“We Ogier are bound to the stedding,
Perrin. It is said that before the
Breaking of the World, we could go where we wished for as long as we wished,
like you humans, but that changed with the Breaking. Ogier were scattered like every other people,
and they could not find any of the stedding again. Everything was moved, everything changed. Mountains, rivers, even the seas…It was
during the Exile, while we wandered lost, that the Longing first came on
us. The desire to know the stedding
once more, to know our homes again. Many
died of it.” – The Great Hunt, p. 503.
Diaspora as a theme has often been attributed to
minorities, specifically Africans through the slave trade and through ancient
conquest the Jewish people. It then becomes
interesting when Jordan introduces the culture of the Ogier as spread out in
small communities across the world which they cannot leave for extended periods
of time for pain of death. When Loial
enters Stedding Tsofu, a stedding which is not his own, he is described as
feeling at ease to be back at a homelike place, among his own people. There are cultural explorations of the Ogier
here, as well as the Aiel, and the society of Ogier very much sees people
leaving the community as dangerous.
Loial leaves out his own stedding’s name out of introductions as male Ogier
are often married off on the word of female Ogier who find them attractive. Jordan doesn’t take anytime to evaluate this
cultural aspect here, instead giving Loial a subject of beauty in Erith, which
plays out like a schoolboy crush. The
quote about the longing above provides quite a bit of insight to Loial and the
Ogier. He’s been travelling with Rand
for a long enough time that he’s felt the Longing already and this is something
that he knows will eventually have to go back to a stedding, this buying him a
lot more time. Loial does have to
convince the elders of Stedding Tsofu to be allowed to guide them through the
Ways, even though they show a broken Ogier to stay them.
The Aiel as presented here also start immediately by attempting
to murder the Sheinarans, though the stedding is a place of peace. But this is the point where Mat immediately
says that Rand must be an Aiel and Rand starts to break down about his own
identity as a possible Aiel. The Aiel
have been looking for He Who Comes With the Dawn, and Mat becomes convinced it
must be Rand. “Mat told most of it, with
Perrin putting in a correcting word now and again when he embellished too
much. Mat made a great show of how
dangerous the Aielman had been, and how close the meeting had come to a
fight. “And sine you’re the only Aiel we
know,” he finished, “well it could be you.
Ingtar said Aiel never live outside of the Waste, so you must be the
only one.” “I don’t think that’s funny,
Mat,” Rand growled. “I am not an Aiel.” The
Amyrlin said you are. Ingtar thinks you
are. Tam said . . . . He was sick,
fevered. They had severed the roots
he thought he had, the Aes Sedai and Tam between them, though Tam has been too
sick to know what he was saying.” – The Great Hunt, p. 509-510.
Rand is already losing a lot of his identity and that only
becomes exacerbated by the Ways not being accessible as Machin Shin is waiting
for them. So what Verin does is knowing
about the Portal Stones to get them to Tomon Head, manipulates Rand into grabbing
saidin when something goes wrong. Rand (and
the rest of the party) are shown their alternate lives which for Rand all end
with him insane or dead. Among these
lives are one where he stays in Emond’s Field and marries Egwene who becomes Wisdom
before Trollocs attack killing them all, one where Egwene dies before their
wedding and he flees to join the Queen’s guard, and one where he is gentled by the
Red Ajah. Each ending with the voice of
the Dark One saying “I have won again, Lews Therin”. Before this Verin actually consoles him that
he won’t die from channeling ““You are the Dragon Reborn,” she said quietly. “Oh, you can die, but I don’t think the
Pattern will let you die until it is done with you. Then again, the Shadow lies on the Pattern,
now, and who can say how that affects the weaving? All you can do is follow your destiny.” – The
Great Hunt, p. 526. The section ends
with the arrival four months after the party has left, with everyone seeing
things about possible futures. While
Rand still protests, this is the point where he cannot deny that he is the
Dragon Reborn. He has seen Aiel, he has
felt the chill of entering the stedding where channelers are cut off from the
One Power, and he has seen his alternate paths had Moiraine not come and found
him.
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