Greetings once again, me hearty Cosmere-Chickens! This week, we tackle the first of the Interludes between Parts Two and Three, in which the former bridgeman and current bearer of Jezrien’s Honorblade… cuts rocks with it. Um. Oh, and carries them around, because why not. He also makes plans with his new god to make life as miserable as possible for Kaladin. This makes us Very Not Happy.
Before we begin, please welcome Paige Vest, whom many of you know from previous articles. She’ll be taking over the RoW Reread for Lyndsey from here on out, and from past experience I promise she’ll do an excellent job!
P: Thanks, Alice! I look forward to hanging out with you each week, Sanderfans! And I wish Lyndsey the best of luck in her future endeavors!
Reminder: We’ll be discussing spoilers for the entirety of the series up until now. If you haven’t read ALL of the published entries of The Stormlight Archive (this includes Edgedancer and Dawnshard as well as the entirety of Rhythm of War), best to wait to join us until you’re done.
In this week’s discussion there are no Cosmere-level spoilers.
Heralds: Talenelat (Talenel, Taln), Herald of War. Stonewards. Dependable/Resourceful. Role: Soldier.
A: I always get a little salty about putting any of the Heralds on a Moash chapter, because it feels like an insult to them. But consistency, I guess… So why Taln this week? Perhaps the stoneworking has something to do with it, but I’d guess it’s mostly because Moash/Vyre thinks of himself as a soldier, and he’s pretty good at following orders. (Okay, only if he likes the orders, but for him, that’s a benefit of his current affiliation. He never gets orders he dislikes.)
Icon: Not Bridge Four—it’s a Moash/Vyre chapter.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Vyre/Moash
WHERE: Kholinar
WHEN: 1175.4.6.3
(Note: For the “when” notations, we normally use this wonderful timeline provided by the folks at The 17th Shard. This week, it appears to be incorrect, since they have this labeled as 4.4.4, but Moash notes that with the approaching Everstorm, the armies were preparing to attack Urithiru.)
Vyre is in a marble quarry, where he’s been using the Honorblade to cut stones for Fused residences. As the chapter opens, he’s trying and failing to emulate Adolin’s Shardblade-throwing skills, while mentally congratulating himself on his freedom from emotion and all other bonds. He’s proven false when Khen mentions his obsession with Kaladin, but he covers it up and returns to cutting stone. Returning to the city with the quarried stone, he is taken into a vision by Odium, who gives him two new tasks. He is to join the armies assaulting Urithiru, assuming his Honorblade will work the Oathgate; and he is to use his Connection to Kaladin to send nightmares and dreams in an effort to break his mind. Odium wishes to possess Kaladin; Vyre wishes to push him to self-destruction.
Overall Reactions
Vyre was unchained.
Moash, the man he’d once been…
A: I haven’t searched the book yet, but now I’m curious. Does he ever think of himself as Moash anymore, or is that just other humans thinking/talking about him? I’ll be watching and noting that in this chapter, at least. (Just maybe, I’ll take the time to look up his other POVs. We’ll see.)
Buy the Book
The Witness for the Dead
P: He may start the Interlude off thinking of himself as Vyre, but the interlude refers to him as Moash some of the time. I think that’s where a lot of the confusion in naming him during fan discussions and the like comes from, because some people don’t want his deadname used yet the book clearly refers to him as Moash during his own points of view.
A: As we’ll note below, he thinks of himself as Vyre most of the time, but certain topics cause him to revert to Moash. It will be interesting to notice this in Part Five, too! Given what we see here, I don’t think “deadname” is a valid designation.
Vyre threw his Shardblade with a wide, overhand throw…
He gestured, and the distant Shardblade vanished to mist. Yet it took him ten heartbeats to summon it again.
“I saw Prince Adolin throw his Blade,” Vyre said. “Three months ago, on the battlefield in northern Jah Keved. He is no Radiant, yet his Blade responds to him as if he were one.…” …
“He must be able to change the balance to allow for this maneuver. And it returned to him faster than ten heartbeats, even accounting for the accelerated pulse of battle.”
