What is the WOT story?

[GrandpaG]

I don't think that any of us fans really have the correct answer to this question.

 

I'm actually only interested in your opinions (we all know about opinions, right?).

 

Every tale has a story. What is the story in the WOT series?

 

Good versus evil?

 

The adventures of three taveren (sp?)?

 

Watch out for the manipulating Aes Sedai!!!

 

A snapshot of one brief moment of the turning of the Wheel?

 

What clothes should never be worn to the Last Battle?

 

Anyway, what do you think the story is all about?

 

ENJOY,

Love,

Gramps

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

how distance in time and space change the reality into the story?

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

and good vs itself.

 

cause i really don't believe in a dark one, and i find it kind of hard to understand that belief.

[balefired-ed2]

sniff vs. snort

[FarShainMael]

How many different situations can you compare to aspects of going fishing

[Nightstrike]

Situations in the books or in RL? TDR (7) & CoT (1) might be fishy enough. :)

[Puny]

Fighting your fate vs accepting your fate

Walking your own path vs following a predestined one

Light vs Dark

Balance vs unbalance

 

It´s also about

if the goal justify the means?

that the good side can be as dark as the bad one

one man´s struggle to come to term with his destiny

one man´s struggle to find and come to terms with his identity

a world´s struggle to accept what is to come

a world that is on the brink of change, internal and external and how they handle it

love, passion, envy, hate and so on

 

change... in a world that is supposed to be neverending, still, repetetive, it´s about change.

 

and alot more I´m sure.

Mostly though it´s about how Logain is the true Dragon and all the cool tricks Rand knows in ToM he has learned from Logain. At TG Rand will be killed by Alivia so Logain can finally have his awesome moment of great glory!

[Mongoose]

I agree with most of Logain's points.

 

At its heart, WoT was a very basic good vs. evil story which grew increasingly political and internal conflict-....al as the series wore on.

 

One thing that always fascinated me is that while the series was very deep in terms of politics, rumor and espionage, it's always been very straightforward in terms of language and religion.

[Sbond91]

For me, it's been a lot of things, but always since the beginning it's been a sense of the question being asked "can a good person do evil things for the greater good?"

 

At the extremes of this you have Shadar Logoth and Dark-Rand. But also you have the Whitecloaks and the Aes Sedai as "good" organisations who, while not doing evil deeds, certainly doing questionable or completely misguided things in the name of good.

 

From the examples there the answer from the books would seem to be "No" but then we had Verin in TGS who did awful things but was clearly on the side of the light. I guess the moral message of the books was more "sometimes, as long as the good person doesn't lose sight of the reason they're doing it."

[Morsker]

The story tries o be many things, but the Aes Sedai's horrible treatment of Rand, and poor treatment of Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne, always overpowered the rest of it to me. It's a story about how young people gain strength of character only by enduring vicious hazing at the hands of women.

[Puny]

In regard to Morsker´s post it´s also about people thinking they are wise and knowlegable when in fact they misunderstand, misinterpret and simply state something for true when it´s not. It´s about having an opinion and regard it as truth, or holding on to it so rigidly that even when truth punches you in the face you refuse to see or accept it. ( which the Aes Sedai has done numerous times. I hope the Asha´man will set them straight, lol)

 

Egwene deserves her horrible treatment. I did like her the first time I read the series but as I´ve done a few rereads I´ve come to realize that she isn´t very likeable. Self-centered to say the least, and how she treats those she calls friends is just horrible, (and I´m only to FoH)

[Randommer]

Hmmm... Well I think WoT is about all the things mentioned in the first post, but also about staying true to yourself and doing what's right, even in the face of almighty power, terrible evil and/or crippling defeat. And about the fact that just because a person has made terrible mistakes, it doesn't define them and it doesn't mean they can't do things right the next time.

[OptimusPrime]

Its a story about being who you are, and peoples reasons for trying to stop you.

[Shimmer]

It's about how the journey to the path of salvation is as important as the salvation (or attempt thereof) itself.

[GrandpaG]

Struggle. RJ gives us a quick glimpse of what it was like to live without electricity, roads, cement sidewalks, ten story apartment complexes, hot and cold running water, indoor toilets, and all of the other things that people said they would miss most if they woke up in Randland. All of those things ease our struggle.

 

I like the way he uses the differences between men and women. He sometimes seemed to write from the woman's point of view. Other times he tried to show the girls how men think. Some of it was very humorous. Some of it was not. He didn't judge either side. Most of it was tastefully done. Except when Rand cut that woman's head off.

 

The story has a less-than-obvious message that people who gain power almost to a man eventually become corrupt. They can't be trusted. They evolve. A benign dictator will eventually become a tyrant if they live long enough. Hawkwing was good in his younger days. Bashere isn't portrayed as being arrogant but he definitely understands the power of command. Aes Sedai? Pick one. Rand once enjoyed a nice hot bath in a copper tub. I imagine that he nowadays expects someone to scrub his back.

