishamael.
You were always so full of thoughts, Elan. Your own logic destroyed you, didn’t it?”
Sylas comes to the opposite conclusion of Ishamael, though. Ishy’s logic is that if the battle goes on forever then eventually the Dark One will break free, without realizing that the battle has gone on forever without the Dark One ever breaking free. Sylas picked up on the second piece.
You know it’s funny. During my reading of The Wheel of Time, I always considered the Pattern to be more of a philosophical construct – a collection of names attributed to observed phenomenon in the world. Thinking about The Wheel of Time meta-contextually, I think I was wrong. Most readers don’t seem to agree with that reading, and given what little I know of Robert Jordan’s life, it seems likely that he did intend the Pattern to be a concrete force.
For me though, I found it to be entirely internally consistent to view the entire philosophy of the Pattern to be metaphorical or at best observational in nature. Much like we observe similarities in disparate groups and call it isomorphism, the people of Randland observed how some individuals had the power to shape events and others did not and named it ta’veren. I’m pretty sure I was wrong of course, but I found it comforting, actually, to read a fantasy story with a more natural driving force, not some fantasy construction, but something that could be observed in reality as well.
@2. Elan Moran realized that, assuming he was correct about being the Dark One’s eternal champion, he and the DO only have to succeed once to win forever. Whereas the Dragon and the Creator must win every time. Sure they have since the beginning of time but in his mind, it was inevitable the Dark would eventually succeed.
@@.-@: There are neither beginnings nor ends to the Wheel of Time. Therefore, an infinite amount of time exists in the past, and an infinite amount of time exists in the future. Given an infinite amount of time, any non-zero probability event will occur. Since the Dark One has never broken free, the chance of the Dark One breaking free is zero.
I know what Ishy’s conclusions were and why he came to them. He’s just wrong, though. And I suspect he was smart enough to realize that, but the idea of being the DO’s ‘champion; and the ‘inevitability’ of the DO winning appealed to his ego and nihilistic bent both, so rationalized it away.
@@.-@ Which is another thing Ishy gets wrong. There isn’t a beginning of time, there is just the Wheel.
There may be no beginning nor no end to the Wheel. But there was a moment of creation. Like the ever present wind it was not the beginning but it was a beginning.
@7: I have thoughts about that, but it’s too big a subject to tackle on my phone. Suffice it to say for the moment that both the act of creation and the Creator exist OUTSIDE of time, and a MOMENT in circular time exists in both the past and the future simultaneously.
@8: For some reason that made me imagine a roulette wheel with the ball spinning around the rim, with the Dark One just sure his number is eventually going to land. The Creator (dealer) knowing the game is a little bit in his own favor. House rules, after all.
A roulette wheel does serve as a good metaphor. The Creator creates the Wheel. Time is expressed by the numbers on the wheel. Time does not “begin” until the wheel starts spinning. The Creator gives it a spin.
Which number on the wheel represents the “moment” of creation? None of them do. They, and all things, were created prior to Time (which doesn’t start until the wheel starts spinning), rather than while time was happenings, as in our linear view of time.
The Pattern is set, the Wheel spins, time repeats. World without end. Until the Dark One, also outside of time (and therefore outside the Pattern) is able to touch the Pattern. This chaos element is not something that can be accounted for in the Pattern itself. This explains why Min’s visions become less sure over the course of the series. She gets either or visions, because the Dark One has touched the Pattern in a way that affects the vision.
The Elenium begins with Sparhawk riding into Cimmura. He’s a middle-aged man, not a boy. He’s returning to his home city, not leaving it. He’s well known in Cimmura, even though he’s been in exile for a long time, so he’s not a stranger in the city. He’s also not a stranger to the protagonist, because he is the protagonist. That’s one story that doesn’t begin with a boy leaving home or a stranger coming to town.
I have come to believe that the primary purpose of the Pattern is to preserve the world. In principle it is quite possible for someone to free the Dark One. Without a Pattern this would happen sooner or later, and that would be the end of the world – but the Pattern guides events in such a way that the Dark One ends up re-imprisoned every time.
