Robert Jordan: Genius or Hack?

Like a puzzle master, it may be the case that he engineers each and every fragment of his work to fit together with such subtlety that a team of die-hard fans would require years to analyze it. Like a sixteenth century clockmaker, he may have painstakingly constructed every misunderstanding between characters, every battle, and every element to fit together into a mind-boggling tapestry which cannot be seen clearly until the series is complete. Already many of those apparently contrived points in the story have blown into important subplots, which may affect yet others. To give an example of an apparently forgotten character: the sniffer Hurin seems to have disappeared in second book, never to be heard from since. Fast-forward several volumes later. Here a brief mention was made that the nations of Shienar and Arafel were at war. Such statements are made in the dialogue between characters all the time. Jordan intentionally bombards the reader with detail, so news and current events in Randland often go unnoticed. Yet a closer look at this miniscule detail leads to the possibility that this distant, minor war may well have been caused by the news Hurin brought when he returned to Shienar... and this may directly affect Rand or some other main character later on.

The Wheel of Time series is more than escapist brain candy. It is a fractal; an infinitely complex structure so tight that it seems to teeter on the ledge which separates fantasy from reality. That world as intricately detailed as our own. Its creator is either a genius or a madman; possibly both. When I picture Robert Jordan’s house, I can only imagine room after room full of papers, push-pinned to every wall, outlining a million details, keeping track of the shifting population of an entire world. He’s got to have timelines, languages (the Old Tongue, Ogier), lists of local cultures and customs, lists of national histories, lists of flags, armor, and weapons, lists of guilds and societies, maps of cities, nations, and continents, and too many other things to name. In recent years a guidebook to his world was published; I suspect that it barely reveals a tip of this gargantuan iceberg.

Despite all this, the critics of Jordan’s characters do have a point or two. There is a certain sameness between all the male characters and all the females. No crossovers exist. In Randland, the women mostly regard men as ‘oafs’ and ‘woolheads,’ and bond very easily with each other, while the men are often mistrustful of everyone, and of women in particular. It has been said that Jordan ignores the realities of human interaction.

At a first glance, it seems that his clearly defined separation of male and female roles is a reflection of a traditional sexist male viewpoint. In Randland, men cannot do women’s work (which includes tossing lightning bolts and manipulating kings and queens), and women cannot do men’s work (which mainly consists of slightly altered versions of their own capacities). Naturally, this leads to confrontations when a woman needs a man to do something, and vice versa. I took offense when I first read The Eye of the World, because the women of Emond’s Field were represented as stereotypical village ‘goodwives’ and daughters. It seemed apparent (at that point) that the main characters would be mostly male. Then along came Moiraine Sedai, and my expectations were blown to smithereens. As a woman, I am eternally grateful to Robert Jordan for having the temerity and skill to invent likeable female role models. Such are extremely hard to come by in almost every genre of fiction.

The world of the Wheel of Time has a three thousand year history of subtle female domination. The cultures and characters are developed accordingly. In our world, perhaps, bristling relationships between men and women are not so commonplace... but Jordan has a unique view on society. He seems to suggest that men would have a much harder time accepting female dominance than women in our own culture have historically accepted male rule. There are nations in Randland where men are treated like second-class citizens. But Jordan is not catering his series to women exclusively. His male characters are equally strong, and it seems that his world is on the cusp of an era where balance will be restored, and men will reestablish their equality with women.