I'm pulling this quote out because I think it says it all, both about why people might find it easy to resonate with Elhokar's arc and why his redemption doesn't quite amount to much positive change at that short distance at which we can observe Elhokar before his death.
I think Elhokar's greatest drawback is that, despite what he may aspire to do or become, he lacks any solid identity. With him, it's always “will be” and “could be”, but never “is”. He might have goals, but no clear direction, and he is more than willing to tag along with other people's opinions of him. He “overcomes” his dependence on Dalinar's counsel by picking Kaladin as his new point of reference, proceeding to pump him for guidance in Dalinar's stead. Which isn't to say that what anyone needs in order to grow out of one's flaws is to be left alone with no one to fall back on for help and advice. No. But as Wit points out, Elhokar comes at the problem from the angle of how he can change people's opinions of him, not how he can change for the better himself per se.
Elhokar does admittedly care about what effect he has on those around him, but there's a difference between impact and impression, and he's evidently much more preoccupied by the latter. It's easy to relate to Elhokar because his shortcomings and struggles are very human, in a down-to-earth sense. Hell, I find myself relating to him, too. He doesn't have a solid grasp on who he is; he does not possess personhood beyond others' expectations of him, he does not understand himself, and so clearly he cannot know how to become who he wants to be as he lacks a starting point. This is what insecurity and anxiety will do to a person, and it's a simple thing to sympathise with.
But it also means that Elhokar isn't exactly capable of adequate self-reflection, and awareness of the impact of one's actions and decisions is crucial for a king and a leader. And this is perhaps what gets him killed in the end. As was the case with the Chasmfiend hunt, Elhokar wanted to be heroic because he assumed that would allow him to grow in stature in the eyes of his men, but it was not the time and place to try and prove anything to anyone, and his desire ultimately proved reckless.
Of course, the fact that Elhokar was a shitty leader and admittedly had an insufferable personality does not at all mean that he deserved to be murdered. But with him being a king and thus being able to exert certain influence over a very large portion of population of his country, if not all of it, his shortcomings couldn't not have tangible consequences. Elhokar could live to be a better person and a better ruler. But sadly, the deep crisis Alethkar and the whole Roshar faced wasn't the time that could allow the luxury of deferment on capable leadership just because Elhokar deserving a second chance as a person should have been recognised.
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Laral turns out to have become an excellent character. Not in a 'this is a character I like for her sympathetic personality' way, but rather in a 'she pisses me off, and I like that because of everything a depiction of a character like her brings to the thematic content of the narrative' way. Between her and Shallan, there is a pattern when Kaladin expresses a very legitimate grievance concerning the way they, and lighteyes in general, treat him with biases inherent to nobility in a rigidly stratified society (which they may not recognise, being products of that same society, but it doesn't excuse their doubling down on their rightness when pointed at the shortcomings in their attitudes), and gets shamed for not understanding that the other side of this arrangement of oppression doesn't have it easy, either. Which would all be great for portraying social injustice and disparity and the way they manifest themselves in individuals in a realistic light — if it weren't for the fact that the narrative seems to genuinely believe it is Kaladin who needs to learn a valuable lesson in compassion in these situations.
The placement of the Heralds' portraits at the head of 'Four Lifetimes' feels very intentional: Vedel first to convey Kaladin's beginnings as a surgeon, then Taln standing in for his time as a soldier, and finally Jezrien to symbolise him growing to accept his role as a Windrunner and a Knight Radiant. But I can't decipher the connection between Kal's story and the order of Dustbringers. I think it has to do with his experiences as a bridgeman in Sadeas' army and a slave, but I'm unable to go farther than that in my assumptions. Any thoughts?
Life before death is the principle learnt first in a Radiant's pursuit of understanding who they are. So of course those are the words Kaladin and Dalinar choose to salute each other with over spanreed while Kaladin's away on his solitary mission to ensure Hearthstone's safety. That's how they know who the other is, with certainty. A motto of recognition, unity, and cohesion of intentions, and a wish for safety and caution. They put enough trust in each other's abilities to know that the other will cope with the dangers of their respective responsibilities, and they cannot do much else. Those words are all the support they can offer each other on their diverging journeys. I don't know, man, that short exchange between them made me emotional.
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The War of Reckoning was never truly about honour, was it? The reaction which Elhokar's call for vengeance elicited among the highprinces was stunned silence, and it in and of itself suggests that his proclamation of war against the listeners wasn't a by-the-book response.
Surely, the listener leaders who issued the assassination were already held responsible for their crime. The only thing that could provoke further action on the Alethi part was the escape of the larger group of listeners after the king was dead, giving a reason for the humans to believe there was a larger scheme at play and thus larger responsibility, and the loss of the elite cavalry troop sent after them. But Elhokar's decision still came off as rather impulsive; I do not think that it was a well-thought-out political maneuver, and I doubt that he understood the ramifications of what he started in its entirety.
