How nuts is rand?

[murali284]

Sorry but this is actually in reference to dragon reborn ie book 3.

 

There was one point where Rand attacks this merchant women and the people around her for apparently no reason. After killing them he takes one of their horses but not before he rearranges all their corpses to kneeling postrate to him. He notes in passing that their was one more corpse than he had previously counted.

 

From this we can infer that the extra guy was a grey man. It is possible that the whole group was darkfriends. But what prompted Rand to attack? He certainly could not have known that they were darkfriends. He also could not have known that the grey man was with them since the grey man cannot bee detected. So was he having a moment of insanity like lews therin did when he killed everybody around him or what?

[Luckers]

Rand is 10 levels of nuts. :)

 

Frankly i think RJ escalated then descalated Rand's madness. The series was originally meant to be a trilogy, and it shows.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Yeah, his level of bonkers definitely fluctuates. But the type of madness changes too. His bonkertude in The Dragon Reborn seems alot more like a traumatized human response to stress, loneliness, and uncertainty. Success versus Ba'alzamon, combined with Elayne and Min and Aviendha, heal that over the next couple of books. Then he gets a little taint crazy, which seems to max itself out with the Callandor episode at the end of the Path of Daggers. (Yes I know there were other factors involved in that, like the flawed buffer in Callandor, and the strangeness in the Power around Ebou Dar, but they amplified the effect of the taint.) That gets fixed, or at least arrested in it's progression, when the taint is cleansed. Then there is the Lews Therin madness, which is, of course, the most dangerous and only remaining progressive madness. It's dangerous because Lews Therin is real, and he is insane, and he is Rand, but at the same time, he is not. It is dangerous because they have similar sorrows, and they are the same soul, so Rand can relate too easily to Lews Therin and Lews Therin is morbidly depressive and suicidal. Add that to the stress that Rand is already under, and, as Semirhage put it, "the descent into terminal madness can be .... abrupt."

[Guest Majsju]

Rand's journey to Tear is not exactly happening under even remotely normal circumstances. From Moiraine and the others following him we learn that Rand's ta'veren effects are running wild, Ishy is constantly trowing a party in his dreams, and he's still struggling with accepting who he is.

 

So he has good cause for being a bit messed up even without the taint-madness.

 

As for the grey man, we do know that Rand has at least a minor ability to sense them. Not enough in itself to get the jump on an entire group like he did here, but add just a whiff of a grey man to the general suspicions Rand has.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Indeed.

[Guest cwestervelt]

From this we can infer that the extra guy was a grey man. It is possible that the whole group was darkfriends.

 

RJ has stated that the extra body was indeed that of a Gray Man, and that at least the lady leading the party was also a Darkfriend. Somewhere in either the blog or the question of the week. Let me check where it was...

 

Here we are.

For Rifty, the extra body Rand found was that of a Gray Man. And, by the way, proof that the lady was no lady. She was a Darkfriend.

 

I think saying that Ishamael was throwing a party in Rand's dream is putting things a bit mild. He is opperating on a "kill 'em all and let the God sort it out" basis. When he sees Egwene in Tel'aran'rhiod he talks about how even visions of his parents have been trying to kill him and then he tries to kill her. Rand appears to have been getting physically pulled in and out of Tel'aran'rhiod without realizing it. Being on foot and travelling the way he was, he should not have been able to stay a consistant day or so ahead of Lan and Moiraine yet he did somehow.

[KaptainKaos]

I think in this instance it is a mixture of the rigors of this journey, Rand first using saidin without any type of training or prior knowledge, Rand being forced to kill a woman and Lews Therin's continued intial effects on Rand's mind. With all these variables in the mix Rand is lucky he didn't go completely insane before he even got to Tear.

 

By the way Rand may have been doing something outside the norm to stay ahead of Moiraine and Lan but you have to also remember the whole Aiel blood foreshadowing devices that Robert Jordan liked to use, personally I think him staying ahead was just another of those devices.

[Varcolac]

If he was being pulled in and out of Tel'aran'rhiod could it be that while resting, he would "step in" at one location and unconsciously "step out" in another? If he was a little off his mental game at that time, could it be that each morning he just didn't notice the variation in surroundings? Or thought it was another trick of his adversary?

[Guest cwestervelt]

Maybe. I was more thinking that Ishamael was pulling him in. Then Rand would journing a day or so and when he camped Ishamael would push him out again. Either would have similar results.

 

It's pure speculation with only the thinnest of support. He was in Tel'ran'rhiod part of the time, either physically or Dreaming because Egwene met him there. Rand was walking and Lan and Moiraine mounted yet they never managed to get any closer no matter how hard they pressed. Something allowed him to stay ahead.

[dyring]

its been a while since the last time I read tdr, and I dont have it here, but didnt moi/lan and the rest follow rand´s tracks? Wich would be impossible if he travelled part of the way in the dreamworld.

 

The party behind went on horseback. Rand is aiel by blood, and its been stated loads of time that aiel outruns horses over long travels. Not to mention that its always harder to make good time while tracking than while not, since you always gotto keep alert on the track, cant go in the dark and so on.

 

Don´t really find anything odd with him staying infront of them.

 

//dyring

[KaptainKaos]

Quote from myself (above): By the way Rand may have been doing something outside the norm to stay ahead of Moiraine and Lan but you have to also remember the whole Aiel blood foreshadowing devices that Robert Jordan liked to use, personally I think him staying ahead was just another of those devices.

