Understanding Perrin

[SparrowHawk]

Hi, this is my first topic, and I'm not a writer, so bear with me :)

 

MowbrayDeadOrAlive may have explained certain things about Perrin better in his post "Perrin Aybara: The character", but I intend to try to explain a little about Perrin through talking about introversion. I'm not here to start another argument about Perrin, just presenting some points about why I like his character(and why I see a lot of Perrin supporters like him because they remind them of themselves), and why I think he's hard to relate to for most readers.

 

 

A Study on Perrin and Introverts

 

Introvert doesn't mean shy or socially awkward, it means a person is introspective, likes to be alone, and think. The world's population is made up approximately of 75% extraverts, 25% introverts.

 

 

Some correlations between Perrin and introverts:

 

1.) Overthinking; Spends a lot of time in his own head

 

2.) Needs time to process things; Eg, Blacksmith's puzzle in ToM, figuring out the parts

 

3.) Isn't a huge fan of dealing with people/likes being alone; Largely paralleled with the wolves

 

4.) Doesn't want to be a leader, but knows that these are his people to lead;

Shows he's a capable leader, just a bit unwilling

 

 

I think that the readers who are Perrin fans tend to see themselves in him, and since most major characters in books/movies that do anything cool are extraverts, it's nice to have a cool character for us to relate to.

Another funny little reason I like him is he reminds me of Sam from LotR. Tolkien once said(paraphrased),

 

"The hero of the story wasn't Aragorn, or even Frodo, but Samwise".

 

Sam was there in the story to be an everyman for the reader to relate to, in the midst of this giant world the hobbits stumbled into. I guess I liken Perrin to Sam in that regard.

 

Thanks for reading, just a thought that I hope will shed some light on how Goldeneyes thinks.

Edited June 8, 2012 by SparrowHawk

[Taryn]

I think most people don't like Perrin because of his unrelenting obsession with his wife, his wife's capture, and his gonowhere plot. I think his introvertedness plays a minor part in the general dislike. For instance, I am absolutely an introverted person, and I liked Perrin until his plotline absolutely stalled out. Just my opinion though. Cheers :)

[safwd]

I did not love Perrins plotline with the Faile chase but it certianly didnt go no where.

In this plotline he destroyed the Shaido, Made ties to the Seanchen, Tied Ghealdan to Rand, Tied the Whitecloaks to Rand, got rid of The Prophet, rediscovered Power Wrought Weapons and probably saved Egwene and her crew by bringing the dreamspike to Tar Valon.

I would say he absolutely got a bit done.

[Agitel]

Good insight. I kind of always knew this about Perrin, but never really made the logical leap to thinking about him as an introvert.

 

A lot of people are turned off by Perrin's single-mindedness and his dangerous obsession with freeing Faile from the Shadow, even if it means "making a deal with the Dark One". Part of me wonders if he wasn't also being pushed and pulled by the Pattern during this sequence, but he didn't notice it this time because it did align with what he wanted, even if it made him go to extremes.

[thom_merrilin]

To a large extent Perrin is selfish. All he cares about is Faile. He has basically said the world could die to free Faile. That makes him selfish, and dangerous. Would he sell out the side of Light to save Faile? Almost certainly. He doesn't want to lead even though people rely on him. It too him way too long, in terms of books to get where he is.

The over use of him stating about blacksmith puzzles is aggravating. I think he does this because he can't/won't want to think about something, or uses it as an excuse for his actions.

[FarShainMael]

I think he got over his reluctance to lead in ToM40, when he forges Mah'alleinir and tells Wil al'Seen to reinstate the Wolf banner.

Edited June 9, 2012 by FarShainMael

[Naggash]

To a large extent Perrin is selfish. All he cares about is Faile. He has basically said the world could die to free Faile. That makes him selfish, and dangerous. Would he sell out the side of Light to save Faile? Almost certainly. He doesn't want to lead even though people rely on him. It too him way too long, in terms of books to get where he is.

The over use of him stating about blacksmith puzzles is aggravating. I think he does this because he can't/won't want to think about something, or uses it as an excuse for his actions.

I think you take it too far. I agree Perrin is boring sometimes (my opinion is on a post above) and he sure cares a lot about Fail, but he isn't as single-minded as you think. For example, when he is rescuing Faile we see everything from his PoV, and obiously he centers his attention in Faile; but while doing this, he also keeps everyone together when they would be more than happy to fight each other. What else would you have him do?