But there were, of course, those who did understand. It's notable that the first highprince to enter the pact was Sadeas. As a newly-fledged monarch ascending the throne after his already legendary father, Elhokar needed a strong cause to support his authority and solidify the highprinces' vassal allegiance to his reign. A war waged in honour of the late king, which was presumed to be a quick and decisive endeavour, appeared fitting enough for both purposes, and Sadeas jumped at the opportunity. And it supposedly followed the code of Alethi honour, albeit nobody really seemed to be bothered with figuring out the specifics of what honour exactly they were reaping.
What I'm saying is, the modern understanding of honour appears to be a concept just vague enough for the Alethi politicians to twist and turn, should they desire, until it fits their goal. I don't doubt that there are solid historical and cultural underpinnings to the honour-based morality — I mean, there was a god named Honour that actually lived and exerted his very tangible influence over the world — I'm just not there yet on my read-through to comprehend it fully. But, as is the case with justifying the lighteyed despotism on the grounds of their resemblance to the Radiants of the old, honour grew to a rudimentary form (pun intended), perverted in the hands of those who wished to exploit it.
On my way through Moash's second chapter in OB I noticed something similar between thoughts and conversations that Moash has in it and some of Kaladin's past moments:
“Dangerous”:
(Oathbringer, Part Two, ch. 45)
(Oathbringer, Part One, ch. 20)
“What do you want?”:
(Oathbringer, Part Two, ch. 45)
(Words of Radiance, Part Three, ch. 41)
And some more subtle. For example, the way they both feel they're bound to fail, no matter what they try:
(Oathbringer, Part Two, ch. 45)
(The Way of Kings, Part Four, ch. 57)
Or the way they both feel set apart, cast off and cut out from the rest, until their differences are finally welcomed and embraced in Bridge Four:
So, the hero of the occasion is the fact that I have finished Oathbringer and may have something to say about it. I don’t think that I have anything particularly newsworthy to share, and my interpretations will likely be in the vein of what one would expect, but. Otherwise I fear I’m gonna burst at the seams, so. Here we go. Before I dig in, though, a couple of disclaimers.Â
First, my ramblings will probably lack proper articulation (I’m not awfully good at putting my thoughts down in a coherent, easy-to-follow way, oh boy). Next, I didn't come up a clear structure for analysis beforehand. The only thing I was equipped with was just a swell of half-formed, swarming ideas in my brain begging to be let out. So I figured that the easiest way to go about this would be simply giving each character their own part in a series of posts, where I would talk about my impressions of their personal arcs and also bring bigger plot points in whenever personal character arcs tied into them. Hopefully this decision would make my review less of an absolutely unwieldy beast and therefore make it easier to take on, as well as reduce waiting time.
With that out of the way, give it up for the first character I'm going to discuss and the undisputed star of Oathbringer!
Part One of Path’s Oathbringer Ramblings: Dalinar Kholin
This is Dalinar’s book, undoubtedly. The implementation of Oathbringer's main themes, those of responsibility, personal autonomy, growing past one's mistakes, redemption, and honour (no way we're forgetting about honour), is fantastic in Dalinar's arc. It's almost too good for me to have anything to talk about here. Not that the purpose of this post is to criticise, of course, but going into elaborate detail explaining why Dalinar’s arc in this book is great feels a bit too preachy to the choir. However, what makes Dalinar’s storyline read as all the more potent for me is the fact that it appears to be a cornerstone on which rests a turning point for the conflict of these books. Even if the characters’ perspective remains unchanged for some time still, the recontextualisation on the reader’s part at least should amount to something. I genuinely want to believe so, and I will talk about my reasoning under the cut.
Elaborating on it would require going on a bit of a tangent talking about contents of the previous books as well, which I feel a bit weird about since this is a post dedicated to my Oathbringer thoughts. But as I haven’t discussed Dalinar’s character all that much on my blog before, I hope y’all will forgive me. Here goes.
The Dalinar that we meet in TWoK is a man whose entire existence is about war. He may be considerably more honorable and honest than the rest of the brightlords, harbouring his intentions of uniting the Alethi people instead of trying to milk the protracted conflict for his own benefit, but even that endeavour is informed by militaristic goals, and the means chosen to achieve these goals are essentially militaristic, too. As Dalinar goes through his character arc, he slowly breaks away from this mindset, learning to accept other means into his toolset. WoR showed us a Dalinar who finally comes round to diplomacy, and though his efforts in that book are largely a failure, it gives him a springboard adequate enough to propel him into his role as a future coalition leader — and also that of a Bondsmith. And here I have to step a little bit to the side because I just want to say, woah. This is a very compelling premise for a character arc, especially for someone like Dalinar, with all the themes he’s linked to. His transformation across these books was imparted onto him by forces outside of him — the visions he received from a literal god are what spurred him on. An external incentive for personal growth. The way it’s written, the help and encouragement that Dalinar gets don’t in the slightest undermine the weight of the effort it took for him to become a better man, and I must say, with these two things combined, what a positive message it is.