A: I find this whole scene hilarious (as well as informative). For all his talk about having no emotions and being unchained, he does envy those with bonded spren-Blades, and he’s trying so hard to mimic Adolin’s Maya-blade.
P: Not gonna happen. Ain’t no one like Maya ‘cept Maya. At least, not yet. And Adolin definitely has something special and unique going on with that spren.
A: It’s fun to learn, though, that Adolin has been doing a lot more with Maya than we’ve actually seen. We thought we were done with the “during the intervening year” stuff, but… I guess not! We saw at the end of Oathbringer that Maya did once form in less than the normal ten heartbeats; now we know that she has not only continued that pattern, she’s reduced the time it takes so much that it’s clearly observable to an outsider. Vyre might be wrong about her changing forms, because we know Adolin has been practicing throwing her for years; still, being Maya, she may have been altering her form for longer than we know!
P: I need MORE Maya!
Large stone settled on his shoulder, he hiked steadily up the path toward Kholinar. The marble was heavy, but not so much that he needed Stormlight or supernatural help.
P: What supernatural help? Other than Stormlight? And just how large is this piece of marble because that stuff is pretty heavy.
A: Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Even granted Roshar’s lower gravity making it weigh less for the same mass, you have to wonder!
Relationships and Romances
“You say you’re unburdened, Vyre,” she said. “That you don’t care anymore. But you keep hunting him. The Windrunner.”
At the mention of Kaladin, Moash felt a hint of old, painful emotions—though Odium quickly sucked them away. “Kaladin is a friend,” Moash said. “It is important to me that he find his freedom.
P: Pardon my Alethi, but my ass. Moash sought revenge over the death of his grandparents yet he wants to drive Kaladin to his death to “free” him? You can’t call him a friend and also want him dead. I don’t care if that means freedom to you, that is not okay.
A: Right? He seems to have convinced himself that he’s doing something good for Kaladin… as long as he doesn’t think too hard. But notice that when Khen brings up Kaladin, and stirs those emotions, he’s Moash again. It’s only for a minute, until he can clamp down on it, but it’s still there. (Things like this are what make me think Sanderson is setting up a redemption arc somewhere downstream. He’s at least keeping the option open, by drawing this division between Vyre and Moash.)
P: I have a lot of side-eye to cast at a possible redemption arc.
A: I hate the thought. Just hate it. And yet I expect it, to some extent, and I’m reasonably certain that if Sanderson goes that direction, I’ll end up loving it. And I’ll hate the fact that I love it. Argh.
Poor Kaladin. There was freedom available for his old friend. Two freedoms, in fact. But he doubted Kaladin would ever accept the same freedom as Vyre, so he offered the other one. The sweet peace of nonexistence.
A: Gaaaaaaaah. This makes me so angry. So much for the moment of humanity! “Sweet peace of nonexistence” my hat. He just wants to shut Kaladin up.
P: I feel that he’s jealous of Kaladin’s radiance. He thinks about the limitations of the Honorblade while he knows that Kaladin has no such limitations.
A: He claims that he feels no anger or humiliation over his Honorblade’s inferiority, but his comparisons reveal that while he doesn’t admit to them, the envy is there—of Adolin’s abilities with a dead(ish) Shardblade, and much more of Kaladin’s living Blade. And I note that he doesn’t think about the Blade Kaladin gave him, that he lost to the Fused—because he wouldn’t have been able to emulate Adolin with that Blade either. Typical Moash: The fault is clearly in the Blade, and not anything lacking in himself. Obviously not. /sarc
There was one chain still holding to him, Vyre admitted. That of his friend. I have to be right, Vyre thought. And he has to be wrong. Kaladin had to acknowledge that Vyre was right. Until he did…
Until he did, that last chain would remain.
A: Because if Kaladin is right and Vyre is wrong, that means there’s no justification for anything he’s done, and he can’t bear that thought. So in order to avoid being wrong, he’s going to try to drive Kaladin to suicide.