Each character has had its progression. Rand becoming his campion persona, Mat accepting that he can't just gamble and forget about the world out there. And Perrin accepting that he must lead. Don't know why you say it took him too long in terms of books (Rand tGS, Mat tGS, Perrin only a book later and only because tGS was all about Malden I woud say).

And about the blacksmith puzzles, I actually find it fascinating. Rand, he's all about action and impulses (overall, I'm not doing an in-deph description of the characters), Mat can rely on his memories and luck, and what about Perrin? Perrin's "gift" has proven more a problem than a help, because unlike Mat' luck or Rand's extreme ta'vereness, he actually has to learn to control it or else he loses himself. Perrin is the only one that has to actually think about the things he has to do. I repeat, Mat has his luck and memories, Rand has his extreme ta'vereness and he is the fucking DR, but Perrin doesn't have anything to help him out other than his own brain. I actually find him extremely intelligent, only that he takes longer than most people to reach a conclusion, but the main point is that if he weren't so thorough he wouldn't be able to achieve so much merits.

 

Sorry I know I made a confusing post repeating myself and things like that but I'm short of time and couldn't find the words :S Sorry. :D

[EmperorMayhem]

i think that the main thing I find annoying about Perrin's character, is that I like him and wish he'd make more of himself- or wish he Had made more of himself sooner. it seems like an ongoing trend with characters here to be like "i'm no lord", or "i'm no battle leader". it happens often that they'll notice unique powers about themselves but won't focus on it, won't focus on leveling up. perrin did this with the wolf telepath power for a long time, and i don't think they've done anything with the power of them seeing what the other Taveren are doing when they think of them... perrin will think of matt or rand, and an image of him will form and he'll shove it out of his mind cuz he doesn't want to have unique abilities or something.

 

if i discovered i could channel, or talk to wolves, or dreamwalk or see one of my friends no matter where on earth they were, i'd be like... Cool! I'm gonna try and develop this, because it could come in handy. The characters tend to shove things out of their minds instead of focusing on turning them to good use.

 

some characters obviously don't do this, such as Egwene, and Rand (after book 2 ish?), and a handful of others, but its more irritating with Perrin because he's an introvert like me, but takes Absolutely FOREVER to EVER come to terms with who he is and what role he'll play. I was always hoping his character would mature so that he could settle into a Kick-Ass role that i could enjoy reading about for longer, but now the series is pretty much done and we only have 1 book to enjoy a matured Perrin character. kinda disappointing because of how much potential ive seen in his character for all these books

[Naggash]

Well I think you are wrong about that.

It's not that Perrin doesn't want powers. He doesn't want to be a lord and thinks he doesn't deserve it.

About the powers, he obstructs his conection with the wolves because he is (sorry for this) FUCKING SCARED OUT OF HELL of becoming something like the other wolfbrother he finds whose name I don't remember. And he vanish the colours because they start when Malden thing and he is too focused in rescuing the girls not because he doesn't care.

[TristanWebb]

My only problem with Perrin is the amount of time we spent with him where he did nothing. If he was left out of a book and the story line was condensed a bit more, he would be much better, but it seemed like Perrin's story was simply there to fill pages so no one else had to do anything.

[Naggash]

I think that was intended. We are shown in-deph Perrin's thought process because that's how he'll be dealing with the LB. Mat may be the general, but I think Perrin's thoughts will be of major importance for non-military issues. Plus we are shown what kind of person he is becomingm, which could be necesary to understand his rol in aMoL; there are various theories about Perrin.

[jsbrads]

like perrin, his story wasn't bad, faile was horrible, a real negative influence,

[David Selig]

The problem is that most of his introspective musings are shallow, repetitive and frankly boring. Nothing wrong with introspection and introspective characters, when done well (I love plenty of those in other novels) it's just not the case with Perrin IMO. "I suck as a leader, why do those people insist on following me" repeated 100 times in slight variations is not a good introspection in my book.

[SparrowHawk]

The problem is that most of his introspective musings are shallow, repetitive and frankly boring

 

To be fair, as much as I like RJ's style, a lot of his characters can be shallow, repetitive, and yes, even boring once in a while. Mat complains about being a lord all the time, Rand lists off the women that died all the time, Perrin doesn't want to be a leader all the time. Well, there character arcs have sort of resolved recently, but in the mid books, they all did this more.