But the final and most vital ingredient of the changes that Dalinar undergoes is the bare necessity: in Oathbringer, Dalinar is forced into accepting that his entire outlook on life is not only inadequate for the task at hand and outdated, but in this circumstances is also very much capable of causing significant harm. He can no longer depend on his military efficiency to achieve the goals he’s after. Under Gavilar’s rule, unity was forged through conquest and warfare. As Dalinar grows into acquiring a purpose outside of his brother’s legacy, he also has to pick up new methods. He has to seek peaceful solutions. He has to adapt, rising to the occasion, and discard the old lens making him approach every problem as a warlord, with befitting instruments and mindset. And so has the reader. Through Dalinar’s arc, we get a chance to recontextualise the war between humans and singers. Through Dalinar’s arc, we are shown that violent confrontation that drives one side to victory and the other to obliteration isn’t all there is. The solution lies in building connections, in reaching out and finding middle ground.
If Dalinar really drew any conclusions from remembering his history with Rathalas, then in order to atone for his mistakes he must allow past experiences to inform how he goes about solving this current conflict. The apparent likeness is there: an aggressor makes a claim on the territory, repressing the interests of the land’s rightful inhabitants in a brutal seizure, which is followed by eventual upheaval against the new ruler. The attempt at diplomacy fails. The oppressed people reject it. It seems like the only possible solution is violence, and it is the one that Dalinar follows through with the first time, decimating the entire city and its population. This is also the end that the coalition is working towards at the moment: solving the conflict by way of obliterating the opposite side entirely. If Dalinar has truly grown to recognise that what he did to the natives of the Rift was wrong, then he also has to recognise that what the coalition is about to try and do to the natives of Roshar is ultimately wrong, too. Other characters’ arcs seem to tap into this idea as well, albeit coming at the problem from different angles. But I’ll cover this in other parts — to each their own! All in all, this seems like a really compelling premise for some significant changes in how the main conflict is viewed.
Moving on, it feels more like nitpicking, but Dalinar’s arc, as great as it was, didn't go without occasional hiccups. Evi forgiving Dalinar in the end is one of those minor details which I frowned upon slightly but which I could easily ignore for the sake of focusing on great parts instead of criticising minuscule slip-ups. Complaining about something in a fantasy novel coming off as too magical for my liking is either pretentious or stupid, but Evi's voice appearing to bestow onto Dalinar her explicit forgiveness nonetheless seemed brushing on being merely a miraculous contrivance to rid the character of a portion of the weight of his burdens. Which was, in my view, redundant, if not outright a bit undermining of the book's main message, as I understood it. And it is as follows: there are going to be mistakes you wouldn't be able to atone for, but knowing that shouldn't undercut your capacity to do good. Dalinar receiving unambiguous forgiveness ever so slightly flattens this notion for me.
The other thing that rubbed me the wrong way was Dalinar apparently becoming a center and a main mouthpiece for morality in the series. Even if we put aside the question of whether he personally deserves the honour, I simply disagree with the idea of any single character accommodating this role. Not only can it make a character’s arc unreasonably rigid, but a series about how morality is a matter of perception and personal integrity and how attempting to align it with rigorous, predetermined ideals is only going to lead to failure and complications objectively shouldn’t stockpile its values in any singular character. But I very well may be misinterpreting this, in which case I hope that I am, if only for the sake of this narrative painting a more complex, intricate, and diverse picture.
Lastly, and it is not so much a minor fault as it is a more hefty criticism, but what troubled me most in regards to Dalinar’s decisions is the possibility of him abandoning the idea of achieving peace with the singers altogether after one failed negotiation attempt. C’mon now, I know that this man is more stubborn than that. Judging the entire people by a single person’s choices setting a bad precedent raises question marks. When Fen or any other political party was uncooperative, Dalinar was willing to find multiple alternative ways to persuade them. Where is that vigor in the singers’ case? Unless their people’s alignment with Odium taints them as irredeemable on the whole, as if every individual singer personally and inexorably defined their loyalties. Or, y’know, were given a chance to. I’m getting ahead of myself rambling about singers in Dalinar’s part, but as different characters’ attitudes to the singers problem are quite integral to my understanding of the book, I can’t not speak on the matter. All in all, I simply hope that this is more about a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to deliver a notion that Odium himself is impossible to bargain with, and as long as he commands the singers’ forces, the fighting is inevitable (because what spelled out the failurewasn't even Venli's adamant rejection ((which she is very much entitled to)); it's the fact that Odium intervened). And less about justifying the slaughter as a backdrop for the main cast’s heroics by pinning the blame of siding with Odium inexcusably on a systematically oppressed, enslaved until the most recent times, brutally marginalised people. Isn't it hypocritical? Wasn’t Odium humanity's god when the newcomers had to fight for a place in this world?
