Welcome back to the Warbreaker reread! Last week, Vivenna viewed T’Telir with fear and revulsion, met Denth and Tonk Fah, and was promptly terrified by them. This week, she regains her footing, only to lose it again when she is confronted with new challenges to her view of the world.
This reread will contain spoilers for all of Warbreaker and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. This is particularly likely to include Words of Radiance, due to certain crossover characters. The index for this reread can be found here.
Click on through to join the discussion!
Chapter 10
Point of View: Vivenna
Setting: T’Telir Marketplace & Lemex’s Lodgings
Timing: Immediately following Chapter 9
Take a Deep Breath
Vivenna’s mind races, trying to draw on her training to determine how to respond to the death threat, when Denth and Tonk Fah burst out laughing. As she attempts to sort out their weird humor and the things they’ve said, she realizes that they must work for Lemex. They give her a code message from Lemex which tells her they are legitimate (for a certain definition of the term), and despite their assumptions of her mistrust, decides to go with them immediately.
Lemex is indeed “not doing so well” as Denth had said. In fact, he’s dying, and she needs to pry out of him all she can regarding Idrian agents and passcodes. Before he becomes lucid enough to tell her anything, he begins to spasm, creating pulses of enhanced color. Denth explains that Lemex has acquired a lot of Breath, and his impending death is making it manifest irregularly. Vivenna is aghast at the thought of an Idrian holding the Breath of others, but Lemex confirms that he inherited some, and purchased more.
Denth reminds her of the economic value of that Breath, and that if Lemex dies without passing it on, the Breath dies with him. Her training wars with her conviction, the idea of financial independence opposing the horror of holding the Breath of others. She considers requiring Denth, Tonk Fah, or even Parlin to take it, finally settling on Denth—but it doesn’t work that way. Before he can explain, and even as she changes her mind about taking it at all, Lemex takes matters into his own dying hands, conferring all of his store of Breath upon her.
Breathtaking
“My life to yours,” he said in an eerily clear voice, his grip tight on her arm as she jumped back. “My Breath become yours!”
A vibrant cloud of shifting, iridescent air burst from his mouth, puffing toward her. Vivenna closed her mouth, eyes wide, hair white. She ripped her arm free from Lemex’s grip, even as his face grew dull, his eyes losing their luster, the colors around him fading.
The Breath shot toward her. Her closed mouth had no effect; the Breath struck, hitting her like a physical force, washing across her body. She gasped, falling to her knees, body quivering with a perverse pleasure. She could suddenly feel the other people in the room. She could sense them watching her. And— as if a light had been lit— everything around her became more vibrant, more real, and more alive.
She gasped, shaking in awe. She vaguely heard Parlin rushing to her side, speaking her name. But, oddly, the only thing she could think of was the melodic quality of his voice. She could pick out each tone in every word he spoke. She knew them instinctively.
First lesson in Idrians Can Be Wrong: Breath cannot be taken by force; it must be given freely—and it cannot be refused.
Her experience confirms that Denth was correct in saying that Lemex held a “couple hundred breaths” at least; she has immediately acquired the Second Heightening.
Finally, we saw it once in the Prologue, but this time, Vivenna experiences the foreshadowing of Vasher’s secret weapon… which, of course, still didn’t register until my third reread. *sigh*
Local Color
This week’s annotations focus much more on the planning of Warbreaker, and some of the changes that happened along the way. Lemex was originally going to live, but Sanderson needed Vivenna to be more vulnerable than she would have been with a competent mentor. So, like Mab, Lemex had to leave the scene early. Denth and Tonk Fah are intended to be amusing characters who can provide a certain amount of the humor and wittiness thematic to the book, but at the same time, they were always intended to betray Vivenna. Denth in particular is set up as a likable but ultimately untrustworthy person; you really should read the annotation on him. Favorite quote:
In some ways, even though he doesn’t have a viewpoint, a big theme of this book is the tragedy of the man Denth. He could have been more. At one time, he was a much better man than most who have lived.
