Olver is Gaidal Cain!

[Myndrunner]

Myndrunner the newb here again with another question I would like to discuss:

 

Is Olver really Gaidal Cain??

 

There is not much evidence, but I think that there are some hints that are worth looking at:

 

1)Olver is fugly - Often, Olver is described to be not a handsome lad, and it is suggested that he will grow up to be very ugly.  Birgitte mentioned that Gaidal Cain often was not what most consider attractive, yet he was always her type. 

 

2)Birgitte mentions that Gaidal Cain often leaves Tela....Telandri...Telamundo....um....the Dream World before her.  Time is different there so what may be minutes there could be hours or years in the real world.  Just before she was yanked into the real world, she tells Nynaeve that she cannot find Gaidal Cain which suggests that he has already been born. 

 

3)Olver's fascination with Farstrider and adventure in general. 

 

I wonder if it was Robert Jordan's intention to run that thread through the book.  It could be a part of the Memory of Light, or it could make for an interesting spin-off.  Olver & Birgitte. 

 

Anyways, enough of my Ogier-like ramblings....I submit my topic for you all to pick apart at your leisure.

 

-Myndrunner

[dyehead]

no

[Rahlian]

Timing is all wrong. Olver is 9-10 years old i believe. Cain had just been spun out, so Cain is a little bitty baby suckling at his momma's breast.

 

Trust me, you arent the first to suggest this. Its just a bad coincidence that fugly-boy Olver is introduced at the same time that Birgitte is unable to find Cain

[Snowy Dawn]

According to the FAQ, when asked, RJ denied this explicitly. In any case as noted by Rahlian, Olver is too old. We see Gaidal Cain in TAR early on in the series, and then Birgitte says later on that he is gone from TAR and must therefore have been very recently spun out. From this we may conclude that he is still an infant.

[Myndrunner]

Again, forgive the newb.  I just read the bazillion posts about Olver and Gaidal Cain denying the connection, but I am glad to know that I wasn't the only one who saw it.  Someone said that Olver is meant to be a Red Herring of some sorts.....I wonder what significance the boy has.

 

Anyways, it sounds like Mat, Thom, and Jain Farstrider will be heading off to save Moraine and maybe Lanfear too.  Dunno.....what role do you see Olver playing in MoL?

[Generic Aelfinn #2]

Time is different there so what may be minutes there could be hours or years in the real world.

 

i'm very sure you are wrong about that.

 

minutes in RL can be hours in TAR,  but not the other way around. 

[aevogt]

No, it does fluctuate.  You can go into TAR and stay for an hour and leave and find that 5 hours have passed or you can enter TAR and stay for 5 hours and find that only 1 hour has passed in the waking world.

 

Time in TAR just doesn't go backwards.

[Myndrunner]

Beating a dead horse:

So, by that rationale, Cain could have been born as Fugly Boy 10 years ago in the Real World but only mere days in TR?

[aevogt]

No, Nynaeve see him in TAR in The Shadow Rising.  That means that he could not have been spun out earlier than that. 

 

Once you are out of TAR, there is no shifting of time.

 

Cain was spun out 13 months ago so he is now 13 months old.  If more time appears to have passed in TAR, it's hasn't passed in the waking world.

 

There is still a balance in TAR in any case. 

 

Imagine an irregular sine wave superimposed over a straight horizontal line.  When the wave curves over the line, time is moving faster, when it curves under the line, it's moving slower.  If something happens on a point on the sine wave, (13 months ago for example) it cannot have happened earlier than that on the straight line, since they're both going in the same direction.

 

We can all thank Dr Gerty, my college astrophysics professor, who 20 years ago, showed me how to graph a triangle on a sphere though I suspect some sort of wormhole alien could make a better job of it.

[Myndrunner]

AH-SO! DOMO!

 

What do you think the signifigance of Olver is?  I read a FAQ on an earlier thread that RJ claims he is a Red Herring of sorts...

[Generic Aelfinn #2]

he's there to remind people of the game snake and foxes(or w/e its called).  its the 'key' to beating the finns

[trakand_01]

Yeah, Snakes and Foxes is right. I presume Mat is the Fox? We know the Finns... one of them, i forget which... are serpentine.