The people in The Wheel of Time believe that time is cyclical, but they also believe in a Creator and a creation event. At the core of their religion is an unresolvable paradox, and that’s how we know it’s a religion.
@10 – So you’re saying that time only exists within the Wheel. And the moment of creation, when the beta version was finished and it was time to go live, it also ended, all at the same time? From creation to the inevitable end, all came into existence at the go live event? Why would the Dark One, who must exist outside the system like the Creator, even bother trying? Boredom?
Because the Creator made them to do that.
The Creator’s kind of a dick.
Love your posts Silas, but just as I’d forgotten Richard Rahl and the Sword Of Truth series was actually a thing you had to go and remind me!! Jog on Terry
Looking forward to the Fires Of Heaven read
Ste
Also Sylas not Silas. Sorry about that
The problem with worlds that have real; functioning gods is that they come with agendas and too bad if that interferes with any plans you may have had for your life. Fate is; all too often; a bitch.
Hah @5 that kind of blew my mind.
Anyway, my mind is too distracted and diffused to offer any real commentery right now, but your posts are one of the highlights of my week, Sylas!
“Because the Creator made them to do that.
The Creator’s kind of a dick.”
A general problem all Religions with a single creator Deity face…
Austin@12:
In real life, time is a construct of our three dimensional physical world, mass, acceleration, and distance. It doesn’t exist as an absolute, and it wouldn’t be experienced the way we do, or even at all, theoretically, by a being that exceeded three dimensions. We would have a lot of difficulty even trying to understand such a being.
You say “And the moment of creation, when the beta version was finished and it was time to go live, it also ended, all at the same time?”
But there is no time outside of the physical world. So, no, it didn’t happen “at the same time”. Time is a function of the physical universe. I think it might be difficult to really move this conversation forward if the response to “there is no time” is “so it all happened at the same time?”
It’s easier to look at it through abstracts, and stop thinking in terms of linear time. The Pattern is Time in the Wheel of Time, so let’s use that as an example.
The Dark One and the Creator are outside the Pattern. So they do not experience the Pattern they way those INSIDE the Pattern do. They are not part of it, nor are they constrained to its properties (like, Circular Time, or any time at all). It’s possible that they have Time in some sense of the word, but it wouldn’t be anything remotely like we experience, and we wouldn’t be able to imagine it. It’s unknowable to us.
The way I’ve used in the past — and the way trying to work with extra dimensions beyond three dimensional time-space was explained to me — was to imagine yourself as a two dimensional creature. You exist in only two dimensions: length and width. You have no height.
Please note that doesn’t mean you’re short. It means you are zero, and you’ve never experienced height, nor have any concept of up, or down. You exist on a 360 degree plane of existence. You have no frame of reference for a being with arms and legs, or human speech (which requires vibrations in three dimensions).
You would not be able to perceive the three dimensional beings who occasionally pass through your plane oof existence, but you would certainly be able to notice their effects. You might be able to posit their existence. It’s also possible that these three dimensional beings might be able to communicate with you in some form or fashion, if they figure out you exist (or created you in the first place). After all, while you don’t have any comprehension of height, they understand length and width just fine.
The Creator and the Dark One are as much beyond us (maybe even MORE) than we are beyond a two dimensional object. And since time is a function of our three dimensional physical universe, a function whose properties change through the interaction of mass, acceleration and distance, and is not constant, beings who are not constrained to our physical universe would not be constrained by time.
As far as why the Creator would go to the trouble… the characters in the Wheel of Time may personalize the Creator. And the Creator may even occasionally speak to people in the story, but what they are experiencing is as far from the reality of what the Creator is as that two-dimensional creature who experiences us passing through its plane of existence. There is no way for a lesser dimensional being to understand even the smallest part of a greater dimensional being, because we don’t have the ability to perceive the being in its totality.