P: I need to stress again how upsetting this is. People like to say that Moash has done nothing wrong but how is it okay to try to drive a former friend to kill himself? That’s heinous. Detestable. Just wrong on so many levels. Who is he to think he knows what’s best for Kaladin when he can’t even deal with his own emotions‽
A: There’s one tiny ray of light in all of it, near the beginning of the Odium vision, where Odium is musing about Kaladin and the danger he presents.
I WOULD CLAIM THIS ONE, AS I HAVE CLAIMED YOU, Odium said.
And Vyre would see him dead first. A mercy.
A: I suppose that much might be true; for Kaladin, it would be better to be dead than to serve Odium. But I can’t help thinking it’s a very minor motivation, and at root, Moash doesn’t want a rival. Even more, he just wants Kaladin to be wrong; once dead, he has no more chance to prove he’s right. And once Kaladin is dead, that last smidgen of humanity in Moash will be gone and (he thinks) he’ll be free of all feelings of guilt.
P: If Moash sees death for Kaladin as a mercy over belonging to Odium, why does he remain? Why not take himself to the honor chasm? What’s that, you say? Because he’s a hypocrite? I agree wholeheartedly.
A: That’s partly why I think he doesn’t want Kaladin as a rival for his position with Odium. He claims it’s because Kaladin wouldn’t take that option, but at the same time he’s just a little worried about the possibility. He’d much rather see Kaladin dead by suicide, because that would (somehow) prove Moash right.
P: *vibrates as anger intensifies*
THERE ARE HOLES IN HIS SOUL. SOMEONE COULD GET IN. SOMEONE WHO KNOWS HIM, SOMEONE CONNECTED TO HIM. SOMEONE WHO FEELS AS HE DOES.
“I will do it.”
PERHAPS. YOU COULD INFLUENCE HIM IN SMALL WAYS ONLY. PERHAPS EACH NIGHT, WHEN HE SLUMBERS … HE THINKS OF YOU STILL, AND THERE IS MORE. A CONNECTION BECAUSE OF YOUR PAST, YOUR SHARED DREAMS. ANY BOND SUCH AS THAT CAN BE MANIPULATED.
A: The worst part about Moash is this intentional manipulation of the bond of friendship. It may be made more effective by a magic system in which Connection is an actual force, but it’s awful in itself, whether in fiction or real life. This is why I can’t comprehend people still maintaining that Moash did nothing wrong. How is it not wrong to use the bond of trust and friendship they once had in such a malicious way? To deliberately use that Connection to send Kaladin nightmares, intentionally twisting his mind, pushing him to the edge where he has no rationality and no hope?
P: Especially with how far Kaladin has come since The Way of Kings. Moash saw him rise above his station and pull his crew from the muck, saw him singlehandedly save lives, saw him become Radiant, and the best he can do for his former friend is to try to push him to the edge of the honor chasm again? How dare he, after he sought vengeance for the death of his grandparents, after he mocked Kaladin in the palace at Kholinar, after he murdered Roshone and again mocked Kaladin by “begging his mercy.” Again, how dare he deign to think he knows what’s best for Kaladin.
A: Think of all Kaladin did for him personally, too. Moash was one of that crew pulled from the muck, one of the lives saved. Kaladin gave him an unheard-of honor, gifting the Plate and Blade he’d earned to Moash, raising him automatically to fourth dahn with a priceless gift. Yeah, he lost all that for the sake of revenge, but he’d be dead by listener arrows if it hadn’t been for Kaladin. Gah.
“Then we find a way to make him jump,” Moash said softly.
A: Once again, right here at the end of the chapter, he’s Moash again… in the part where he thinks specifically about pushing Kaladin all the way to death. (This is a little like watching the identity shifts in Shallan’s POVs, come to think of it…)
Bruised and Broken
P: Ooh, I’m all OVER this section!
Okay, okay… putting aside my Moash hatred for a moment, let’s look at the state of his mental health. He was obviously traumatized by the death of his grandparents, and by his time in the bridge crews. I imagine he might suffer from PTSD because of those experiences. He betrayed his dear friend and tried to kill him while he was unarmed and injured, and now carries so much guilt from that that he couldn’t bear it any longer. Having been captured, he decided to give in to the freedom from feelings offered by Odium.
