Bon-joor, mays ahmees! Say un Wheel of Time Reread Redux, ness pah? Way!
Today’s Redux post will cover Chapters 7 and 8 of The Dragon Reborn, originally reread in this post.
All original posts are listed in The Wheel of Time Reread Index here, and all Redux posts will also be archived there as well. (The Wheel of Time Master Index, as always, is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general on Tor.com.)
The Wheel of Time Reread is also available as an e-book series! Yay!
All Reread Redux posts will contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series, so if you haven’t read, read at your own risk.
And now, the post!
Before the chapters: Ha, this is the post where I did the intro in French for no discernible reason (other than sleep deprivation, possibly). I enjoyed that, even if I had to double-check half the translations. I love the language, but it had been a while even at that point.
Fun fact: the first two lines are what one of my French teachers said to us at the beginning of every class, word for word. I think she just liked how she could get away with telling her students to “sit down and shut up” as long as it wasn’t in English. Heh.
Chapter 7: The Way Out of the Mountains
Redux Commentary
I love how travel chapters in fantasy novels always remind me of how entirely screwed I would be in the same situation. Perrin’s all “yeah, I killed rabbits with my sling for supper” like it ain’t no thang, when I would be lucky if I could bring down rabbits with an actual cannon. Survival skills and me: unmixy things. Sigh.
Also, I’m sure most people know this, but trout tickling is totally a real thing, and my dad had a couple of friends who claimed they could do the Southern/Louisiana equivalent of it, which is catfish noodling (also known as “catfisting”, which will never ever ever not make me snicker like a twelve-year-old boy every time I hear it). I never actually saw them do it, because me and fishing trips to the bayou were also unmixy things (Such mosquito. So waking up at 4 AM. Wow), but, you know, I’m sure it was super cool to see done. Totes. *finger guns*
I opined in the original commentary that Moiraine is being kind of a dick in this chapter, and I… still think she’s being a dick, really. I mean, I get what she’s doing: Rand’s defiance of her in the mountain camp had undermined her authority over Perrin, and now she’s reasserting it. And to the feudal-ish mind, she does outrank everyone else in the party, on her own merits as well as in her capacity as Aes Sedai, so from that point of view it’s proper that everyone else do the scutwork. There’s even sort of practical reasons for it, if you consider how much of the heavy lifting (so to speak) she will be obliged to do if they are attacked by Shadowspawn, not to mention the Healing after. From that perspective you could even contend that it’s a fair division of labor.
All that’s true. And yet, she still kind of pissed me off.
But then, the reader is very firmly entrenched in Perrin’s POV by this point, so no matter who is actually being a dick in this scenario, we are naturally inclined to take Perrin’s side over Moiraine’s, just because we have more access to him as a character. It’s the same way with Nynaeve’s struggles over accepting older Aes Sedai’s authority; even when you can tell Nynaeve is being ridiculous, you still want her to win out over them just because she is the one we’re rooting for. Or I do, anyway.
So maybe Moiraine’s treatment of Perrin in this chapter is justified, more or less, in a uniquely “all Aes Sedai are kinda dicks” way. But I really do have to say, her needling Lan about Myrelle is a little beyond the pale. It’s one thing to give someone shit over a situation that has nothing to do with you, but quite another to give them shit over a situation that you imposed on them, without either their knowledge or consent.
I don’t like throwing the word “rape” around lightly (or even, er, heavily), but while the whole bond-passing thing might not quite reach the level of violation that that word implies, it comes close enough to make me very uncomfortable with it. And then to tease someone about it…
Well. Let’s just say that pushes quite a few buttons on my end.
So, in conclusion, I said it before and I’ll say it again: not cool, Moiraine. Seriously not cool.
Chapter 8: Jarra
Redux Commentary
Oh, yeah, this thing.
The introduction of Noam the feral wolf-man in this chapter is definitely one of the things that is profoundly affected by what we learn in the conclusion of the series, as opposed to what we knew at the time I did the original Reread. It makes this chapter read completely differently than before, in fact, which is pretty interesting.
In the Epilogue of TOM we learn that, far from being overwhelmed by his Wolfbrotherliness as everyone assumes in this chapter, Noam had in fact intentionally chosen being a wolf over being a man, apparently because his life as a man had deeply, deeply sucked. We—and Perrin—learn that Noam’s decision to be the wolf named Boundless actually was a decision, and all of Perrin’s fears about losing himself to the wolf side of the Force were mostly groundless.