What's more, I'm genuinely baffled that Dalinar doesn't connect the crime of genocide against the rebelling people of the Rift with the crime of genocide against the listeners. Doesn't he have an entire breakdown forcing him to question the very foundations of his personhood over the atrocities he comitted in his past? In a book that for the first time since the start of the series garners enough compassion for the singers to engage in a discussion whether it is a righteous thing at all to stand up against the singers, thus denying their people justice for the crimes perpetrated against them? Shouldn't these facts coincide somehow? It's admittedly a very, very difficult notion to come to terms with in a narrative while retaining a positive image of the main characters, but to simply ignore the issue? Erm. It might undermine the entirety of my initial point in this post.
I guess I'll have to wait for the resolution, but the narrative framing is not selling it for me so far.
Since I have already mentioned Evi in this part, which was inevitable, and since I’m not giving her her own post, I simply have to talk about Dalinar’s relationship with her here. The dead wife trope is not usually my piece of cake (like, at all, though I won’t get into it now — it's an entirely different can of worms), but I genuinely believe that Sanderson’s iteration of it is one of the best there are. Evi still is a distant memory and an unternished beacon of light, as dead wives tend to be. Her personality is still primarily defined by a function she has to perform in a male character’s storyline, stirring the potential for positive change inside of Dalinar and sending him on his journey toward eventual improvement. All of the typical attributes that make me dislike this trope are seemingly there. And yet it works. Because Dalinar’s relationship with her and her memory isn’t all uncomplicated, sunshine and rainbows. Dalinar's relationship with her in fact sucks. Dalinar was a terrible husband for Evi. He loved her more when he didn't have her anymore, the feeling provoked by the grief of remembering his mistakes more than anything else, and showed more affection toward her when he no longer had anything to remember her by. His choices killed her, and there was a time he resented her for it. She was both afraid of him and his tremendous capacity to do harm and not afraid to confront him about it. Because his ferocity was what initially made becoming his wife plausible to her and her brother, and she understood that as well as Toh did.
But despite this marriage being little more than a mere political necessity, it didn’t prevent Evi from treating Dalinar with innate humanity every man deserved. With her gentle interference, she accomplished a feat of pulling a human being out of a jaded husk Dalinar became whenever he didn’t have orders to follow or a reason to engage in violence. She continuously challenged his detachment by coaxing him to think for himself and demanding to know his feelings. Kudos to her for making him feel validated for disagreeing with Gavilar for what seemed like a first time in Dalinar’s life, too. She awakened in him the first beginnings of an autonomous personality. But it's safe to say that neither of them really loved the other in a way that marriage usually suggests. Their relationship isn’t informed by them being a husband and a wife. And neither is it presented as something they need to work on! They simply learn to live beside each other, coming from a place of understanding the mutual duty that brought them together — until, of course, it all goes terribly wrong. Evi and Dalinar share a fascinating dynamic, regardless of Evi's effect on Dalinar's future arc, and that is well-meaning treatment of her character, even if she only exists as a narrative tool (nothing wrong with that, by the way!).
Bringing this part to a close, there are undoubtedly many a highlight in Dalinar’s arc. Sanderson’s penchant for powerful one-liners and ability to pull them off in a way that is both emotionally charged and natural are unmatched. The most important words a man can say are, “I will do better.” The most important step a man can take is the next one, it’s always the next one. These will stay with me for a long, long time. And among Dalinar’s flashback chapters, the ones that stood out to me perhaps the most, though it may seem like an obvious choice, were probably Only Red and An Animal. It’s not only the sheer brutality of these chapters’ events that won’t let go of me. It’s also the fact that Evi’s influence over Dalinar is the most apparent in them, as they show an amalgamation of the Dalinar who once was and the Dalinar who is now. Making his own decisions, overriding Gavilar’s authority, being finally a master of his own actions, even if the progress is negated by both the nature of his decisions and their consequences. It still read as an important step forward. Paired with the fact that Dalinar lashes out, reacting from a place of violence, as a result of his failed attempt at peaceful negotiations and the betrayal that his uncharacteristic endeavour, which as well was prompted by Evi, entailed, it makes for a curious sort of paradox. Sometimes a hypocrite is a man who makes mixed progress.