Who could possibly know why a being that much greater than ourselves would do anything? Even if they told us why, that explanation, by its very nature and medium of delivery, would be something akin to using a square to explain a box to a creature without the ability to understand height. It would be a representation that doesn’t come close to expressing the totality.
I kind of thought at least through KoD that the creator and the dark one were one and the same. But then again I also used to think that randland took place literally beyond time, not just in our future history
Dan@20:
Our future and our past history, simultaneously. That’s the nature of Circular Time. If we are to believe the in-world cosmology provided.
The interview with RJ at the beginning of the audiobooks is a fascinating listen. He talks a little about this concept in that the Creator needs a force to keep the circular nature of the universe in motion — thus the ta’veren.
I’ve always viewed it in terms of a project timeline. Each project has a crit path that needs to be stuck to if the project is to be completed. The persons assigned to this task (in this scenario it is ta’veren) must meet goals or else the project fails. There are other tasks needed to complete the project but they can moved around and changed without impacting the final due date. The people assigned to these tasks (think people like Moraine, Egwene, etc.) are still needed to be successful but their path is more mutable to meet goals.
I view this in the same way as free will in this universe. The Creator has this constant crit path to keep time circular. In most instances, people have complete autonomy. But if big changes needs to happen to keep time circular, the Creator basically zaps a person’s free will and forces them on the “crit path” to success as ta’veren. This person manipulates his resources to bend the will of the people around them to the will of the Creator until the project is back on schedule and the circular path of time is running smoothly.
For me the DO can only win, if the patern lets him.
His main weapons are DF and the forsaken. They are part of the pattern. (For DF proven by Mins viewings for example)
So the pattern is using his weapons to beat him (Slayer was for example a training tool for Perrin)
So how can the DO win?
@23 that’s where Free Will comes in, the Dragon could choose/help to let the DO win, that was Ishy’s pitch to Rand a few times
@5 “Given an infinite amount of time, any non-zero probability event will occur. Since the Dark One has never broken free, the chance of the Dark One breaking free is zero.”
While I like this mathematical explanation, there’s another explanation, which I read on this site sometime and which has stuck in my mind since:
Time, as Anthony Pero has touched upon, only exists within the Pattern. So for the DO and the Creater, who exist outside of the Wheel, time does not exist. We humans are subject to time. Since we perceive time as linear, events seem to repeat themselves with each turning of the Wheel of Time. Only an outside observer could see the circular nature of the Wheel.
This theory also nicely explains why the Dark One makes such stupid mistakes: since the DO is not subject to time, he cannot learn from past mistakes – there simply is no “past” for him. He makes his move to break the Wheel and is repelled by the Dragon. We humans perceive this struggle to take place over several millenia, and to repeat itself each time the Wheel has turned to the 2nd/3rd age, but for the DO, it simply is.
@25:
I don’t know if it’s as simple as “time does not exist” so much as that the Dark One and the Creator are beyond time. It “might” be fair to say that the Dark One exists outside of Time, since the Creator imprisoned him in some way beyond reach, at least until the Bore is drilled.
Certainly, some small part of the Dark One, the part that interacts with Humans in Shayol Ghul, must interact with Time as well, in some capacity.
I do think it’s an interesting concept to think of the “Last Battle” is the exact same battle that is fought in all times by all Dragons, in all universes. In that way, it would also be the “First Battle,” and the “Only Battle.”
I also think we take the concept of the Creator and the Dark One as equals too far. They are alike in that they exist outside of the Pattern, but the Creator obviously has the power to imprison the Dark One, so they are not equal. That would be like saying lightness and darkness are equal. They are two sides of the same coin, perhaps, but light extinguishes darkness and pushes it back. Darkness cannot encroach on the light. The source of the light has to be extinguished by something other than mere darkness.
@22 and anyone else. Several of the audiobooks had interviews with Jordan in which he discussed why he started the WoT. It flowed from his opinion as to what would really happen in the “Gandalf & Frodo” scenario.
