Why the heroes are so young

[son omerc]

The level of educational expectation in a community is directly related to the age when a young person is considered to be an adult. Our heroes are fairly well educated, they can all read, write, and cipher, and if they had stayed in the two rivers would have been farmers/ranchers/small businessmen and been expected to manage their accounts and deal with wool/tabac buyers. In communities where a goodly portion of the young population will take up more menial or repetitious jobs without much call to read, write, or cipher the age is much more likely to be related to physical development. Borderland boys would likely start learning weapons young and if they wanted to become warriors they would have been accounted men when their training and physical size reached a generally accepted mark. Remember that in the two rivers all are small holders or independent businessmen but in the borderlands Lords have many retainers who are more menials or arms men who have little use for managerial skills.

 

Also in areas like the two rivers many young men and women will live at home until they acquire the necessary implements to take up their vocation. A plow, harrow, small tools like pitch forks and hoes, a team of horses or mules, and most importantly the land or means to acquire the land needed for farming and raising sheep. Once all that is acquired a young man can usually think about finding a girl to marry. His future wife will bring the linens and many of the household goods. The community will often come together for a house and barn raising. The young man will probably be in his mid to late 20's depending upon his desire and drive and until he leaves home he will be in between boy and full adult. Once he has his own hearth and home he will be a fully functional adult member of the community with all benefits and responsibilities.

 

Again RJ has chosen his heroes from a community that has instilled the necessary skills before hand. Who would have loved to watch an unlearned Rand struggle to learn to read so that he could understand the prophesies himself instead of relying on others to read them to him. Or how about checking the accounts of Tear or Cairhein when he can't count higher than 10 without resort to taking off his boots.

[Jackalyn]

Some stories did go that way,such as the Belgraid. In there Garion did't know how to read untill the third book.

 

But I do agree with you it's all in the culture they were raised in.

[Inara]

in the farseer trilogy the main character is very young, and in the tawny man, the prince marries at 13ish.

i totally agree with you all though, its all about the culture they were raised in; their ages onl really bothered me for about 10pages because i came into it off a medieval series where the heros were alot younger.

the life expectancy of most of the characters seems to be equivilent to that of today in this world, so it seems only right that their characters should come of age as we do.

[Guest Egwene]

In my opinion at 13 the vast majority of kids in vaguely civilised societies are still very much children and looked upon as such. Whereas 16-17yr olds will be acting and be treated as nearly adults or full adults depending on the individual. The change taking place in this short period is huge.

 

Which is why age has never bothered me in WoT, but it was a major stumbling block in SoIaF for me. There is a huge difference between being 13 and being 16-17. I would say those three years equate to 10-20 years in adult life.

[far shores]

I think it'll make it so much sadder if they die, because they're all so young (obviously it's still sad if an adult dies but with a younger person there's all this feeling of waste, that they had this life ahead of them and it's all gone...). i know the portal stones show that it couldn't have gone any other way and ended well, but still...