Re-Reading "The Great Hunt": "Chapter 34: The Wheel Weaves" and "Chapter 35: Stedding Tsofu"
In a pair of compelling chapters, Jordan gives us insight into a couple of important side characters and sheds fascinating light on some very alien cultures.
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Welcome back to Wheel of Time Wednesday here at Omnivorous, where I’m slowly working my way through Robert Jordan’s sprawling epic series, The Wheel of Time. This week we continue our exploration of The Great Hunt, focusing on a pair of chapters, one of which focuses on Thom and Padan Fain, while the other follows Rand and his friends as they enter an Ogier stedding.
In the world of The Wheel of Time there are few characters as terrifying or as compelling as Padan Fain. From his first appearance as a peddler who arrives in Emond’s Field just before the Trolloc attack to the moment when he breaks out of the prison of Fal Dara in a welter of blood, he’s shown that he’s almost as dangerous as a Fade or even one of the Forsaken. After all, unlike them he doesn’t really seem to have an allegiance to the Dark One so much as he is just…pure chaotic evil. He harbors a relentless and unslakable bloodlust for Rand, in particular, and it’s this desire to come to head-to-head with the boy from Emond’s Field/the Dragon Reborn that seems to motivate so many of his actions.
There’s something more than a little disconcerting about spending time in the mind of a character like this one. It’s a bit like those moments in a horror movie where the camera sutures the viewer into the perspective of the monster or a killer, except this time we get even more intimate detail about how his mind works. His actions make a sinister kind of sense, at least if one is willing to let go of one’s moral compass and normal way of looking at the world and fully sink into his twisted psyche. At a narrative level, of course, this also creates a lot of dramatic irony for us as readers, since we know what he’s doing and the trap he’s laying for Rand, even as the latter remains mostly unaware.
Yet Fain finds that, for all of his wiles, he’s not nearly as in control as he might like when it comes to the Seanchan. I’ll admit that I felt a little bit of savage glee when Turak managed to open the chest with the horn without hesitation, a not-so-subtle demonstration of his own knowledge and Fain’s lack thereof. Fain is very clearly one of those people who can’t stand to not be in control of a situation, and you can almost feel his desire to wrap his hands around the Seanchan’s neck. Moreover, Fain also has to reckon with the fact that these invaders don’t think about things in the same way that he does and that, as a result, he’s not going to be able to manipulate them in the way that he expects.
Indeed, the exchange between the High Lord and Fain also gives us more insight into the Seanchan and how their society is organized. Jordan is one of those extraordinary fantasists who has the power to evoke a country with such detail and depth that we almost feel as if we’ve been there, and all of this without a single character actually journeying to Seanchan itself. What’s particularly surprising about these strange people from beyond the sea is just how much they’ve all bought into the system to such an extent that it would never occur to them to try to rebel against their leader. Turak admits as much when he turns down the opportunity to take the Horn of Valere and wind it himself, even though doing so would give him extraordinary power. Like many (though by no means all) of the Seanchan, he seems to be a true believer in their way of life.
And then there’s poor Thom. Having managed to survive the attack by the Fade and having built a bit of a life for himself in Cairhien, one would have thought that he would at last be able to find at least a little bit of peace. Unfortunately, he’s yet another of those whose life is turned upside-down thanks to his involvement with Rand, and the Wheel weaves its own bit of tragedy for him. It’s quite heartbreaking to see him come home to find his young lover and apprentice dead, and even more wrenching to realize it was all for nothing. She was just another casualty of the Game of Houses.
Meanwhile, Rand and company end up entering a stedding, where he at least can take comfort from the fact that inside there he can’t access the One Power. Though I didn’t plan it this way, this chapter makes for a good pairing with the preceding one, in that both provide us anthropological detail of cultures very different from the ones that we’ve met before. In a strange way, the Ogier are rather a mix of the hobbits and the Ents of Tolkien’s legendarium. They possess all of the former’s reluctance to leave their neat and ordered existence and the latter’s devotion to the trees and to a more deliberate approach to life and to anything that even remotely resembles change. All of this is quite eye-opening for Rand and company, though more than a little distressing for Loial, who fears that he’ll end up being roped into marriage.
Considering how grim the preceding chapter was, this one was like a breath of fresh air, and I personally enjoyed getting to spend some time inside of the stedding. I also enjoyed our glimpse into the Aiel, who make a memorable appearance. It’s getting harder and harder for Rand to deny that he’s one of them, for all that doing so fills him with (understandable) angst and dread. Moreover, their presence in this chapter is also a reminder of their very martial way of looking at the world and, as subsequent chapters will reveal, they’re even more complicated in their social organization than the Seanchan.
All in all, I quite enjoyed these two chapters. While they may not move the plot forward very much, they do accomplish something just as important, giving us valuable insight into cultures and side characters who will play a prominent role in events to come.