Tonk Fah is a waste of flesh, though. Even if he is funny sometimes.
Snow White and Rose Red
For the first time in her life, Vivenna is well and truly out of her depth. She repeatedly manages to grasp a semblance of control, only to have it snatched away again. First, she finds herself in what appears to be a hostage situation; just as she begins to organize her thoughts to consider what to do, she finds out that it’s just a joke. She’s in control again quickly, with the crack about “mercenary humor?” and gains a reprieve when the mercenaries try to throw her off with the implication that the note from Lemex might be a fake. Since she knows he wouldn’t have given away both the real password and the fake one, she gets to throw them off balance for a moment by deciding to go with them immediately.
(Also, if that’s cioppino they’re eating, I’m with Vivenna on this. My husband loves the stuff, and I don’t even want to look his direction when he eats it.)
Anyway, her control of the situation is short-lived. Lemex is clearly ill, a frail stick of a man rather than the spry, witty mentor she’d expected. (Although she is currently unaware of it, Denth has poisoned him with the dual intent of holding Vivenna as a better pawn than Lemex had been, and hoping to manipulate her into giving him all of Lemex’s breath.) She gets hold of herself enough to go into Princess Mode, attempting to gain access to the Idrian spy network, but the discovery of Lemex’s heresy of holding multiple Breaths throws her right back into a spin.
Watching Vivenna struggle with her training—which urged her to take any advantage she could find, especially without Lemex to depend on—and her revulsion at the thought of holding Breath that should belong to someone else, she’s beginning to realize that her training wasn’t adequate to her clever plan. It might have been just fine for the God King’s wife, where the very confinement would give her a certain level of protection, but it certainly didn’t prepare her for life on the streets. It’s arguable that her aversion to everything about Hallandren which is not like Idris would have made her a poor bride, and it’s probable that her attitude would have been a perfect fit for the machinations going on in the Court of Gods, to the detriment of both nations. Nevertheless, she was more or less prepared for the political scene, and in that context could perhaps have done some good; at least, she would have tried to.
But… she’s not in the Court, and the political game she’s caught in is way over her head—so far over that she doesn’t even know what the game is. For now, though, what’s relevant is that just as she begins to exert some self-control and attempts to make a wise decision, it’s wrested away in a heartbeat as Lemex pours two hundred or more Breaths into her, shaking her to the core both physically and mentally.
Poor Vivenna. Life just got a lot harder.
As I Live and Breathe
“Breath, Princess,” he said. “I inherited it from my predecessor, and I’ve bought more. A lot more…”
God of Colors… Vivenna thought with a sick feeling in her stomach.
“I know it was wrong,” Lemex whispered. “But… I felt so powerful. I could make the very dust of the earth obey my command. It was for the good of Idris! Men with Breath are respected here in Hallandren. I could get into parties where I normally would have been excluded. I could go to the Court of Gods when I wished and hear the Court Assembly. The Breath extended my life, made me spry despite my age. I…”
He blinked, eyes unfocusing.
“Oh, Austre,” he whispered. “I’ve damned myself. I’ve gained notoriety through abusing the souls of others. And now I’m dying.”
Lemex gives us another glimpse into how Breath serves an economic purpose in Hallandren: you gain respect, you gain access to parties and to the Court, you get longer life… but I think his first reason is the one most tempting to most people. It makes you powerful. With a little training, you can make any object obey your command. That… that’s pretty heady stuff, right there. That kind of power can induce all sorts of rationalization to silence the conscience.
A couple of Siri’s earlier concerns are repeated here by Vivenna and Lemex. One, both Siri and Vivenna assume that Breath is taken from a person; in T’Telir, they’re both going to learn that it must be given… though Vivenna is learning this in a much more personal and immediate fashion right now. Two, Vivenna and Lemex both repeat the Idrian teaching which wholly conflates Breath and Soul—and the horror is real for all three of them, though Lemex found ways to numb himself to the idea. (Somehow the numbness tends to wear off on a deathbed, though.)