 

I think all of the characters have faults, but Perrins are less relatable to people. I, for one don't like it if I have more than a couple people's attention on me, so I can totally relate to leadership problems like his, especially when I know in a situation that I'm capable of leading, but feel uncomfortable to do so. So yes, lol, I have this Perrin-thought all the time.

 

I love Mat too, but there's parts of his character I don't like that everyone else goes crazy for. He seems to be a good example of an extravert that's very charismatic, but charisma doesn't really do anything for me, haha, I guess I'm just not charmed by him.

 

Another thing I dislike about certain characters(Egwene), is being manipulative. I prefer Perrin's straightforwardness to her's (or Faile's) subterfuge.

 

Keeping personality traits in mind, are there any other characters you guys can think of that you relate you, or alienate you?

[Agitel]

like perrin, his story wasn't bad, faile was horrible, a real negative influence,

 

Everyone complains about Faile, but not usually because of who she is, but because they think Perrin sucks. Faile pretty much agrees with all of you and tries to encourage him to be more authoritative and to take up his leadership role, yet she gets the blame for his failings and his codependency. It's not as if she ensorcelled him with magic or even attempted to manipulate him through feminine charms. That's what Berelain does. Perrin would have been a lot weaker without Faile. She's only been a positive influence.

[Kamin_Majere]

Also the thing about Perrin that a lot of people seem to gloss over is (which the books did to so it's a little understandable) is the man lost his entire family to a horrible murder. He's all of 22 and his parents and uncles/aunts and grand parents and younger siblings were all murdered and left to rot. And on top of that the only other father/mother figures he had to turn to (the blacksmith and his wife) now treat him as a lord instead of someone barely a man, that the year before would have probably adopted if the same murders would have happened. Its not a huge wonder he turned to Faile with such gusto.

 

She's the only family he has left.

 

I blame it a bit on the books not having time to give much thought to this happening (was a very busy time of the story) but having your entire family murdered is going to break things inside a person and for all that Perrin has still kept going.

 

Out of the 3 Two Rivers boys he's the only one that has truly lost people he cared about.

 

About the only others to suffer something like this were Lan (when Moirane "died") and that almost caused him to get himself killed on his way to his new bond, and Thom when he lost his lover and he took his rage and destroyed a nations powerbase over it.

 

All Perrin got was a few paragraphs worth of morning, before he was thrust right back into having to lead the entire Two Rivers against a trolloc invasion that could have very easily killed every man woman and child there.

Edited June 10, 2012 by Kamin_Majere

[TristanWebb]

Also the thing about Perrin that a lot of people seem to gloss over is (which the books did to so it's a little understandable) is the man lost his entire family to a horrible murder. He's all of 22 and his parents and uncles/aunts and grand parents and younger siblings were all murdered and left to rot. And on top of that the only other father/mother figures he had to turn to (the blacksmith and his wife) now treat him as a lord instead of someone barely a man, that the year before would have probably adopted if the same murders would have happened. Its not a huge wonder he turned to Faile with such gusto.

 

She's the only family he has left.

 

I blame it a bit on the books not having time to give much thought to this happening (was a very busy time of the story) but having your entire family murdered is going to break things inside a person and for all that Perrin has still kept going.

 

Out of the 3 Two Rivers boys he's the only one that has truly lost people he cared about.

 

About the only others to suffer something like this were Lan (when Moirane "died") and that almost caused him to get himself killed on his way to his new bond, and Thom when he lost his lover and he took his rage and destroyed a nations powerbase over it.

 

All Perrin got was a few paragraphs worth of morning, before he was thrust right back into having to lead the entire Two Rivers against a trolloc invasion that could have very easily killed every man woman and child there.

It is even worse when you remember that Perrin was the only one to care about home enough to break the ta'veren pull and when he gets there everyone was already weeks dead.

[jwood01]

The problem is that most of his introspective musings are shallow, repetitive and frankly boring

 

To be fair, as much as I like RJ's style, a lot of his characters can be shallow, repetitive, and yes, even boring once in a while. Mat complains about being a lord all the time, Rand lists off the women that died all the time, Perrin doesn't want to be a leader all the time. Well, there character arcs have sort of resolved recently, but in the mid books, they all did this more.