Are these interviews transcribed anywhere on the web? If not, someone who is better typist than me would be doing a great service if they transcribed and postedthese audio interviews.
Silas needs to at least listen to one of these early interviews as what Jordan says is directly applicable to what Silas has written in this post. (Hint, hint, moderator).
Personally I’ve never been sure whether the Dark One is the result of our free will, we created him by making bad choices. Or if he exists to give us free will, to give an option to positivity.
In the book of Job Satan is a servant of God and welcome at his court, the loyal opposition so to speak. The Dark One seems more Miltonic.
@24/rc_math: That’s Ishamael’s pitch, but we also know that in a vast tranche of potential timelines (from the Portal Stone journey) that Rand never does so, from Rand’s explicit statement to that effect whilst in full on ta’varen fugue mode in TGH,
From a more metaphysical standpoint, the Pattern and the Wheel are made to contain the DO (amongst whatever other purposes the Creator might’ve had for it). Nothing within the Pattern — which is, you know, everything — is going to be allowed to break the Pattern and allow the DO out. The Pattern won’t allow it. Note that a way to repair the damage done to the Pattern from balefire appears precisely when it’s necessary, for example.
@28 There has to be the DO to have free will, we saw that in the final battle where Rand created a world without the DO and he saw the consequences for that.
@29 I understand what you’re saying, but have to disagree, there has to be the ability or option for the DO to win. Otherwise what is the point of telling the story? There is no drama or tension or stakes if it is impossible for the bad guy to win and from a storytelling standpoint I don’t see why Robert Jordan would create that.
@rc_math: Did you at any point think RJ was going to conclude the series by having the DO triumph? Particularly given we have the direct intervention of the Creator to stop that in the very first book?
The DO winning wasn’t ever possible. The narrative trick is to obscure that.
The White Ajah has taken over this comment section. LOL
Do we have any narrative evidence that the DO is actually imprisoned? I always thought it was that he was sealed out moreso than imprisoned. I picture our universe like an egg. Lanfear bored into the shell allowing the DO in. When the DO was “imprisoned” by Lews Theron and crew, he was technically just pushed back out and the bore was patched by like a black hole or something that slowed the DOs integration into our universe through time dilation (thus why the forsaken aged at different rates). It wasn’t until the last battle that the egg was made new again. From our perspective the DO was imprisoned during this period but I always believed he was just temporarily kicked back out.
Also, w.r.t. free will, @30, I don’t read that scene quite like that. What the DO provides isn’t fee will, precisely, but selfishness. Ambition. These are key elements of many characters, even on the Light side of things — note that it is in Elayne, whose ambition is absolutely central to her life, that Rand notices something “missing” — and is part of their strengths. Selfishness to an extreme is the one consistent attribute amongst the servants of the Dark, too.
@30 “There has to be the DO [evil] to have free will.”
I hear this argument frequently as an explanation for the Epicurean dilemma of evil existing in a world created by a benevolent Creator. But the argument assumes that the Creator is constrained by Logic. If so, Logic is the true ultimate power, worthy of worship perhaps, with the Creator being only an “inhabitant” of an existence bound by rules that He/She did not create.
Surely a Creator with truly ultimate .power could come up with an existence that excluded evil yet retained free will. Logic -as presently understood – might be sacrificed; that existence might well be inaccessible to human understanding as it presently is, but still . . . an ultimate Creator is not bound by Logic – rather, Logic is a creation along with time, space, energy, and quantum fields.
Intervention by the White Ajah would be welcome if they have an explanation.
That theory from Verin/Aes Sedai on the nature of the DO and how it interacts with the worlds of the Pattern is just that, a theory. Whiting this whole piece out since Silas may read it.