This brings up the question of Breath and Soul: Are the Idrians overreacting, or are the Hallandren ignoring an inconvenient truth? The answer, I think, is… “Yes.”
I spent far too long researching this, trying to determine just exactly what the relationship is between Breath and Soul. In one interview, Sanderson said that giving up your Breath is giving up a piece of your soul, and elsewhere he’s said that Drabs cannot be Returned. So I guess in one sense the Idrians are correct: Breath is a piece of someone’s soul. And yet, it’s only a piece, not the whole thing. When someone gives up their Breath, they don’t die, and they don’t become soulless, but they do become… less. One of these days, I am going to ask what Endowment thinks of all this. What do you think?
In Living Color
Denth is our only Returned this week, and at this point on a first read, we wouldn’t even know that much. I keep coming back to the quote above: “At one time, he was a much better man than most who have lived.” It’s mentioned in the annotations that he has become a mercenary in part to escape responsibility for his actions.
Denth was written to be likable and amusing, because most people—even those on the wrong side—aren’t evil through and through. They may tend toward actions that result in evil, and even do it knowingly, but they are still people with emotions and desires in common with all humanity. So Denth is introduced as someone a bit uncomfortable to be around, especially for Vivenna, but amusing enough once you get used to his sense of humor. By now, of course, I can’t remember at what point I began to distrust Denth again, but I do recall there being a stretch here where I thought he was one of the good guys.
Exhale
That’s pretty much covered the chapter, by now. It’s sad to realize just how thoroughly Lemex was taken in by Denth—how he thought he’d hired a team of (relatively) trustworthy mercenaries, and advised Vivenna to trust them. Meanwhile, Denth was actually working for someone else, paid to attach himself to Lemex, and in the end murdered Lemex so that he could have full control of the Idrian princess on behalf of his real employers.
There’s one more question I’ve never seen posed in relation to Nalthis. What effect does it have on a person, to combine pieces of other souls with your own? We know what happens in Hemalurgy; how similar is this? Does it change who you are as an individual? Does it merely enhance your abilities and health, or do you end up with some of the personality of the people whose Breath you absorb? Discuss this, if you will—I’d like someone else’s interpretations!
Next week, Chapter 11 (plus annotations, of course) takes us back to a decidedly bored Siri, whose developing self-control is being challenged by the lack of both progress and sleep.
And now, the comments!
Alice Arneson is a SAHM, blogger, beta reader, and literature fan of many genres. If you Facebook, you can join her in the Tor-Sanderson-rereader-specific group known as the Storm Cellar; since it’s a closed group, you have to ask to join. Identify yourself as a Tor friend, and one of the moderators will add you.
Yes, Breath can only be given, not forcibly taken, but that doesn’t mean it’s all sunshine and rainbows on the Breath market. It seems clear that the only reason people give up their Breath is because they don’t have any other good choices. In the story, the Returned Court will pay enough for a young Breath to feed a whole family for a year. Let’s assume that’s the best price one can get for Breath. I don’t recall if there’s a legal market for Breath, but undoubtedly there’s a black market. Prices there will be an order of magnitude or more lower. Breath from adults is also worth less (but far from worthless), Even so, there are people who will be forced, either by circumstances or sometimes explicitly, to “give” their Breath. It’s not going to be rich people. Power in Hallandren is built quite literally on the souls of the poor.
Interesting question on Breath and hemalurgy. I suspect it doesn’t impact personality, or if it does it’s too small an amount to be significant. It 1/50th of a small part of a soul (at the First Heightening) isn’t all that much.
While the donors of breath to the gods are compensated, there does seem to be some genuine belief behind it.