 

There is plenty of straight forward good -vs- evil.

 

Since the series is based on the concept of an ever turning Wheel of Time where history repeats itself over and over, I see this story to be just one brief glimpse of the travels of the Wheel. It just happens to be the end of the "Third Age" of this particular revolution. There are an infinite number of other stories that the series could have been about. I would have liked to have read the one about the end of the "Second Age" when people were flying around in planes driven by male channelers.

 

CRAP! Wifey says I gotta get a shower and get ready to go. Struggle! Always more struggle! I'll post again some other day, I'm sure. Keep the interesting comments coming!

[FarShainMael]

A parable about how men and women working together can achieve more than when they are separate.

[GrandpaG]

Even though this series takes place in some other weird place, we can relate to it because of the presence of humans. We as a species are dominant in our world. The people of Randland are dominant in their world. King of the hill. Top of the heap. Numero Uno. The Seanchan even dominate their strange animals. Human towns. Humans traveling from one place to another. Humans making war. Humans struggling against the elements. Human superstitions. Human faults such as greed, envy, and prejudice. Humans enslaving other humans. We can relate to Randland because most everything human has been included. Lust? Yup. Compassion? Yup. Humor? Yup. It's a series of books about humans. It just happens to take place in a different dimension.

[Thanatos]

To bring up an old post...

 

Order vs Chaos. Enough said.

 

Just my thoughts.

[spoke]

When RJ was asked this in a radio interview (I think it was after the 6th book) he was asked what is the underlining story of his series. His replay was that he was basically taking the idea of someone discovering that he was supposed to become the savior of the world, and how to come to terms with that in every aspect.

[Nightstrike]

Yes, it really seems to be a terrible burden. Channeling would have been great, probably (at least in the AoL), but there is a lot to come to terms with. For lots of characters, and especially for Rand. I think the struggle with that is part of what the makes the story so interesting.

[Mav]

I rather believe that its about history repeating itself and that people rarely learn from their mistakes.

 

Also, pride comes before the fall, look at the AoL and the Forsaken.

[Swithin]

I don't actually think that there's any serious treatment of good versus evil in the WoT. The same guys are always good (or secretly evil) or evil (and, just maybe, secretly good.) Sometimes they fight. Their ideologies don't really have any substantive collision beyond Moridin's nihilism and Rand's VoG epiphany at the end of TGS, and even that I think plays more into a different theme.

 

For me, the story is about how things you cannot control fight to shape who you are, but that the decision ultimately rests on the choices you make. It's another bildungsroman, only it's repeated for all the main characters and several entire societies to boot. Someone said order versus chaos, and I'm just a tick to the left. I think it's two forms of order that both think they're justified, but if either completely dominates there'd be no point to existence; each character has a chance to add a little chaos, a little individual spice, and to reject their lot and struggle to be who they want to be. An unrealistic proportion succeed, of course, but that's what's fun to read. ^_^

[Bluedust9]

A quick answer I'd say the story of the Emond's Fielders:

 

Dragon*Con 2005, Atlanta, GA, 2 September 2005 - Isabel reporting

 

Q: Someone else asked a question about the development of characters. Something about that Mat is his favourite character and that he has forgiven RJ for leaving out Mat for a whole book. (laughter of all the people) And then about how characters grow in RJ's perception/ imagination as the series progressed.

 

RJ: Not so much as growing in my perception. I had a thought about how I wanted those people to grow. The first vision that came to me was the ending of the last book. The next things that came to me was Emond's Field. And I realized the book was going to take these people to turn them into those people you see in the last scene in the last book. So I knew how I was going to change them. Not all the mechanism of the changes but I knew how I was going to change them.

 

Of course they're much more than that, or at least turned into much more, but it looks like at the beginning RJ planned it to be about the character's progression.

[Senexx]

Art imitates Life

Life imitates Art

 

There are comparisons to all the choices we've made in life with some of the characters when they face that choice or a similar choice. I'm sure an analogy or near analogy can be made with a character's choice compared to one you have made.

 

As we know books are linear, there's a start and a finish, even if we jump around in the timeline. Once Memory of Light is done that is it. But it is not the end.

 

The Wheel of Time turns.

[GrandpaG]

= BALANCE

 

 

 

GOOD balanced with EVIL.

 

MEN balanced with WOMEN.

 

SEVERE HEAT balanced with EXTREME COLD.

 

HATRED balanced with LOVE.

 

TROLLOCS balanced with TINKERS.

 

RAND balanced with MORIDIN.

 

etc.

 

 

"For every bad day there has to be a good day."

-- GrandpaG original saying created especially for you at this moment in time.