I say “mostly” because Moiraine’s information in the next chapter indicates that it did happen, at least according to her research. But then again, possibly the Age of Legends writer who asserted that fact had made the same error Perrin and Moiraine did, and had not considered the possibility that the loss of humanity she’d observed was deliberate instead of involuntary. So maybe the fear actually was completely baseless, and no Wolfbrother ever lost himself (or herself—despite the title, I have to assume that there were women who had this gift as well at one point or another) to their wolf side unless they wanted to lose themselves.
So on the one hand, this was incredibly gratifying to learn, as it at last justified my series-long belief that Perrin’s fears about going feral were overly annoying paranoid. But on the other hand, when I realized that Perrin’s series-long angsting over his wolf problem was pointless AS WELL as incredibly annoying, I kind of wanted to punch something. All that drama over nothing, you guys. Grrrrr.
…Okay, so it wasn’t nothing, but sheesh. And, yeah, no story without conflict, blah blah etc., I know. Still annoying. But gratifying!
I do rather wonder whether this change re: Noam’s true situation was always intended, though. On the one hand I think it must have been, because it was such an elegant resolution to Perrin’s central character conflict, by changing his perspective on the thing that had solidified it into a character conflict. But on the other hand, I find it slightly weird that there doesn’t appear to be even the slightest hint or foreshadowing in this chapter to indicate that perhaps Noam’s home life was not the happy comfortable existence that his brother Simion made it out to be.
And Simion himself is probably the most puzzling bit of that, really. TOM’s Epilogue clearly indicates that Noam’s brother had a raging temper, and while it doesn’t flat-out state that Simion abused Noam, the implication is pretty strong that Simion was part of the reason why Noam’s life was miserable. And yet there’s not even the smallest suggestion in this chapter that Simion has any kind of temper at all, nor that he has anything but sincere concern and care for Noam.
Granted, it’s true that abusers are generally extremely good at presenting a socially acceptable front to strangers and an entirely different one to their victims, but… I dunno. I’m not saying there should have been anything obvious in the scene that all was not as it seemed, but there should have been something, and there really doesn’t seem to be.
Other than Noam being locked up in a barn in the first place, of course. But, I’m not really sure what else a small village would be expected to do with a (from their point of view) feral madman who was attacking people. It’s certainly no worse than most methods people in the olden days had to deal with insane people, and a great deal more humane than some. So perhaps the method of his imprisonment by itself was supposed to be enough of a hint that Noam’s life was terrible, but personally it didn’t strike me that way.
*shrug* It’s a minor point, probably. But it bugged me, and so I note it. And all that said, even if the revelation in TOM was a retcon, it was still a pretty awesome one.
So I SUPPOSE I’ll let it stand. Ain’t I generous?
And that’s the story for now, y’all! See you next week, and as we say during this particular season down here in New Orleans, lay-say leh bohn tohn roo-lay, cher!
HI Leigh
Re Simeon the abuser…well, either it was a different brother, or it could be that Simeon was that good an actor. But either way, it sort of didn’t work, as a story…
It appears that the Blue’s secret weave that controls insects works on fish as well.
I want to know the circumstances around the first Blue Sister who discovered this weave on insects. What would posses somebody to think “I wonder if I can channel something that will control insects?” I could understand if you were traveling in the forest and a lion, bear, wolf or other animal attacked. A weave controlling animals would make sense. But insects? I do not see it. Was this Blue Sister’s hobby beekeeping?
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
On the plus side, Simeon did let Noam go when Perrin told him that Noam wouldn’t be happy caged up the rest of his life. If he wanted to keep abusing him, he could have kept him. I loved the reveal that Noam chose to be a wolf. Took me by total surprise and it made total sense. I wonder if that was a RJ or Sanderson call.
If they mainly eat rabbits Perrin hunted, he seems to have gotten better since the time Elyas found him and Eg in the first book.
Is Moiraine using a variant of the insect summoning Blue Ajah secret weave to get the fish?
If no umarried women are left who are old enough to marry, what about men? Why are they not mentioned?
Why is Lan suddenly eager to kill witnesses? Killing innocents doesn’t really fit with his Malkieri honor.