On the question of what Endowment thinks of the whole Breath transactions conundrum, I have a few thoughts: Brandon has previously said that when a Shard invests in a world, he/she/it does not determine how their Investiture will manifest, the world itself dictates this. So I think that what we need to know is whether Endowment also created humans on Nalthis, or if they were already present when she arrived. If it is a situation similar to Scadrial, where she actually created the planet from scratch, maybe she had a modicum of control over the process, in which case I’m sure she is totes fine with it. Otherwise, I think that she probably has some concerns about how the economy of Breath has evolved over time. Seeing as how her Intent is “Endowment”, she literally endows each human with a Breath, to see it removed so frequently might be an affront to the Intent; on the other hand, since Breath cannot be forcibly taken from one person to another, it could also be seen as one person “endowing” another with their Breath, in which case, again, Endowment is probably totes fine with it. But of course, we also have the Returned, who need one Breath per week to keep surviving until their own “mini-intent” has been fulfilled, so I’m not sure how that floats with what I’ve said above. Anyways, enough of all that;
As to whether Breath changes your personality or otherwise alters your Soul, I don’t think there’s much of a link to Hemalurgy, other than how it is almost like stapling part of one soul onto another. I feel like giving up your Breath to another person is like blanking your Identity with Allomancy. As long as the proper Command is given, your Breath can be transferred to another person to be used as they see fit. Otherwise, when somebody Awakens with their Breath, nobody else can remove it from the object, so it is now coloured by your Soul. Same thing happens with Feruchemy – you Invest a property into a metalmind, and then only YOU can retrieve it, unless your Identity is ALSO stored away at the same time.
Wow, that got long-winded…at least for me, it did….
It is stupid of Vivenna to mention Lemex first. If they hadn’t known him, they could still just have said yes, we work for him.
They do kidnap her, they just trick her into coming willingly.
Did Denth know for certain that Lemex was going to give up his breath to Vi?
A breath is not a modification of the Spiritweb of the person, contrary to Hemalurgy. Thus, there are no twisted bodies or changed personalities. Here, I assume it is an addition to ones reserve. I remember Brandon Sanderson mentioning not too far ago that the Investiture of Nalthis is the easiest to manipulate and transfer from someone to somebody, and from world to world, because it is keyed to the identity. Then, there won’t be any change of nature
I keep waffling on this whole giving/selling Breath thing. You could say it’s nice of Endowment to give every person something they can sell once in their life… or you could say it’s very exploitative. From both text and annotations, it does seem that people consider it an honor/religious duty/generally-good-thing to give their breath to one of the gods; the fact that it’s so often a young person, giving the very best, fits very well with the Hallandren religious commitment. And it’s a good thing that they are well-compensated for it, otherwise it would be a horrible exploitation.
If I ever get a chance, I’m going to see if I can get Brandon to just talk about it for a while. I’d like to know what his intent was – or what his intent for Endowment’s Intent was.
One problem with the black market breaths being cheaper theory. If that were true, you could make a fortune. Have a child, take her to the god kings and sell her breath. Use the money to buy someone’s breath for less, go back to the god kings, rinse and repeat.
#8 @wingracer – The theory isn’t that the Breath would be cheaper to BUY on the black market, but that the person SELLING their Breath wouldn’t get as much for it as they would selling it to the Returned Court (or that the Breath isn’t one the Court would buy). The black market takes from both ends, being less rewarding for the seller and more expensive for the buyer (or cheaper but of significantly lower quality). In other words, huge profit margins for the black market in exchange for the risk of said market being of questionable legality.
#7 @Wetlandernw – I don’t see a problem with selling to the Returned Court. If they consider it an honor and religious duty, that’s fair. But the society clearly uses Breath for more than just keeping the Returned alive. Breath == respect == access == power. Plus the fact that with enough Breath, one is for all intents and purposes immortal. That’s where I think it becomes exploitative. If someone offers to pay me to dig a ditch or build a Windows Server for them, it can be a mutually beneficial transaction. They don’t have to sully their hands with dirt or Microsoft and can spend their time and effort elsewhere. I haven’t lost anything irrevocable (besides time), and I’ve gained money which gives me some power I didn’t have before. In their society that’s not true. As a staunch free market capitalist, I normally don’t have a problem with buying and selling. I guess what I get hung up on is the same as the Idrians – what’s being sold is part of someone’s soul.