Rand pretty much observes this later that he doesn’t think that freeing the DO in one world would free it on all worlds. The DO is bound by Time (and other rules of the Pattern) when it touches the Pattern. It’s infinite outside of the Pattern. We have examples of this, the Bore and the Seals are one. Balefire is another. The mere possibility that the DO can actually be killed in the Last Battle is a pretty strong example. As is the fact that the DO needs the Dragon/humans to capitulate/make an agreement to basically do anything. These are all rules of the Pattern. And within the Pattern, each world is basically local. Sure the worlds are linked, esp at the Last Battle but I always found the explanation that the Creator creates worlds and leaves them to live by the rules of the Pattern to be the most poignant. Since free will is important to the Creator and by extension the Pattern. Some worlds may wither and die aka the DO wins as happens in the portal stone world Rand meets Lanfear for the first time. But such places dying has no direct impact on other worlds because the DO is bound to only rule within what the Pattern allows. The Pattern is effectively both the prison that keeps the DO out and the only thing that binds it.
@33 that has definitely been my read of it. The Pattern keeps the infinite out (both the Creator and the DO) and binds them to rule to interact with the finite world(s). Time is one such bound as is free will unless the world gets broken completely one way or another. The Bore is a hole in a point where the Pattern is thin. The difference is that the DO keeps trying to break in (from the perspective of the finite, time bound world) and the Creator basically plays by the rules it created (non intervention basically since the Pattern provides enough ammunition to help the world go on forever)
@35, Surely a Creator with truly ultimate .power could come up with an existence that excluded evil yet retained free will.
No, I don’t think He could. By giving His creation Free Will He has ceeded some of His power to us. We can defy Him and affect creation by doing so. Did we create evil by exercising our Free Will? Maybe.
@38 I think that’s right too.
I am reminded of “arguments” I have had with people who tell me, when for instance a child is murdered on his bike, that “we can’t understand God’s will”. My reply is that this thing was not God’s will, it was ours, because we’re the ones in charge “down here”…
I am btw nowhere near as religious these days, as I was in my youth….
@39 RE child murdered on bike
An all-powerful god does not escape responsibility: having the power to prevent this, the god chose to let it happen.
@38 And if the god “ceded some of his power” to an evil-doer, then that god bears the responsibility for what results. (If I cede control of a car to a three-year-old, I am responsible for the crash.)
@40 Fair enough: but responsibility != will to make a thing happen, true?
@40, by creating free will God lost absolute control of the universe and control of individuals exercising that free will. Of course he also has the longest view and knows more than any of us about the ultimate consequences.of our acts.
I always took a big more postmodern view of things — the Creator is Robert Jordan. The other worlds that exist outside of Rand’s world are other worlds Robert Jordan thought of, like the Portal Stones worlds. If the Dark One is free in any one world, then he’d be free in all of these worlds, because that’s the way Robert Jordan structured this fictional universe. The Pattern is the term for the plot that Robert Jordan was weaving together out of all of these disparate characters he created. The characters did not have free will because Robert Jordan dictated their actions. They only exist insofar as the characters are typed out on paper, or in Robert Jordan’s head. Creation could be “unmade” at any time just by Robert Jordan deciding to stop writing the stories. Creation, in fact, has been unmade, since now that the story is over and Harriet has decreed there will be no “expanded universe” writings, as it were, there is no longer any Wheel of Time universe existing past what’s already been put down on paper.
And since Jordan is not around to write any more stories, the Dark One has won again.
After reading the final thoughts of RJ in AMOL, Rand has become the creator, and the act of creation occurs in the realm of chaos at Shayol Ghul the pattern is created and the wheel then revolves for 7 ages until the act of creation is repeated. It may be that the tests set by the Dark one cause the morphing of Rand, into the creator, so the only fixed thing is the dark one
Coming back to this now!
I will say I was never totally satisfied with the ending of WoT and both my husband and I have discussed it and he is even of the belief (perhaps a little tongue in cheek) that the Dark One basically won (or at least prevented his total defeat). But I’ve never really been a fan of philosophies like ‘good can’t exist without evil’ or ‘light without darkness’ etc. To me it’s the other way around. But others have brought up some interesting points in terms of what/who the DO actually is and so what would destroying it mean?
