“It was coming on evening as they went through the
village and he felt a pang of homesickness as lights appeared in the
windows. No matter what it looks like, a
small voice whispered in his mind, it isn’t really home. Even if you go into one of those houses Tam
won’t be there. If he was, could you
look him in the face? You know, now, don’t you?
Except for the little things like where come from and who you are. No fever-dreams…You might as well stop” – The
Eye of the World, p. 458.
It isn’t easy to write something that makes the reader
feel so isolated in what is essentially a vast world. This entire sequence, and the sequence to
come, just pushes each of the three parties to their lowest points. Rand and Mat are struggling to find places to
hide, with people finding them around every corner and each bit of help feeling
like a drop in a lake. There is fear as
the Darkfriends are always at their backs, and for some of them, the Children
of the Light at their fronts. None of
them actually know if the others are alive: Moiraine is the closest to having
an idea, believing that Rand, Mat, and Perrin are alive. It’s really just something which is built on
a hope. That hope is one of the very few
things being kept alive in them, and is something which can be broken. Rand and Mat’s journey is perhaps the one
with the least hope: they are truly on their own, Rand is having a crisis of
identity while Mat is clearly losing any bit of his previously jovial
self. The quote above clearly shows that
there is this one little voice, sitting right in Rand’s head, telling him that
he has absolutely nothing back for him at home, and that there is nothing for
him going on. The dreams are getting worse,
and Rand has this idea that he might be going insane.
With Mat, however, we come upon one of the early
problems with The Wheel of Time, aka the Mat problem. This problem is mainly one of perspective: The
Eye of the World is told nearly exclusively from Rand’s point of view, only
eight of the previous 31 chapters have split off from his point of view, and
that is only after the splitting of the party.
This means that the character with the most development and personality
is Rand, and that is mostly spent on the crisis of identity. Now Perrin and Nynaeve have gotten the next
most character development as we have been given glimpses into their
perspective, while Moiraine, Lan, and Egwene all get discussions on what the
others think of them and through interactions.
Mat Cauthon is an anomaly as he has either been lumped with Rand or
Perrin in the group, almost echoing just what the group has said already. Rand and Perrin are discussing their dreams,
Mat is there chiming right along. His
introduction is great at giving him a trickster archetype, but there really hasn’t
been enough given that he did maybe one trick in the second or third
chapter. Post the splitting of the party,
Mat has essentially been grumpy and protective about the ruby dagger. It is implied to be the poor conditions mixed
with something about the dagger, reacting terribly when Rand dare suggest
selling it because “That ruby would fetch enough to take us all the way to Caemlyn
in a carriage.” – The Eye of the World, p. 459. It’s clearly affecting Mat, but there isn’t
enough of Mat pre-ruby dagger to make the difference apparent as to whatever he
was before that. It also isn’t effective,
and will be something which plagues Mat for a long while yet.
It becomes completely apparent with the mirroring of
Rand with Perrin and Egwene. There are
two legs of their journey here: first the time with the Tinkers and second
being captured by the Whitecloaks. The
sequence with the Whitecloaks is equally as chilling as Rand and Mat’s internal
strife, as with every question answered, Perrin and Egwene, trying their best
to save themselves, only seal their fates.
The wolves only hurt them, with one scene where Perrin nearly loses
himself to the wolves. He attempts to
shut them out throughout, but the death of one of them affects him greatly: “Pain
filled Perrin, and he screamed, a wordless scream that had something of a wolf’s
cry in it. Without thinking he leaped
forward, still screaming. All thought
was gone…Something crashed into his head, and as he fell, he didn’t know if it
was Hopper, or himself who died.” – The Eye of the World, p. 446. There are thoughts from the wolves which permeate
Perrin here and it’s something that the Children of the Light, use. The Children are led here by Geofram Bornhald,
and his underling Child Byar. They make
an interesting double act as it’s a very obvious that Byar is out for blood. Now, Perrin did end up responsible for deaths
of Children, really using the axe for the first time.
This is also the first time Jordan shows his flair for
building cultures with the Tuatha’an, or Tinkers. They are a travelling people who go and
repair things, have a bad reputation for theft, and follow the Way of the Leaf,
an extreme form of pacifism. A song is
lost and they are searching for it. There
are clear influences from the Roma people of Eastern Europe, though the
prejudices don’t seem to go as deep as in the real world. The group of Tinkers that Perrin and Egwene
meet with Elyas have one of their member, Aram, being slowly soured with the
Way fo the Leaf. There are those who leave
the Tuatha’an, but it is a sad day, like someone leaving their religion and
being shunned. This is also a period to
show Egwene as someone who really explores culture at each opportunity. She is the one who blends the best with the Tinkers,
even with Perrin thinking she’s going to eventually leave and travel with the Tinkers,
forgetting her recent plans to become an Aes Sedai. This is clearly an idea Jordan wants to get
across, that Egwene is naïve and in a way it is true, but it is also something which
will be reversed going forward. It’s
also a point where Perrin essentially has to start the long process of
accepting himself, the denial phase. He has
to be told that he can let his guard down and enjoy himself, that there can be
some bit of safety. Of course, it is cut
short, and even the little safety of Rand and Mat’s is cut short with the ominous
telling of what is to come for them.
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