Re-Reading "The Wheel of Time": "Prologue: Dragonmount" and "Chapter 1: An Empty Road"

In two relatively short chapters, Robert Jordan manages to capture the richness, complexity, and human warmth that make his series so enduringly appealing.

Since I’ve been enraptured by the second season of Amazon’s adaptation of The Wheel of Time, I figured it was time for me to revisit the original novels. I last read them all the way in graduate school, and I’ve always thought there’s a great deal of value in revisiting the things that you love, just as I also think that there’s a lot to be gained from taking a real deep-dive into what makes books work. And, since I love sharing my work and observations with the world, I figured I’d use Omnivorous to do a chapter-by-chapter reading of the sprawling story that Robert Jordan has given us, starting with The Eye of the World. 

So, with that, let’s dive right in, with both the prologue and the first chapter “An Empty Road.” 

I’ve always thought that the Prologue was one of the best parts of this book, or the series as a whole, for that matter. Think about it. You have this enigmatic chapter that throws you right into the aftermath of a gruesome slaughter and, as if that wasn’t enough, you also have to occupy the headspace of someone who is so far gone into madness that he can’t even recognize his own wife’s dead body staring at him. We know that this person is named Lews Therin, and we get a slew of other references, but none of it quite makes sense. Nevertheless, it’s clear that his self-immolation is meant to be understood as a tragedy, a terrible ending for anyone.

Just as remarkable is the fact that we get a number of references to characters and happenings which won’t really make sense for several books. It’s clear that even at this early stage in the series that Jordan was one of those fantasy authors with a truly expansive imagination. He was not only able to give us a prologue that teases us with knowledge but also is the perfect stage-setting for the epic drama to follow. Unlike the prelude to The Fellowship of the Ring, which lays out in meticulous detail the habits and social structure of the hobbits, Jordan teases us without ever really showing his hand.

And then, just a few pages later…we’re seemingly in an entirely different place and time, plodding along with a red-haired young man named Rand al’Thor as he makes his way to the town of Emond’s Field with his father. It’s really quite a remarkable shift, and it’s a testament to Jordan’s skill as a storyteller that it manages to not be completely disorienting. Instead, the abrupt (and unexplained) shift in setting serves to whet our appetite for more, leaving us wondering how long it will take before we get a full explanation for where we are in time and how the events surrounding young Rand connect to the prologue. 

This first chapter clearly owes a significant debt to Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. Just as the first chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring immerse is in the bucolic world of the Shire while also showing us the shadow lurking on the horizon, so this first chapter of The Eye of the World gives us Emond’s Field, a quaint little village in the Two Rivers. The darkness, however, is much more obvious than it is in Tolkien’s work, and the first few lines we’re already shown that this is a perilous time for our hero and for his family and friends, with wolves and bears preying on sheep and the weather being deeply uncooperative. 

And then there’s that Black Rider, I mean, shadowy horseman. If you’ve ever read The Lord of the Rings, you know that the presence of the Nazgûl in the peaceful Shire is one of the clearest indications that the world as Frodo has known it is about to change forever. Though we don’t know anything about this mysterious rider that Rand sees on the road behind him, it’s already clear–from the feeling that our hero gets as he sees him and from the fact that the wind doesn’t ruffle his clothes–that this is someone (or something) far beyond the bounds of the normal. 

There are still some touches of levity to this chapter, though, particularly once we start to meet the other residents of Emond’s Field. Jordan does an amazing job setting the stage for the major events to come. Emond’s Field isn’t quite as detached from the rest of the world as the Shire is relative to the rest of Middle-earth, but it’s still clear that they do things their own way and don’t appreciate too much meddling from the outside world. It makes sense that a place like Emond’s Field would produce cantankerous old men like Cenn Buie or the various members of the Coplin and Congar families. Indeed, I loved this chapter for the texture and flavor it gave us. In just a handful of pages we get a real sense of what Emond’s Field is like as a place and where its various citizens fit into its social fabric. 

But what of Rand himself? Though the gender dynamics of the series as a whole won’t come into full focus until later, we already see shades of the perpetually-agonized Rand that become such a recurring (some might say tiresome) motif in this series. He’s obviously torn about his feelings for Egwene, and he seems distinctly uncomfortable around women in general, whether those of his own age or older. Knowing what I do about the way this becomes one of Rand’s key characteristics later in the series, it’s hard not to read these scenes through that prism. At the same time, I was also struck by how quaint it seems in this first chapter. 

Overall, I found both these two chapters to be an excellent start to The Eye of the World. It’s a delicate balancing act between light and darkness, between epic destruction and small-town life, and Jordan once again shows why he deserves his reputation as one of the finest fantasists of his generation.