 

I am also thinking along those lines hence this quote above from me and since I am getting close to The Dragon Reborn in my most recent re-read I will enjoy looking closer at these sections and I did forget to mention the whole Lan having to track Rand thing causing them to lag behind more than normal for a Warder and Aes Sedai, good insight. One thing I did forget to mention that could be helpful in identifying the actual reasons for Rand being one step ahead is that men don't use tel'aran'rhiod to travel in any way Egwene discovered that it is part of the way women travel but men do it different somehow. I don't know if this would exclude Rand from being able to travel at all by being in tel'aran'rhiod while he is sleeping but thought it would make for some interesting thoughts...

[OzzieAlThor]

its been a while since the last time I read tdr' date=' and I dont have it here, but didnt moi/lan and the rest follow rand´s tracks? Wich would be impossible if he travelled part of the way in the dreamworld.[/quote']

 

They basically followed his affects.

 

All the really bizarre good/bad things that happened to each town he went through.

 

So yeah, I'm missing where he would have travled most of the way in TAR.

[Guest Majsju]

One thing I did forget to mention that could be helpful in identifying the actual reasons for Rand being one step ahead is that men don't use tel'aran'rhiod to travel in any way Egwene discovered that it is part of the way women travel but men do it different somehow. I don't know if this would exclude Rand from being able to travel at all by being in tel'aran'rhiod while he is sleeping but thought it would make for some interesting thoughts...

 

Eh, women don't use T'A'R when they travel. What Egwene discovered was first how to enter T'A'R in the flesh, and then she figured out that it was the same technique you used when you opened a gateway.

 

That Rand doesn't use T'A'R to travel to Tear should be obvious to anyone who has read his battlöe against Ishy in the Stone, where Ishy enters T'A'R, and Rand does not recognize what he is doing.

[KaptainKaos]

Yeah, you got it Maj, I just didn't want to discredit that theory completely because I don't want to continuosly get accused of being too mean.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Yes, Rand's Tal'aran'rhiod incidents along the jouney were almost vertainly when he was sleeping (or trying to anyway). Sleep deprivation treatment, of a sort, by Ishamael.

[Barnabas]

to my way of thinking the trip to tear was just an extension of what ishamael had been doing to all 3 during the eye of the world, but now he only has one focus and turns the pressure up a few notches. in saying that, its unlikely that rand used tel'aran'rhiod to travel as pulling someone into that world was done while they slept, not in the flesh

[Shaidar_Rannow]

I think Rand is not what we in "reality" would call mad, however in his travels he has made many decisions that have killed his followers. Perhaps we are looking at madness in the wrong way here. Maybe his hard heart functions to his madness. He is undoubtably a bit nuts after handling Callandor in any case but I think that him being a hard sort of a man is a side affect of madness. I think he pulls it together at times but taking lives is not something he had done all his life. This is tipping his madness scale that the taint has no bearing on. He killed animals for food now he kills because he must. It has to tear him up. After all duty is like a mountain and death like a feather.

[Luckers]

Currently psychologists have no definition of mad. They speak in terms of abnormal psychological conditions, ones that inhibit a range of what is deemed to be normal social interactions. And yes, his cause being the taint, or the reality being that the voice in his head does not change the fact that his mental state comes under the terms of an abnormal psychological state.

 

Remember too that many of what we call mad are caused by equally real things... the psycho-chemical processes in the brain being messed up by foreign influences... take syphallis for instance. I've always thought the psychosis induced by Syphillis sounded very similar to that induced by the Taint.

[Shaidar_Rannow]

So your, by proxy, saying male channelers suffer from one hellva kick from syphillis? I still think that he is mad no so much by LTT but by what he knows he must do and how it must be done. How can he feel sane when he knowingly will kill thousands and rebreak the world? Maybe he can get tips from stephen king or something. Never the less, he the bolts holding his box together are falling off. I doubt that he becomes any more sane if he survives TG after all why did so many die when the one who made their deaths is allowed to live. He is doomed to maddness.

[dimmu666]

Rand is not nuts at all, hes a stoner.

[CrazyMike]

I believe Rand could have easily stayed ahead of a party on horseback trying to catch him even if their tracking expertise allowed them to track on the run... Native American Indians could track on the run even across hard or rocky ground, and they were able to easily outdistance American Troops that chased them , troops on Horseback Indians on foot...

 

Horses get tired and have to eat and drink a lot...

 

I know from personel experience that a man can walk at a fast pace (about 5 miles an hour I believe) for anywhere from 12 to 16 hours on an even and level track and do so for 6 continuos days, I have done so in the past and I was not in great physical shape at the time...

a man in good physical shape can easily match that pace...

 

Apache Indians were reputed to be able to run at an even paced loping stride for more than 18 hours without stopping over rough and rocky hilly and mountainous terrain, and they did that often in pursuet of enemies that were riding horses and trying to escape from them,,, the Apache attitude toward horses was to ride them hard until they collapsed , then eat the horse, gorging until they could eat no more , then run on foot until they found another horse...

 

Rand was certainly in excellent physical shape and with the build of an Aiel he could develope a long loping stride...

 

Lan being a Borderlander is probibly very experienced and able to track on the run, but unless he left the horses he would have to wait for them to rest (often) and eat (often) and Drink (often)...