 

I think all of the characters have faults, but Perrins are less relatable to people. I, for one don't like it if I have more than a couple people's attention on me, so I can totally relate to leadership problems like his, especially when I know in a situation that I'm capable of leading, but feel uncomfortable to do so. So yes, lol, I have this Perrin-thought all the time.

 

I love Mat too, but there's parts of his character I don't like that everyone else goes crazy for. He seems to be a good example of an extravert that's very charismatic, but charisma doesn't really do anything for me, haha, I guess I'm just not charmed by him.

 

I agree with both of you actually. This is part of RJ's writing style and is one part of the books I am not enamoured with. Thought processes are a little more complex than being so "shallow, repetitive, and boring". Sometimes I feel like the introspective bits are like RJ hitting me over the head with a hammer repeatedly. But I guess we have to take the good with the bad ;)

[jwood01]

What I like most about Perrin is that despite being cast as an introvert, he is very common sense driven. He is willing to put anyone in their place regardless of who they are. He's not afraid to call people out on their bullsh**.

 

I anticipate this will come in handy when Egwene (or Rand) needs to be taken down a peg or two at the FoM.

[SparrowHawk]

^THIS^ I loved when he met up with Egwene in ToM :) And Rand in Cairhein. So yeah, I could see that happening.

But I also like how quickly he was at Rand's side in ToM about breaking the seals. It was cool to see him trust Rand on this, knowing that Rand's pulled off some crazy awesome stunts in the past.

[Kamin_Majere]

Yeah I have a feeling that Perrin will end up playing a bit of go between when the Dragon and the Amrylin meet up at the FoM. Which suits him well as he isn't usually prone to let emotions lead him as much as thinking through things (which Egwene and Rand have problems with at times)

[1Brotherbill]

Perrin I feel it the one who has done so little with so much. Even though all the players have issues that Dr Phil couldn't figure out. Perrin is the one who doesn't want to be what he is. He fights it all the time. Only accomplishes anything when he is forced to do so because it is the only choice left.

 

All that being said, his parts of the books are still better than some of the girls parts. I do believe BS is better at writing women than RJ was. Because the women parts of the books now are tolerable compared to the parts were Egwene and Elayne were in the tower as Accepted.

[Naggash]

Perrin I feel it the one who has done so little with so much. Even though all the players have issues that Dr Phil couldn't figure out. Perrin is the one who doesn't want to be what he is. He fights it all the time. Only accomplishes anything when he is forced to do so because it is the only choice left.

Could you tell me the difference between him and Mat and Rand? I kind of missed it in yout comment.

As side note, imo he's done so much with so little, but that's personal opinion.

and what about Perrin? Perrin's "gift" has proven more a problem than a help, because unlike Mat' luck or Rand's extreme ta'vereness, he actually has to learn to control it or else he loses himself. Perrin is the only one that has to actually think about the things he has to do. I repeat, Mat has his luck and memories, Rand has his extreme ta'vereness and he is the fucking DR, but Perrin doesn't have anything to help him out other than his own brain. I actually find him extremely intelligent, only that he takes longer than most people to reach a conclusion, but the main point is that if he weren't so thorough he wouldn't be able to achieve so much merits.

Edited June 13, 2012 by Naggash

[TristanWebb]

He only thinks he will lose himself. ToM shows it was a choice to go feral by that guy. rand's gift is less his ta'vereness and more his extreme channelling ability, which is far more likely to destroy him than being a wolfbrother is to Perrin.

[Naggash]

He only thinks he will lose himself. ToM shows it was a choice to go feral by that guy. rand's gift is less his ta'vereness and more his extreme channelling ability, which is far more likely to destroy him than being a wolfbrother is to Perrin.

He was wrong when thinking that the mere contact with the wolves would make him lose himself, but he still needs to find that balance. That is for certain. If he didn't find it he would become just like Noam (?¿ I think that was the name) eventually, or lose himself in another way I don't know. Elyas sais that he had had the same problem, but that he had found his balance.

And maybe Rand was in more risk pre-cleanse but that's not the point.

I never said that Rand and Mat didn't have their own problems, I only said that, from my PoV, the one with less help (understood as abilities too) and resources to do what he had to do was Perrin.