Wingracer@8: Arbitrage only works if there’s some factor of exclusivity – e.g., not everybody can figure it out, or there are other costs, like transport, convenience, or the like. In fact, in Hallandren, everyone would know whether a Breath sold to the gods would fetch a better price, and everyone with the desperation to sell Breath would be motivated by this.
Anyway, I suspect your idea wouldn’t work, for two reasons. The text often speaks of Breath in a rather rigorously countable, mathematical sense – to accomplish X takes exactly Y number of Breaths. They seem very fungible, meaning, each Breath is exactly alike. But for the Returned, it seems very different. There’s still a mathematical quality to it – one Breath lasts exactly one week – but they can apparently discern a quality to each Breath, and prefer Breaths from young, healthy children. (It’s possible that non-Returned can also discern this quality. Have we heard?)
As such, I also suspect that a child with the secondhand Breath of some other poor person would not be suitable for donation/sale to a god. It would probably function for the one-week life extension, but I suspect it would not have the desired “flavour,” even if the Breath originated in another young, healthy child.
Which brings me to the second reason. As I noted, arbitrage only works if your buyer and seller can’t easily cut out the middleman (i.e., you). And if some child in poverty needs to sell his or her Breath at all, why wouldn’t they go directly to the Court of the Gods? Aside from perhaps fetching a higher price, it’s the more pious option. Jewels tells us they take genuine pride in it.
Seems to me the secondary Breath market is for those who don’t have what it takes to sell to the Returned. And as such, even if it’s not a black market, these Breaths are less valuable and probably fetch a noticeably lower price. (Though … who knows for sure? Perhaps the difference in value is covered by the aforementioned nonmonetary value of piety.)
@11
I agree it wouldn’t work which was kind of my point. I’m not convinced that there really would be much of a thriving black market for breaths at all. Maybe for the selling of many breaths in one large chunk for convenience but why would I sell my breath cheap to a black market if I could just walk over to the palace? If my breath was not acceptable to them, I bet there would be other options. If I was rich and wanted to buy some breath, why pay some black market 10 gold a piece for them if I could just walk down to the nearest poor section of town and offer 5?
Black markets exist when there is demand for something that is either illegal, taboo, highly taxed or otherwise difficult to come by for most yet easy for some. As far as we know so far, there is no tax, regulation or really even taboo on breath at least in Halandren. Everyone has one and can keep it or sell it to anyone else whenever they want. Sure you would have people trying to profit from it but it would be more like a corner pawn shop than the illegal drug trade.
Now Idris, there I could see a black market for breath thriving.
Yes, well, it sounded like you were saying that if the going rate for a Breath on the open market is lower than what a child can get from the Court, that this would permit arbitrage, and therefore we shouldn’t assume the price would be lower. That’s what I was trying to refute, because I don’t think arbitrage could really arise here. We don’t know that the going rate is lower than what the Returned will pay, but I think it’s reasonable to believe so.
(We agree, I think, that a black market per se is unlikely. The sale of Breath seems to be widely accepted in society, and the rich are clearly buying Breath as opposed to collecting it painstakingly from dying friends and relatives. We aren’t given reason to believe it’s illegal, or particularly difficult to arrange legally.)
Speaking of dying friends and relatives, do we ever figure out why Breath doesn’t accumulate generationally? Assuming no Idrian taboo on such things, the number of Breaths in the population ought to go up over time. Almost anyone who is about to die, like old Lemex, would wish to bequeath his or her Breath to the younger generation – just like their property and material possessions. And unlike material goods, which moth and rust doth corrupt, Breath never expires, if you’ll pardon the pun. (The God King’s Breaths, some hundreds of years old, are still perfectly good.)