I’m really trying not to be super sarcastic here, I promise. Because when you’re depressed and mentally unstable, your judgment is not usually very sound. In fact, it can be quite questionable. And on one level, I can understand not wanting to feel emotions. I’ve often dissociated in order to escape overwhelming emotion, but I always come back to it because even as I do it and feel the nothing, I know it’s not right. Moash has to know that what he’s doing isn’t right. Right?
A: Quite true; Moash is very definitely broken, and for plenty of valid reasons. And his judgment is definitely not very sound. IMO, Sanderson set him up as an “anti-Kaladin”—where Kaladin takes responsibility for things beyond his control, Moash blames someone else for his own choices, even when he accepts the consequences. Moash is what Kaladin could so easily have been. Quite possibly, Moash is the version of Kaladin that would have kept the Shards when he killed Helaran.
Singers/Fused
As usual, his small band of singers went where he did, and started working—quietly—as he did.
A: I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it’s nice to see that Khen is still around, and whoever else is left of that group. On the other hand, I really hate seeing them follow Moash so unswervingly like this.
P: Yeah. They worship Odium so much and they feel that he’s set Moash above them. Gross.
“I don’t want to go on these raids and fight anymore, Vyre. I feel like I woke up to life, and then immediately started killing. I want to see what it is like to live. Really live. With my own mind, my own Passions.”
P: It’s rather nice to see her say this. All she wants is to finally experience life, but her life is nothing to Odium and the Fused.
A: It is nice. I can’t help thinking that if only she could find them, she might fit in well with the listeners. I’m not sure why she’s so different from the others, but this is one singer who would really like to be free. Do you suppose it has anything to do with the time they spent with Kaladin?
And hey… she would like to be free. Maybe one of the Reachers will find her, if only she can get away from this place.
P: I wouldn’t be surprised if her time with Kaladin influenced her in the same way it did Kaladin.
“Vyre,” Khen said. To Determination. Curious. What did she want that made her so afraid?
P: Refresh my memory… have we seen Moash so accurately decipher singer rhythms prior to this?
A: He was beginning to understand them at the end of Oathbringer. He had recognized that the rhythms existed, and had started to associate meanings with some of them. At one point, Leshwi hums to “a rhythm he associated with being pleased,” for example. I think this is the first one where we see him naming the rhythms, though.
Humans
The peoples intermixed, though singers were properly given deference. They were models of behavior the humans needed to learn to follow. When disputes happened, the singers forced men to be fair to one another. After all, when the parents came home, it was their duty to remove privileges if they found a mess. Humankind had been given millennia to prove they could self-govern properly, and they had failed.
A: Ugh. I don’t quite know what to say about this. It grates on every single nerve I possess… but I can’t really say that humans on Roshar were doing a spectacular job of self-governance. (Especially not the Alethi, which is the only culture Moash knows well enough to address, and he’s kinda prejudiced against their rulers anyway.) I just doubt the singers would have the ability to do any better, if they were actually free from the iron control of the Fused.
P: And I’m over here wondering how Moash is an authority on how well humans were doing? Who did he lead that made him an expert on how leaders should behave? He’s arrogant and presumptuous and it makes me crazy.
A: Point. Maybe that’s what makes it so irritating. He has zero qualifications to make this judgment, so it’s either his never-satisfied hatred of the Alethi kings, or he’s parroting the Fused narrative. Either way, ugh.
Brilliant Buttresses
“Everstorm tonight, Brightlord. We were given a half day off, in celebration.”
“I’m not a brightlord,” Vyre said…
“Well, um, Bright… er, Lord Silencer? Sir? Um.
A: Hah. What do you call someone with that much status who insists that the normal honorific doesn’t apply?