Here Noam seems less intelligent than wolves normally are. It is not surprising that Perrin worries about becoming like him. Why can he “hear” Noam but not Elyas? All wolfbrothers are part wolf, even if they don’t let the wolf side dominate.
That AS can just open locks without a key probably doesn’t make them more popular.
With Suian’s fish obsession, I’m surprised she never learned fishing-by-hand and taught it to Moiraine. Just as well, though — that scene utterly delighted me on my first read, mostly because I was in the midst of a massive crush on Gollum. I consider it Moiraine’s finest moment.
I wonder if female wolfbrothers were called “wolfsisters.” One would think so, but wolves call all Darkhounds “Shadowbrothers,” so who knows. (Not to mention some “Gray Men” and “Dreadlords” being female).
It’s hard to imagine some phenomenon striking my town and causing all unmarried women to marry (men) simultaneously. Like, what about wome like me who aren’t even acquainted with many local men? In a much smaller village, it might work.
Yes, I remember being very much on Perrin’s side here, pretty much because he is the one we are supposed to sympathize with. It was a delicate balance with the Moiraine vs. Superboys dynamic that RJ plays very well most of the time. But, the reader’s sympathies starts to tilt more and more toward the Superboys, IMHO, as the story progresses; particularly when Mat is not around (or after he gets his personality transplant in this book).
As for the wolf brother thing, yes I would largely agree that it is there to give the reader some angst, help justify Perrin’s current and future angst, but it take too long to play out. I think at this point RJ still thought that the series was only going to be 4-5 books.
Catfishing like this is more hazardous than grabbing trout, because cats have nasty dorsal spines!
I only found this re-read recently, and I’ve been trying to catch up by reading all the older posts. What a blast of nostalgia.
I’m not sure I’ll ever reread TWoT (for the umpteenth time, at least through KoD) but this whets my appetite. The commentary makes me try to recall how I felt about the various characters from the get-go (oh, to read it again for the first time, which was a whirlwind affair reaching into the early morning hours, night after night, as long as I could come up with new books, which carried me through ’til aCoS; after which it was wa-a-a-i-t-i-n-g for each new arrival). I once read from aCoS to tEotW in reverse order, with the idea that it would help me better understand what the hell was going on.
Anyway, my very best to Leigh, the chief and funniest denizen to tWoT, who has – through the WOTFAQ and these rereads, helped us all recollect the magic that we found in Jordan’s epic work. Thank you.
@5. AeronaGreenjoy Yes, Gollum caught fish by hand. So did Hemingway, in an unfinished novel he wrote about his youth in lower Michigan, catching them in a small stream just the way Moiraine did here. So did some buddies of mine (all who became fisheries biologists) who caught steelhead trout by jumping into the stream, causing these big (up to 3 feet long) fish to run to overhanging banks and other hiding places, where they could be grasped, pulled out, and made into dinner. However, Siuan was fishing a great river near the sea, and she was fishing with nets, or perhaps with bait in great reedy areas. And apparently some of her prey would eat you if you fell in.
@2: Getting your blood let out by the fifteenth or twentieth mosquito, would seem to me to be good and sufficient motivation to investigate such a weave…
@2 @10 re: The insect weave – I always assumed that weaves like this were something taken/adapted from the “special weaves” that many novices brought with them to the tower (such as Moiraine’s eavesdropping-with-the-stone weave). Certainly not all of these weaves were shared by those women once they joined an Ajah, but some like this one would make sense to share. Moiraine was never one to share much of anything (Daes Dae’mar is baked in thoroughly) so of course that didn’t get shared with the entire Blue Ajah, but weaves that are less secretive than that likely would have been, and then would be passed down.
@9: Yeah, Siuan grew up around seacoast fisheries, but if she were truly obsessed, she would have learned to catch freshwater ones while living inland. And at the time, I would’ve considered anyone fishing by hand to be adorable.
@2 – At some point the Blues probably made the connection between mosquito bites and various diseases like malaria. That, and a swarm of hungry mosquitoes trying to suck you dry while you’re trying to use the One Power can be very distracting.
If Siuan had been able to go adventuring after becoming AS as she wanted she might have learned to catch freshwater fish, but she was stuck in the Tower.
