The Eye of the World

The first book of The Wheel of Time, The Eye of the World, is an epic fantasy novel that wears its inspirations on its sleeve – even to a fault: its story is clearly based on Arthurian legends and The Lord of the Rings, but it’s Tolkien who most shackles Robert Jordan’s novel. Nevertheless, The Eye of the World really shines when it manages to break free from its influences and do its own thing, developing a fascinating protagonist and a couple of great themes.

It all begins on “an awkward morning, made for unpleasant thoughts.” Rand al’Thor is a farmer who is accompanying his father to the local town, in the isolated rural region of the Two Rivers. The weather – always quick to react to important narrative events – is particularly bad: the air is chilly and the gusts of wind are stronger than usual. It doesn’t come as a surprise, then, when Rand suddenly feels like he’s being watched and, looking back over his shoulders, spots a dark rider not too far away. He can sense the hatred and malice of this rider, who also seems to exist on another plane: their horse doesn’t make a sound, and the strong wind doesn’t affect their robes. This mysterious figure vanishes when Rand looks away to call his father, and the boy dismisses the event as another unpleasant thought – but one that will linger on his mind for a while.

Like most stories in the genre, Rand is about to have his calm, peaceful life shaken up by the arrival of a wizard, who tells him of the importance of his quest, which is directly linked to the rise of evil forces that answer to a Dark Lord. Rand is forced to set forth on a journey to faraway places, visiting strange lands while being pursued by vicious monsters.

These monsters are grotesque in nature, being a bizarre mix of different animals. The Trollocs, for example, which serve as the Dark Lord’s main minions (basically, this novel’s version of orcs,) have the horns of a ram, human hands, a muzzle, feathers, and also fur. They even exude a vile stench, because evil in The Eye of the World is not just an abstract concept, but something that can be clearly seen and felt by those around it. Evil is a tangible force that affects living beings and even materials. As a character explains to Rand:

“Trolloc weapons are made at forges in the valley called Thakan’dar, on the very slopes of Shayol Ghul itself. Some of them take a taint from that place, a stain of evil in the metal. Those tainted blades make wounds that will not heal unaided.”

The book is structured as a long, big chase. As soon as Rand is told that the Trollocs are after him and his friends – Merry and Pippin (sorry, Mat and Perrin) –, he sets off to Tar Valon, where the Aes Sedai, a sect of female wizards, will supposedly protect them from the Dark Lord – whose name, Ba’alzamon, sounds like a Digimon based on a Christian demon.

The Aes Sedai that visits Rand and tells him of his quest is called Moiraine, and she’s a very interesting character. The system of magic at play here reverses a Biblical notion of gender: instead of women, it links men to taint and corruption. Only females can use magic – drawing from the so-called “one power” – because magic is said to have a male and a female side (Saidin and Saidar) and the male half has touched darkness and been corrupted by it: those who attempt to draw from Saidin, then, are bound to become madmen or tyrants. Women are the powerful wielders of magic in The Eye of the World, and this leads to Moiraine being characterized in a peculiar manner.

She’s not Gandalf, gentle and trustworthy in the eyes of the protagonist. The Aes Sedai are women with power, which means men are afraid of them, creating rumors and stories about their “true” malicious intentions. Rand and his friends are incredibly suspicious of Moiraine, being constantly warned about her agenda: even her allegiance to the light is questioned, as the characters ponder if Moiraine is secretly a servant of the Dark Lord, leading them to a trap.

The narration is in the third person, but it’s attached to the protagonist, never leaving his perspective for the most part of the novel’s first half: we have access only to Rand’s thoughts and opinions, with the other characters being constructed by his gaze. Moiraine, then, is presented to us through Rand’s eyes: the eyes of a gullible young man, who is keen to believe in stories and rumors. Consequently, he’s suspicious of Moiraine, seeing in the Aes Sedai a menacing enigma.

This results in a curious blur between two distinct genre tropes: in this book, Moiraine shares more traits with the Femme Fatales of Noir stories than with the Old Wise Mentor trope of the fantasy genre. She’s considered manipulative and dangerous, pushing the protagonist to trouble just like Gandalf, but with a hidden agenda. She’s not there to teach and guide Rand and his friends but to use them. Her beauty is brought up immediately when she first appears before Rand, who gets mesmerized by her appearance: it softens him up, making Rand and his male friends more compliant: they all become very eager to help Moiraine with anything she wishes. The only part missing of the Femme Fatale is the seduction itself (and Moiraine wears blue instead of the usual luscious red) but Rand only has eyes for another character anyway.

His relationship with the young Egwene is a fascinating one. Rand seems incapable of commitment and expressing his feelings for the girl, which doesn’t stop him from wishing she would never leave his side, getting grumpy each time she mentions her own plans for the future (which usually doesn’t involve him). He doesn’t want to commit to a relationship, but he also doesn’t want to let her go. When she talks about becoming a Wisdom (the town’s sage), he becomes angry and lashes at her. When Moiraine is testing the girl, assessing the extent of her powers, Rand hopes Egwene fails.

And he doesn’t stop there. Rand also projects his own insecurities and issues onto Egwene. There’s this revealing moment when he thinks of her as a naïve girl that is just learning how the world works – as opposed to him, who is supposed to be wise and mature. With a smirky attitude, he thinks, “Maybe now she realizes this isn’t some grand adventure after all.” The fascinating aspect here is that the person who believes in stories and believes that he’s going on an adventure is Rand himself. Just some chapters before this moment, the narrator says, “Trying to convince himself that he was beginning a grand adventure, Rand followed them through the darkened kitchen and out into the stableyard.”