I guess the only ways the number goes down are (a) those who die suddenly, with no chance to utter the words, (b) creation of Lifeless people and squirrels, or (c) use by the Returned. Now, it’s possible that those three depletion factors overwhelm the number of Breaths that can be passed down through inheritance, but I doubt it. So, number of excess Breaths should keep going up, and, unless the population is expanding even faster, average Breath per capita would rise as well. At some point it becomes rare for anyone to have fewer than, say, 5 or 10 or 30 or 80 Breaths.
…Or maybe this exact thing is happening, but is wholly concentrated in the 1%, as the hoi polloi are kept poor enough to sell any excess Breath they inherit?
You bring up some good points. It reminds me of video game economics where money and loot is constantly being dropped by conquered foes so the money supply in game is constantly increasing leading to rampant inflation. In this case there are circumstances that remove breath from the economy. People die without giving their breath. The returned are all taking one a week. Some are being used up in awakenings. In the past it sounds like a huge amount were being used in awakening. I suspect the biggest check is the wealthy hoarding all the breath they can get a hold on.
And then there is another question. Would people really be all that willing to give their breath before death? I’m not so sure. Breath extends life. Giving it up when you are seriously ill would seem to guarantee death while holding it would provide some hope of recovery. My life isn’t perfect but I like it and I’m holding on to the bitter end.
Video game “rampant inflation,” ha. I see we’re more or less on the same page.
Well, how much Breath does it take to really boost your immune system, as it were? It takes 2000 to achieve “agelessness.” (Number pulled out of my Ars.) Poor old Lemex: his hundreds of Breaths didn’t avail him much in the end. I suspect the one or five or ten that you might have as a poor person won’t provide much illusion of hope on your deathbed.
On the other hand, the economic incentive is yuge. Enough to feed a family for a year? Even if the market rate is far lower, that’s still a lot if you’re poor. And the desire to provide for your loved ones after you’re gone is powerful indeed. It seems we’re wired to value our children’s wellbeing above our own. This is why most people don’t blow all their savings on wild living in their later years. Given a choice, they’d rather leave a sizable fortune to their children. Likewise, many will choose (directly or via a living will) not to spend their last dime on hospitals and chemo.
That accumulation would also mean that sometimes one unexpected death isn’t the loss of one Breath, but hundreds or thousands. It takes a relatively long time to add a Breath to the world, but removing one or many can sometimes be very fast. I wonder how battles go. Medics running around, “Better pass me your Breath, just in case…”
I wouldn’t have thought of Denth as “the anti-Kelsier” working for “the wrong team” if Sanderson hadn’t said so (partly because I read Warbreaker before Mistborn), but I can sort of see it.
I love cioppino. And most other seafood medleys.
Hello Alice,
still lurking in the back – when you begun the re-read, I started re-reading Warbreaker as well, then, after chapter 3, I noticed that I had to binge-read the whole book, finished it by the same day and have been… less motivated, since, which is a pity… I’m a binge-reader, I’m afraid.
As for Breath and Souls – I will discuss the second question first, as we have clear sources for this. Those would be Denth (who doesn’t really know what he’s talking about), Tonk Fah (who’s a sociopath and thus doesn’t really count), and Vivenna (who is particularily interesting due to her Austrian biases).
What I find most peculiar is that your question
… doesn’t even occur to Vivenna when she finds herself with so much Breath. I would think that the idea of having her personality changed is a far less abstract fear than “losing” her soul – so I take the fact that she doesn’t even think to fret about it as an indicator that that is not the case.
From the annotations:
As for the second point, we have Vivenna’s memories of being a Drab:
Here I don’t have proper sources to back anything I say, but from how I read it (“Drabs cannot Return”), I think that by giving up your Breath you’re giving away your Connection.