Now, where there are definitely some interesting discussions to be had is of the whole nature of free will, allowing vs permitting vs willing evil (and culpability thereof) and the paradox thereof. I can’t say I have the answer to that either. Love necessitates some type of freedom/choice (and so in that I do agree with the ending), but I’m just not totally sure if it necessitates a complete lack of evil. But perhaps it IS inevitable. (And yes, I haaaaaate so much the platitude of ‘God works in mysterious ways’, ‘the will of God’, etc. I’m religious but this stuff bugs the shit out of me and I think it’s bad theology to boot. I think there is an element of ‘yes, God can redeem any suffering/bring beauty from ashes’, as well as – for better or worse – God allows us to be subject to the natural consequences of both natural and human actions, but that’s still different than ‘God wanted this to happen’). But as my 7 year old sense while he was trying to grapple with some of this and also wondering aloud if we we more powerful than God in this regard, “Why did God give us free will? That was a mistake.”
I will admit the nature of time/cyclic stuff is something I always had a hard time wrapping my mind around. What types of variations are there in the different turnings of the Wheel?
Silas, your note that Tel’aran’rhiod is an ‘in-between’ space really resonated with me – like the ‘world of pools’ in The Magician’s Nephew. Metaphysically, if there are multiple worlds/timestreams/realities, I guess you’d need something (The Age Lace?) to hold ’em all together? Puts a whole different spin on Tel’aran’rhiod, though. Now I have to go re-read CS Lewis, dammit! (grin)
There’s a lot of paradox at work here. I generally agree that the Dark One is beyond time in his prison, but that does somewhat contradict what the Dark One told Demandred in his first appearance at the beginning of LoC. “EVEN I CANNOT SAVE HIM FROM BALEFIRE. EVEN I CANNOT STEP OUTSIDE OF TIME.” I know he’s the Father of Lies, but Demandred sensed anger/frustration at this statement and a lie doesn’t make sense there. It may just be a language issue though. The DO can’t affect the world unless he touches the Pattern, and by touching the Pattern he is bound by time. So he CAN step outside of time, but when he does, he has no power.
I’ve also always seen it as others have said, that the DO’s “prison” is not so much a place, as it is the void outside of the Pattern. The Pattern itself locks the DO out of the world.
Carrying that thought to its ultimate conclusion, you can certainly make the argument that it’s possible there IS no active Creator. When Rand forges the Dark One’s prison anew, “He wove something majestic, a pattern of interlaced saidar and saidin in their pure forms” [Emphasis mine]. Does Rand remake the whole Pattern every seven ages? Is Rand the Creator for all intents and purposes? Or is he imbued as the Creator’s Champion with the power of creation just for that period of time, and for some bonus period after where he can light his pipe with his will?
I believe it is left deliberately ambiguous by the authors as to how much of the cosmology is truly as the Third Agers state in their catechism. Maybe there was a moment of creation at some point, but the Creator truly has been hands off since then, and ever since it has been the Wheel and the Pattern, acting through Rand and the ta’veren that have kept it going. Is the Voice in TEoTW (“IT IS NOT HERE”) and before the Pit of Doom (“IT IS TIME. LET THE TASK BE UNDERTAKEN”) the Creator talking? Or Infinite Rand himself communicating across the Ages from the moment he touches all of the Pattern?
Thirty years since this series was started, and I think you could have these arguments for thirty more.
@36
Sylas stated at one point a year or two ago that he would no longer read the comments, and thus that the comments are a spoiler zone. I wish he would stick a reminder to that effect at the end of every post (the opposite of what Leigh did at the end of all of her Re-Read posts). Whiteout is also extremely cumbersome to decipher on a mobile device, so please don’t.
As to what you wrote, note that the dead world past the first Portal Stone was NOT a world where the DO was freed. It was just a world where the Trollocs had won and eaten everybody. The DO was still sealed there, or it would be one of the DO’s preferred end states (i.e. a world of good people being tormented, a world where everybody was Turned, or a void). Trollocs winning militarily is not enough to result in the freeing of the DO.