And Rand is not just into Egwene, he’s obsessed with her, as this passage clearly shows: “Egwene combed her hair out – one hundred strokes; he counted.” And yet, just a few lines after this, the narrator reveals the protagonist’s greatest contradiction, “It was the first time he had spoken to her in two days.” He wants to be with her, but makes a point of showing the opposite. There’s a scene in which a kind of oracle says to Rand that he and Egwene are not destined to be together, but they don’t need fate to keep them apart, Rand alone does the job.

Rand, of course, wouldn’t agree with this conclusion. After a long paragraph where he keeps judging Egwene for her connection to magic – an opinion he tries to disguise with a revealing “at least it’s not her fault” –, he approaches her and she – naturally – stiffens and turns her back to him. Hurt, he thinks, “All right, then. If she wants to be like that, there’s nothing I can do.” That is, he blames Egwene for their disconnection, never realizing it’s his own thoughts and behavior that are pushing her away.

His troubled relationship with Egwene is important to the narrative because it reveals crucial details about Rand: he’s a man blind to his own faults and that often projects his own insecurities onto others. He’s quick to trust the wrong people and he puts a lot of faith in rumors and stories, buying prejudice just as it’s sold to him. In other words, a Dark Lord shouldn’t have much trouble enlisting a man like this. This creates tension: since Rand is a deeply flawed and immature individual, the prospect of him falling to darkness becomes more possible and the threat the villain represents becomes more palpable.

Stories and legends are interwoven into the novel’s narrative. Time creates them, Rand believes in them, and Moiraine weaponizes them. There’s a great early scene in which the Aes Sedai faces an angry mob and instead of throwing fireballs at them, she just tells them a story of bravery and courage: she tells them the tale of their forebearers to directly compare the coward, superstitious folk that stands in front of her to their legendary ancestors. When she finishes the story with, “They held it until, today, there is you,” the impact on the mob is devastating: Moiraine beats them not with strength, but by making them deeply ashamed of themselves.

Time and fate are the other big themes. The transition between the prologue and the first chapter marks a big jump in time, showing how it changes and destroys even the most inexorable rock. Human feelings, such as love, grief, and hatred, all fade away. Human lives are forgotten, no matter how grand and important; their legends eventually slipping away from memory, ceasing to be told. And yet… there’s a cycle. The series is called The Wheel of Time, marking how the past repeats itself, turning the battle between good and evil into an eternal struggle that sees only the players changing. Fate, meanwhile, seems a consequence of this cycle. One of the most repeated sentences in the book is, “The wheel weaves as the wheel wills,” revealing how these characters personify the concept, giving it purpose and intent. Moiraine even has “Moirai” in her name, bringing with her the concept of the Greek Fates.

When The Eye of the World is dealing with these themes and characters, treading its own path, it’s great. There’s even an attempt to break down the binary worldview of this type of story, where good and evil are clearly demarked, when it introduces a group of holy knights that are cruel precisely because of their righteousness: their unshaken belief in their goodness leads them to fight the wrong enemies, providing the perfect excuse for sadists to fester in their ranks, as they’re given an authorized enemy to torture and kill.

Sadly, the novel frequently struggles to break free from its major inspiration, The Lord of the Rings. It’s clearly indebted to Arthurian legends as well, with Moiraine functioning as a Morgana-like figure, and a Gleeman mentioning the legend of a certain “Artur Paendrag”, but these are just archetypes and easter eggs. When it comes to Tolkien, The Eye of the World also copies scenes, conflicts, and dialogues. It never reaches The Sword of Shannara levels of, uh, homage, but it’s still problematic.

There’s this early scene where Rand must get off the road and hide in the forest, completely silent behind a tree, because a dark spectral rider – a wraith – is on the road hunting him. Later on, his friend Matt is seen foolishly revealing details of their quest to an innkeeper while Rand unsuccessfully tries to stop him – in a chapter named after the Inn no less. There’s another scene in which the characters talk of a mysterious being following them in the dark: a Gollum-like figure that displays traces of a double, broken personality. And this being is a dangerous figure that Moiraine, nonetheless, advises everyone not to kill because she still feels he has a part to play. Even his interrogation resembles The Lord of the Rings, basically repeating the tale of Gollum getting captured by Sauron’s minions and being brought to and tortured in Mordor. The names are also very similar, never attempting to hide the novel’s main influence: someone mentions an old king in the mountains who is “the son of Thorin”, while the villain lives near the “Mounts of Dhoom”. There’s a ranger with a similar backstory to Aragorn and even a cursed dagger that functions just like the One Ring. These things in isolation are not a problem, but when we add them all up in one single story, it becomes too derivative.

The other problem is with the book’s climax, which involves two random dark beings that were barely mentioned before, and the resolution itself, which sounds too easy. Of course, this is the first book in a very, very long series, so things are certainly not going to be okay for the main characters going forward, but this doesn’t change the fact that the climax here can leave the reader thinking, “Is that it?”

The Eye of the World is a good, if bumpy start for The Wheel of Time, showing that the series can go to fascinating places when – and if – it finally decides to let Tolkien go.

November 12, 2021.