It’s only a theory, but since Breath is Investiture I would say that people without it are cut off from the Cognitive Realm (and hence, being stuck in the Physical, can’t Return) – I don’t see reason why they can’t pass on Beyond, I think we would have heard if that was not the case, but there’s no way back to them to their body.
Making sense? :)
Ok,I have a problem with folks saying it’s an honor and people feel somehow more compensated by selling their breath to the returned. THESE ARE CHILDREN. THERE IS NO WAY THIS IS NOT COERCION. Maybe the parents feel they get more than just money from this exchange. The children have no say, they have been brainwashed with no idea of what they are really losing.
As for Denth, when I first read Warbreaker I really thought he was a good guy until he wasn’t. Now I see everything he does as the controlling planned actions they are. I feel sorry for Vivienna, she is the product of a lifetime of training. it’s not her fault that training was incorrect and misleading.
@19 – Ummm. About that first paragraph… Jewels has a few things to say on the subject, but I’ll wait to go into it any more until we get there. If you want to read it, it’s in Chapter 25. She would definitely not appreciate your opinion of her beliefs, any more than she does Vivenna’s (which you mostly echo).
Remember, the priests have been storing tens (hundreds?) of thousands of souls in the God-King for generations. OK, technically he counts as Returned, but consider that he may have as many Breaths by Siri and Vivenna’s time as there are people in Hallandren.
Denth. Oh, Denth. I started to like him almost right away (the very beginnning of his introduction was a bit strange). He was nice and amusing and showed me how intriguing and awesome mercenaries are. And then he turned on Vivenna, with practically no foreshadowing that I had noticed. And Vivenna immediately insists upon often sadly thinking about how Denth had seemed so nice and like a friend, and she had been so shocked to learn that he was actually bad and she shouldn’t have trusted him at all all along. Everyone seems to immediately reject all of Denth’s good points and the kindnesses he clearly showed to Vivenna and just consider him bad out of hand. And then he just dies, and nobody even seems to care that much. I quite liked him! He was a really interesting character!
The annotations ameliorate the situation somewhat, but really, if Brandon Sanderson thinks that way about Denth why couldn’t it show up in the book? I’m glad that he appreciates Denth’s complexity and such, but it really didn’t come across properly for me in the book. That’s one of my problems with Warbreaker; I feel like it’s necessary to have the annotations in order to properly explain stuff, instead of the book functioning fine on its own and the annotations providing some extra information.
However, I don’t care that much about Tonk Fah, and generally find him utterly terrifying. He was all right before you found out about him liking to torture things. Now he’s just scary.
Did anyone else notice the slight anomaly in that Denth says that his Breath “keeps him alive”, when in reality he would know enough to not be under that misconception? It definitely looks like foreshadowing to me.
I wonder if it would change anything about you to sell your original Breath and then buy a different one. Are these pieces of souls different enough that it would really change anything? Does the strength of the Breath have any noticeable effect on you?
I was also just thinking about whether people who had enough Breaths to get to the Fifth Heightening would have the resistance to alcohol that Returned do. (Brandon Sanderson does like his drunkness-preventing magic.) Is that something just to do with Returned (like being infertile) or is it just the Heightening?
Yeah. I enjoyed Tonk Fah and his pets before learnng what he did to them.
Re: Breaths and Souls. Are we defining “soul” here the way Christian define souls?
Because of we follow the annotation:
Then, the “soul” here is not like the Christian definition of soul. So, if that is the case, then to me, this is just a magic system and the morality of selling and buying breaths do not come into play.
That said, and on the assumption that the “soul” here is not the Christian definition, then “breaths” are like stormlight (in SA) and/or metal in Mistborn.
I might be way off. And perhaps incorrect. I might even sound heartless. But, it is hard for me to judge the people of Idrian and Hallendren because we sort of equate “soul” to Christian definition . Or am I the only one seeing this.
sheiglagh, it might be worth mentioning that lots of cultures have the concept of a multipart soul, most famously the ancient Egyptians with the ba and ka.