@2 -I don’t know about you, but I would LOVE a chemical free way to keep mosquitoes and the like away! And let’s not even talk about bed bugs…
Really interesting thoughts on Noam and the way the scene reads with new knowledge. It does make one wonder how much was known ‘beforehand’, and how much of good writing necessitates giving some type of hint for it all to fit together, vs. keeping things in the dark to be a satisfying twist.
If we only knew, so many books in advance, how long Perrin would end up stuck in Ghealdan (then Altara), and how much we’d wish he never went there…
I have to agree pretty much word for word with Leigh on Moiraine: she’s being unfair to Perrin (however much it makes sense both as an Aes Sedai and noble and as wanting to reassert control after Rand flouted it/maintain power over the one ta’veren she had left), and I also have to mention being vaguely annoyed at Loial for always taking Moiraine’s side, being mildly reprimanding when Perrin stood up to her, and then relaxing and being content again once things went back to “normal”. Again, I understand why he feels as he does about Aes Sedai, but it’d be nice if someone encouraged Perrin the way Lan did Rand (the only one who does, unfortunately, is Faile–I say unfortunately because a good number of the things she encouraged from him, at least early on, ended up getting him into trouble). And of course Loial ends up close friends with Perrin, so to see him urging him to quiet down, mind his manners, and obey his superiors is frustrating too.
But most of all, yeah, the Myrelle thing was way out of line. I admit I can’t quite figure out Moiraine’s reasoning here. Is she still testing Lan, to see if he wants to leave/how he’ll react if it has to happen? Is she upset about the possibility, so she’s making Lan upset too so she won’t be the only one? Or alternately, she hopes he’ll prove she is right to be upset over the separation by showing how much he too cares and doesn’t want to leave? Whatever it is, all I can say is that I absolutely love Lan’s comeback to this, when they’re arriving at Illian. Not only is it snarky as hell, but it shows a decided bent for revenge being served cold, considering how long he waits for the opportunity.
Oh and while I did learn some survival skills when I was younger, at summer camp, I’ve forgotten most of it, and even if I hadn’t I certainly didn’t know everything the Two Rivers folk do, so I’d also be lost if I had to fend for myself. But then I expect a lot of modern people would be, there’s a reason that one reality TV show where families have to live in medieval/colonial/frontier times usually ends up with the contestants washing out and having to be taken back to civilization before they end up dead.
Before I get to the main issue of Chapter 8, one side point: it seems odd Moiraine would even consider silencing Simion to keep their identities and presence a secret. Or rather, that she could even do so considering the Third Oath. He clearly wasn’t a Darkfriend, so unless he openly threatened them, there wasn’t anything she could do to silence him. Which means either the whole thing was a ruse meant to frighten Perrin into being properly obedient and secretive by impressing upon him the gravity of the situation, or if she had decided such a thing was necessary, Lan would have done the deed and him alone, since he wasn’t bound by the Oaths.
As for Noam…this is indeed quite the different situation upon a re-read after finishing the series! I remember when reading the Epilogue of ToM that, however much it was an elegant solution to Perrin’s doubts and fears, and explained Noam’s situation poignantly and realistically, I didn’t quite think it geled with what we saw in TDR either. Of course really we have no idea what his life was like apart from Simion, so everything else could have been as truly awful as what Perrin saw in Boundless’s mind. (BTW, that wolven name is so absolutely perfect for one who was seeking to escape a terrible life; the wolf to him wasn’t just peace, it was “boundless” freedom.) But it was Simion that really struck me; even assuming there was more to him than met the eye, that the images didn’t mean what they seemed to, or that Simion might have made mistakes and mistreated his brother, yet still loved him and even come to regret his actions, thus becoming the kinder man we met in TDR after having to take care of Noam, it…didn’t fit.
In the end I think there can only be one of two explanations for this: 1) Jordan had left nothing in the notes about how to resolve Perrin’s situation/what was really up with Noam, so Team Jordan had to come up with something that even if it didn’t fit didn’t really contradict what we saw in TDR. This is hard to believe, particularly since it was so important to Perrin’s arc, but with Jordan so close to dying and so much material to cover, it’s entirely possible he ran out of time or it slipped his mind. Or 2) Jordan himself hadn’t decided when he wrote this scene what Noam’s deal was, but he did later, so while the notes explained the full story, the original text for this scene didn’t reflect Jordan’s later decision. I think the latter makes more sense.