(I have to admit, though, it bugs me every single time someone refuses to be called Brightlord—especially since the person doing so is generally of much lower status. It puts them in the untenable position of having to figure out a unique form of address that won’t offend a powerful person who objects to the traditional form. Trust Vyre to do it anyway.)
P: Oh, definitely. Because he just doesn’t care. He has no respect for the little guys. Just as he showed no emotion when Khen said she was leaving. He felt no anger, no disappointment. Why should he care that he’s making someone else uncomfortable?
We’ll be leaving further speculation and discussion to you in the comments, so have fun and remember to be respectful of the opinions of others! This is an exceptionally lengthy set of Interludes; with most sets, we can combine two or even three in one week, but not these! Therefore, next week we’ll be back with Interlude Five, in which Lift rescues a chicken and experiences the fall of the Tower.
Alice is a Sanderson beta reader (beginning with Words of Radiance) and administrator of two fandom Facebook groups. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids, with extended family out back. She’s still working on that Mistborn Era 2 reread, but she’d better hurry it up; the progress bar on The Lost Metal is up to 66% now!
Paige resides in New Mexico, of course. She works full-time, goes to school full-time, beta reads part-time, mods/admins 3 Stormlight-themed Facebook groups part-time, and writes part-time. She wishes sleep wasn’t necessary because there’s just too storming much to do! You can find her writing at www.amazon.com/Paige-Vest/e/B0797Z37XV and www.patreon.com/paigevest.
If only Moash knew that the honorblade only takes ten heartbeats because that’s what he expects it to do…
This is such an intriguing chapter for getting inside Moash’s head. There are so many layers of self-deception and contradiction: he keeps trying to convince himself that his current state is an ideal one, yet thinks of it as a fate worse than death when applied to Kaladin; he simultaneously regards killing as vengeance (Roshone) and as a mercy, because living with pain is unendurable. He desperately needs to believe that the path he’s taken is the only possible path – that’s why Renarin’s vision terrified him – and so he needs Kaladin to make the same choice to validate that belief. (This is a shift from midway through Oathbringer, when he was comfortable with just regarding Kaladin as an exception to the general rule.) I don’t get the impression that jealousy comes into it at all; the constant theme is that he still cares about Kaladin, it’s just been twisted in an incredibly destructive direction based in his own unacknowledged pain and self-loathing.
Given his very well-grounded hatred of the racist Alethi caste system, I don’t see anything at all to criticize in his not wanting to be called ‘Brightlord’. And his experiences give him good cause to conclude that humans have done a bad job governing themselves, though that doesn’t make the Fused any better. I really can’t comprehend the attutude between you deriding his “never-satisfied hatred of Alethi kings.” FFS, the Alethi monarchy committed negligent murder of his only family for no reason! He’s got damn good reason to hate i
Thank you ladies, and welcome Paige!
This interlude made my blood boil. The evil is absolutely satanic—I’ll help my friend, be good to him, by trying to get him to kill himself. Sanderson may be planning a redemption arc for him, but it will have to be beyond incredible for me to handle it.
By the time this book ended, I was firmly in the No Redemption camp. IMHO Moash/ Vyre/ whatever deserves one (or more) of the following fates:
1. Thrown off a Skimming platform,
2. Slow digested by the Sarlacc,
3. Used to make a new personal record by Dr Kaufmann,
4. Used as a patch on a leaking Warren,
5. Killed using the sword Dragnipur or Katana ( I don’t know if being killed by Nightblood or Stormbringer results in eternal torment, else I would have added that too).
Another thought…
Vyre using the blade to cut stone parallels Dalinar cutting stone with his, but the contrast is Vyre was helping the Fused build houses and Dalinar was helping his people by building latrines.
‘The peoples intermixed, though singers were properly given deference. They were models of behavior the humans needed to learn to follow. When disputes happened, the singers forced men to be fair to one another.’
For me this just shows how false Moash’s concern for darkeyed people being mistreated by lighteyed people was. He’s fine with people being seen and treated as inferior when he thinks they deserve to be, and when he is part of superior group (Moash isn’t a Singer or Fused but it seems pretty clear he’s treated as one in terms of rank). So really, he was only bothered by the Alethi caste system because he wasn’t high enough up. Particularly given that the Fused and Singers have pretty clearly got a caste system themselves.