 

The key to the game is cheating - it is impossible to win the game by playing to the rules, you HAVE to cheat in order to win. Mat needs to learn that - he's gotten so used to his luck winning for him, that I dont think it's occurred to him to cheat - it's going to be quite a shock for him when he realises his luck can't win for him, that he has to stand on his own two feet and this time, he needs to cheat. I dont think he'll like it, but it has to be done.

 

I also think that Olver serves to show us the development of Mat's character. he has to be responsible, look after someone other than himself.

[Luckers]

No, Mat is refered to as a fox several times (heh) but he is not the foxes refered to in the game. The Eelfinn and the Aelfinn are, together, the Snakes and the Foxes.

 

[Myndrunner]

I like how Mat has no idea where Olver learned how to leer at women and grin at them so.  -MR

[Red2111]

^ lol yes i know.  cause of all of the "Band" Mat is the only one who shows constraint with women around the boy  ::)  or so he likes to think lmao

 

 

i had thought this at one point in time as well.  but then i actually thought about the events surrounding Brigette and the disappearance of Gaidal.  because Elayne and Nyneve are steadily visiting the Dream world when Cain disapears and brigette is drug out by Mohegedien you can kind of piece together how long it's been in real world time since cain disappeared.  it was only a few months at the most since the meeting between Brigette, Nyneve and Cain to where Brigette starts talking about not being able to find him any more.

 

unless the Pattern spit him out at Olvers age; say the real olver died when his parents were killed but at that moment the pattern used his body to insert Cain's soul into, with olver's memories of course. (which considering other events that have occured it's possible, but if RJ denied it, then i doubt it) he's at the most a year old.

[Guest Dreadlord]

Why yet another thread on it? This website must have more duplicate threads than there are ideas, simply because people ignore the search facility.

[balefireruinssteaks]

Mat is the fox referred to in the prophecies regarding Tuon, but indeed, the "foxes" are the creatures in the Tower of Ghenji. (and the "snakes").

 

there are more than enough references throughout the books to tell us that the game itself is a remembrance of old dealings with these creatures; the key to defeating them probably lies in the things that they restrict in order to have dealings in the first place.  Iron, music, etc.

 

Olver is Olver - probably a reminder to us that kids sometimes have a lot more answers than we give them credit for.

[BlackveiledTaraboner]

I will admit that until I read the post about RJ denying this it is exactly what I thought. I would love to see this kid though...with his "fugly" face.

[Myndrunner]

I think this is Olver....bless his little heart.

 

[BlackveiledTaraboner]

That is simultaneously amazing and terrible. Poor guy!

[BlackveiledTaraboner]

I hate to bump this up so far but I just finished FoH again and (RJ's supposed denial notwithstanding) the line that makes it kind of jump out at me is Birgitte right after she gets up and about "He is out there somewhere, a baby perhaps, or a young boy." This is not too far at all in the timeline from when Mat meets Olver for the first time.

[Valinthros]

It does make a nice theory but Robert Jordan says no. Quoting from Theoryland.com:

 

Q: Is Olver Gaidal Cain?

 

RJ: No. I didn't really think that this would last as long as it has. The timing is wrong. He has another reason for being there besides being a red herring, though.

 

Q: He's too old.

 

RJ: Yes. Time in T'A'R and the real world run at different rates, but it never runs backwards. You may spend an hour in T'A'R, and a day has passed when you get back, or you may spend a day, and an hour has passed when you get back, but you'll never go in on Tuesday and come back on Monday.

 

Let's put this to rest shall we?  ;)

[Guest Dreadlord]

QUOTE

Anyways, it sounds like Mat, Thom, and Jain Farstrider will be heading off to save Moraine and maybe Lanfear too.

UNQUOTE

 

Lanfear is Cyndane

[Snowy Dawn]

Re Gaidal Cain: recall the Spider's ``prediction'' to Birgette that she will weep alone forever. But how can this be? Both will end up back in T.A.R. to be spun out again at some later time in the proper way, yes? 

[benr]

Maybe Moggy is counting on the DO winning this time.