Also, being who he is Brandon Sanderson is inevitably aware that “spirit” literally means “breath”. (Same root word as “respiration”.) So does Chinese “chi”, which is itself the root word of Japanese “ki”. They all mean “breath”.
carlf @@@@@ 25 – Thanks for the info. :-) I learned something new today.
I don’t know much about the old Egyptian religion. And I know a little about the Chinese and Japanese religions. Both countries are very secular.
That said, the Chinese (at least before the Cultural Revolution) believe in a multi-god religion. Just like Greek mythology, the Chinese gods can be petty and jealous. I had forgotten Chinese mythology. The Japanese are also secular and medieval Japan religion also believes in a multi-gods theology.
That said and putting it in context of Warbreaker, it is still hard for me to imagine that the “buying and selling” of breath is immoral in the Christian context. Take “kami” for instance which is the basis of the Shinto religion. It says that “kami” resides in all things including inanimate objects. Kami is loosely defined as the “spirit” within everything. So, if that is the case, then buying and selling furniture is immoral.
Come to think of it, the first time I read “The Emperor’s Soul”, it reminded me so much of Japan and Shinto.
Anyway, like what I said, I might be in the minority on this one. From the very beginning, when I was reading Warbreaker, I did not see the buying and selling of breath as immoral or taking advantage of the poor. To me, it is just commerce. I am not opining on a group of people who believes in a God King, and a new god created everytime there is a Returned within the Christian context of soul and divinity.
Just my thoughts
sheighlagh, treating ‘breaths’ as a commodity in Hallandren is not the same as acquiring souls in the Abrahamitic religions in that it is not the aspect of a person that survives physical death, as you noted. Nonetheless, it can be considered immoral since its loss diminishes the prior owner in important ways. Breaths make the owner lively and more aware of surroundings. It also confers health and longevity. Being forced to sell breaths, or – worse that of your child, because of poverty is unfortunate or tragic. It is not a sign of a progressive society.
carlf, your translation of spirit as breath in some Asian languages is more widespread than you realize. In Hebrew the corresponding word for both breath and spirit is ‘neshama’.
I never liked Tonk Fah. And he just gets creepier.
As for breath – I think in some ways the Idrians are on to something, even with their incorrect ideas about it. I may still be thinking about the way children have to give up their Breath as a sacrifice, but it seems like something that one can’t really meaningfully consent to (and if they do it’s out of some greater, more desparate need), except perhaps on your death bed. The powers are pretty cool, but of all the magic systems this is the one I’m most squeamish about (except hemallurgy, I guess!).
(Ah, I see Nick31 @1 already addressed some of these same concerns!)
@24 – I agree that this doesn’t seem to map exactly to the Christian conception of the immortal soul (and really, given the theology/metaphysics of the Cosmere it’s kind of hard to try and apply any specifically Christian theological concepts to this, outside of general ethics) – if that were the case, I’d find it even MORE offensive! – but it still seems shady to me. A predilication to depression and sickness?
@28 I don’t think we have enough facts to make a judgment one way or the other on this whole breath issue. Maybe once Brandon releases more books set on Nalthis we will know more.
Seems like Drabs are just people from our world. Not really that horrible of a fate to be one of us, although I’m sure it sucks not to be Enheightened when everyone else is.
So if you’re a drab, but then get someone else’s breath are you able to Return?
That seems to be how it works. Just make enough money to buy somebody else’s breath. Going by Jewels being a Drab is well, drab, but she has a really interesting take on selling her breath. Maybe she’s just rationalizing but I can see somebody feeling good about ‘being a part’ of the God King. She’s clearly compos mentis and intellectually capable, the effects seem to be mostly emotional.
@30
Actually, per Word Of Brandon people from worlds other than Nalthis (presumably including people from our world), have a bit more Investiture than a Drab, but a bit less than someone with one Breath.
@33, Aeshdan: but how about Scadrians, who (like Nalthians) have a bit of a Shard in them, in this case Preservation?