Plus, does Moash really think that singers are always fair? That none of them are ever biased or want revenge? lf he thinks that he’s even more nuts than I believed or more probably just wilfully ignorant.
‘Because if Kaladin is right and Vyre is wrong, that means there’s no justification for anything he’s done, and he can’t bear that thought.’ This, 100% Moash/Vyre can’t bear the thought that he may have been wrong and thrown everything away for nothing, so he needs Kaladin to give in so he can keep deluding himself.
‘never-satisfied hatred of the Alethi kings’ – his hatred seems to expand as well, probably due to the link with Odium. He starts off hating Roshone and Elkohar, then after Elkohars death hates Navani for being Elkohar’s mother. Hell, he even hates Teft for taking attention away from when they were in Bridge 4!
I don’t think Moash/Vyre will redeem himself by the end of the series as he seems determined to flee away from anything that shows him as being in the wrong or having made mistakes. Doing that makes redemption almost impossible.
Wow, I totally forgot this interlude. I remember Vyre sending Kaladin nightmares but that’s it. I agree to the idea that he is the anti-Kaladin and that makes him crazy. He is correct, if Kaladin is right in how he cares for people and feels pain then by definition Vyre/Moash is wrong. Ha, I made him right that he is wrong.
His words when he tries to talk Kaladin into suicide are despicable. The problem is that is exactly what someone in a horribly depressed state might feel. Nothing is a relief from unbearable pain.
I have never considered an Honor blade as less than a Shard blade since it gives you all the surges. It doesn’t give you a devoted and constant friend like Syl however. Which is better?
@8:
We need to know more about the Honorblades first. Apparently there is way more to them than just providing the surges.
Any one Honorblade does not seem to grant all the Surges. You would need access to several to practice all the surges the way Szeth did.
I do not remember anyone saying Moash has done nothing wrong. I am one of those who say he has done nothing worse than Dalinar.
I like the idea of keeping track of when Moash thinks of himself as Vyre. It’ll make it easier to stay analytical during his later chapters. Because I was not very analytical during my first read of his last few chapters. Ahem. :)
@10
Some people in the Stormlight Facebook groups often say that Moash did nothing wrong. I know, I moderate two of them. But maybe RoW changed some minds.
I hope nothing is wrong with Lyndsey. I will miss her perspective. If the re-read of Oathbringer is any indication, we will be in good hands and Alice will have a great co-pilot.
I find it interesting that Odium wants to make Kaladin his champion whereas, I believe Moash would prefer that Kaladin kill himself. Moash is dubious that Kaladin would accept Odium’s gift (of taking away the pain). Thus, Moash believes that the best he could do for Kaladin was to convince Kaladin to kill himself. I wonder why Odium thought Kaladin would be willing to give up the pain to Odium. My guess is that Odium does not know Kaladin at all. I think Kaladin would rather keep suffering than give into Odium. If the only choice is for Kaladin to either surrender to Odium or die, then I think Moash is right: Kaladin would choose death. Of Dalinar or Odium, Dalinar was much more likely to have given in to Odium.
I guess Odium never informed Lezian that Odium wanted to have Kaladin as his champion. Had Lezian succeeded in his pursuit (i.e., killing Kaladin), I wonder what Odium’s reaction would have been. I can just imagine the following conversion.
Fused minion (talking to Odium): Good news, my Lord. We have confirmed the Windrunner did not swear his Fourth Ideal. In fact, the Windrunner will no longer oppose us.
Odium: Good news. Now where is he. I have things to discuss with him.
Fused minion: You want to talk to the Radiant human cremling (says with rhythm of Dismissiveness).
Odium: Watch your tone. I can kill you and cause sever your connection for all time.
Fused minion: my apologies. But when I said the Windrunner, would no longer oppose us, I meant the Pursuer has claimed his prize. He killed the Windrunner.