All of that said, the scene is still powerful, not just for what it sets up with Perrin (however long the resultant angst was drawn out, or how it was unnecessary in the end, the possibility of such a fate was still one that needed to be addressed and which Perrin needed to face if he was going to achieve his balance and accept his role in the Pattern), but for what it reveals about Perrin and Simion. Namely, the compassion and understanding Perrin shows for Noam, and Simion’s following mercy when he doesn’t turn Perrin in to the Whitecloaks because “no Darkfriend would care about my brother.” Whatever else may have been true of him as a temperamental or abusive sort, Simion clearly was still a good man at heart, and having Perrin’s act of kindness (as partly motivated by self-interest as it was) be rewarded in kind rather than being punished is a welcome relief. Particularly compared to how his wolven nature otherwise haunts him in TSR and ToM, and the threat of Whitecloaks as well.
Quick side note: I remember an interview somewhere where Jordan did say there could be Wolfsisters/female Wolfbrothers.
@2 AndrewHB: LOL! You never know, though I’d think beekeeping (and the possible knowledge which could come from studying the bees) would be more of a Brown thing than a Blue. Hobbies differ of course (Anaiya loved lace and was interested in Dreaming, neither of which has anything to do with causes exactly, though clearly championing Dreams/a Dreamer could become a cause), but still… Anyway, the other possibility to mention of course is that there’s a very good reason a traveling Blue could wonder about using a weave on insects: if she encountered bitemes and other buzzing, stinging insects and wanted to make them leave her alone. The ability to ignore the heat wouldn’t extend to bug bites, I shouldn’t think, so it could have been as simple as “Light! There must be a way to weave these bloody nuisances off of me!”
@@.-@ birgit: I wonder if Perrin being better at hunting the rabbits is something we’re to attribute to his Wolfbrother nature?
Maybe the men outnumber the women, so there would be unmarried men of marriageable age left?
See my thoughts above; it’s possible the whole thing was meant to frighten Perrin into obedience, and neither Lan nor Moiraine meant Simion any harm.
Boundless kept a close rein on his inner human nature; I would imagine his human body did the same, projecting only his wolven side so that no other Wolfbrothers who might encounter him would guess the truth and try to “save” him.
@5 AeronaGreenjoy: LOL! Offhand I’d say that it was because Siuan, being a practical fishmonger’s daughter, would have been offended at the idea of cheating like that, and thus wouldn’t try to use the Power on fish.
I want to call them wolfsisters myself, as you can see above, but you have a point about the gendered male titles that get used exclusively throughout. That could be Jordan using male as the generic stand-in, the same as “he” and the other masculine pronouns are supposed to be neutral/unknown gender/multiple gender stand-ins and “man” is supposed to stand for humankind, but if so it seems as questionable and patriarchal as those other examples are.
Well remember the Pattern here and its contrived coincidences. Maybe all the eligible maidens in town just happened to know all the eligible men, and any who didn’t were out-of-town that day. Or Rand’s ta’veren nature brought out of them feelings they didn’t know were there (or which hadn’t gotten to develop yet), then made them act on them.
@6 gadget: To be fair, the in-universe time Perrin spends angsting is far less than it was in real-world time for us.
@10 zdrakec: LOL exactly!
@12 AeronaGreenjoy: Would she have had any opportunity though? She didn’t go inland until she went to the Tower, and the Aes Sedai discourage experimentation as well as not even allowing novices to channel without an Accepted or Aes Sedai in attendance. I suppose if it was a Brown watching them such a thing might have been allowed, but otherwise it doesn’t seem like something she’d get to do even if she wanted. Of course Siuan was very rebellious…
@13 Robert B: Wouldn’t it have been the Yellows who discovered that? And Moiraine and Siuan learned in New Spring that there was some disagreement between Yellows and Blues over something that happened in Altara a hundred years ago, so I don’t think they’d be sharing that info with Blues.
@@.-@ I think they’re better hunters in TDR because the weather situation is fixed. It was impressed continuously in those scenes in EotW how scarce the game was.
Re, Simion and Noam: it is possible to make another human being totally miserable without meaning to do anything of the kind. The brothers might simply have been incompatible. Possibly if we’d seen into Simion’s memory we would have found scenes of Noam being violently angry with him and in Randland anger tends to get physical.