Odium: WHAT?? Wait until I get my hands on Lezian. I will make him wish his mother never kissed his father.
Fused minion: Gotta go my Lord. Thank you for your wisdom.
What I am not sure of is if Moash is being truthful to Kaladin when he says he cares for Kaladin and wants to help Kaladin. It would be within Moash’s character that he actually believes he is helping Moash by convincing Kaladin to kill himself. Moash looks at the world as suffering is too great for people like Moash and Kaladin. Moash believes that as Darkeyes, they will always be at the low end of society. (This is interesting because before Moash abandoned Bridge Four, Moash had obtained the rank of a well-off Lighteye by his being a Shardbearer.) Now in the age of the Singer, man (irrespective of his eye color) will be the dregs of society. Moash cannot see the benefit of relying on one or more of friends, positive thinking, and people with shared experiences (Kaladin’s start of group counseling on Roshar) to help overcome the mental pain. On the other hand, I could see Moash now (as of this Interlude) seeing Kaladin as his enemy and not caring about Kaladin. He wants to use psychological warfare to hurt Kaladin so much that Kaladin will either give in to Odium and become a supporter of Odium’s cause or Kaladin will kill himself. In either case, Kaladin would be removed from Dalinar’s coalition.
If I had to choose, I think it is the latter. I agree with Paige and Alice. Moash is selfish. He does not care about Kaladin. Rather, Kaladin represents the last chance of Moash to feel remorse. When he looks at Kaladin, Moash sees the betrayal he caused Bridge Four. Without Kaladin, Moash can convince himself that he will not feel that betrayal. I also agree with Alice and Paige that Moash, like Amaram in connection with Dalinar, does not want a potential rival.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
How exactly does Moash cause Kaladin to have his dreams? I do not understand how he has that power. Would someone explain the process? I thought that Odium was causing Kaladin to have these dreams.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@14 I think it’s Odium through the Connection Moash has with Kaladin
I would never defend Moash’s crimes, but he feels especially relatable in this section. In some ways, that is. I was envious that he could even delusionally believe himself to be free from negative emotions and enjoy that (imagined) numbness. And of course, I don’t want Kaladin to kill himself. But when my depression is bad, and I see a friend or stranger talk about climate change, ramped-up human atrocities, or suchlike, I wonder: How can you think about this stuff and still be alive? The options I see are to die mercifully in despair now or live in denial until something worse kills us.
But unlike Moash, I don’t say this to people and don’t actually want them to kill themselves. And Kaladin (along with other characters) provides a counterpoint — he also has exceedingly relatable depression and he’s also in the middle of a very obvious apocalypse, but, thanks in part to occasional external intervention, he doesn’t give up or urge other people to do so. Granted, he and his allies have superpowers (and sometimes political powers) that we lack, but this doesn’t take away his relatability. That’s one of the very special things about this series for me. Despair happens to some heroes and some villains, they often survive it, and they provide examples of how we can best and worst respond to it.
I suspect Moash being blind by the end of this book will make him more uncomfortably-relatable to me in the next book. Unfortunately, the series doesn’t currently have any blind or visually impaired heroes to counteract this.
I think Moash and Kaladin are studies of excess in some ways. Kaladin takes too much responsibility and it’s destroying him, because he’s holding himself responsible for things beyond his (or anyone’s) control. Moash is giving himself a break from that responsibility, but taking it too far: all the way into a moral abyss. It’s a reason why I find it hard to get so heated in hating him: he’s got a similar background to Kaladin and is making similar mistakes, just in the opposite direction.
He’s also another example of why Alethi society is so awful: govern like the Alethi and you end up with people like Moash. It’s why a ‘redemption arc’ for the character would be interesting and significant: it could only land if it represents not just something personal for Moash, but a fundamental change in Alethi culture that means that don’t make Moashes any more.
Wow, nothing like a late response… the new post is up before I get around to this? Pathetic. Anyway…
katherinemw @3 – “I really can’t comprehend the attutude between you deriding his “never-satisfied hatred of Alethi kings.” FFS, the Alethi monarchy committed negligent murder of his only family for no reason! He’s got damn good reason to hate i”
Two things.
One, context matters. My point was that his hatred of the Alethi monarchy makes him think he’s qualified to judge all human self-governance. He completely ignores the fact that even within the Vorin kingdoms, government varies; if you go farther west, the forms of government are completely different. Granted, he probably wouldn’t make it very high up in any of those societies either, but that’s because of his attitude, not his eye color or any other immutable attribute.
Two, I do think his (yes) never-satisfied hatred of Alethi kings is out of line. He already killed Elhokar and Roshone, the only two people he could perhaps legitimately claim were at fault, but that has no bearing for him. He eagerly sought to kill Navani for no better reason than that she was queen of Urithiru and Elhokar’s mother. He tried to kill Kaladin for standing between him and Elhokar. He tried to kill Raboniel (!) for standing between him and Navani. Do you doubt that he’d gladly kill Dalinar, Jasnah, Adolin, Renarin, and Gavinor if he had the chance? (Yeah, I know, he only kicked Gavinor instead of killing him in Kholinar. Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t kill him, given another opportunity.) Yes, his grandparents (not his only family, by the way, since he worked for his uncle) were killed by the negligence of a system that allowed Roshone to have them imprisoned and thereafter forgotten. That doesn’t give him the moral right to a murder spree against every Kholin alive.
And it doesn’t give him the right to decide that all humans (except himself, of course) should be chattel for the Fused and/or singers, just because a teen-aged prince overstepped his authority and allowed a conniving “friend” to commit negligent homicide.
Chitnis @5 – Legit options. I’d accept any or all of those.
Karl @7 – I totally agree on how false Moash’s concern for darkeyes is. And he is definitely being wilfully ignorant; back in Oathbringer, he was upset about the one group of singers being treated badly, and to be fair he did stand up for them. But that whole “you’re supposed to be better than the humans!!” complaint rings pretty hollow, now that he’s been promoted and brought that group with him. He seems to have decided that, evidence of his own eyes to the contrary, the singers and Fused are always right, and humans (except himself, of course) deserve to be the lowest class of society. I wonder how much of that is solely satisfaction that the lighteyes are now the same level as darkeyes. (Umm… sort of like they are in the whole world outside the Vorin kingdoms, you know?)
Alex Watts @17 – It’s a nice idea that there could be “a fundamental change in Alethi culture that means that don’t make Moashes any more.” I don’t buy it, though. There are millions of darkeyes who don’t become Moashes; his choices were his own. His family was second nahn – the same rank as Kaladin’s family, by the way – and highly privileged depending on which way you look. Moash only looks at the lighteyes, and is full of envy and bitterness because they rank higher; he doesn’t look at the rest of the darkeyes and realize that he was really far better off than most of his countrymen. That doesn’t make the whole structure right or good, but it does demonstrate that Moash isn’t uniquely persecuted. It also demonstrates that the system isn’t what creates a Moash. It’s a Moash attitude that creates a Moash.
I would push back a bit on that last paragraph – just because not every single person reacts the way Moash did doesn’t mean the system itself shouldn’t be interrogated or that it is a contributing factor to pushing people who already have certain flaws/weaknesses/traits to a darker place.
That said I agree that Moash is an example of a person who has made their victimhood into a true identity and can’t let go of it and then uses it to justify anything and everything, while refusing that he has any accountability/agency whatsoever. I don’t think redemption will be possible without that.
And of course the mental manipulation is absolutely sick and twisted and I do believe drives from his own bitterness that not everybody is as dark/miserable as he is.
I also agree that there is some hypocracy here in that he seems fine with the system in general when he’s the one in charge (or the Singers at least) so I don’t think his oppositions are principled.
On the other hand, when my depression flares I completely understand that desire for…annihilation, and even the way I start to somewhat suspiciously view people who don’t also feel that way, as if it is some type of affront. I know it’s irrational thinking but it’s kind of like their existance is an erasure of my own pain. Except I don’t actually want others to be dragged down with me!