Critical Flaw In The Wheel Of Time

(Spoilers for the entire book series)

The Wheel of Time is near-universally praised by fantasy readers for having a spectacular ending. It is also near-universally agreed that it has flaws, and in my opinion a lot of them are excusable (even “the slog”, a period of narrative lethargy). Back when I finished the book, I had nothing but praise for the series as a whole.

However, having mulled over the events of the book (especially the ending), I realised that there is a glaring problem in core philosophical argument of the book, a problem I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere yet. This is not to say I entirely dislike the series as whole, it’s a one-time-read, a solid 6.5/10 I’d say, with some spectacular 10/10 moments.

The problem is at the heart of what many people would consider one of the high points of the entire series - the last battle. More specifically, the last battle between the protagonist, Rand, and the antagonist, the Dark One, or Shai’tan.

Rand and Shai’tan Dream-off: A Quick Recap 🔗

As The Last Battle rages on in the physical world, Rand is sucked outside of the spacetime itself, and has his own fight with the antagonist of the series, simply called “The Dark One”.

This fight, however, is not a fistfight - it’s a fight of wills, a fight of vision for the future of the world. A fight of imagination. This involves the Dark One and Rand presenting their respective imagined realities to each other, which culminates into the final round of this dream-off.

The Dark One presents, what I would consider, a true dystopia. From this world, he has removed compassion itself. Not only that, he has removed “even the suspicion that something is wrong”. People have been turned to the Dark One signified by spooky shadows behind their eyes. This is terrifying, partly because it hits a bit close to reality of many regions of the world today.

In response, Rand shows a world where The Dark One (let’s be honest, a proxy for “all bad things”) never existed. A true utopia. Everything is good, there isn’t any violence, even the weather is perfect all the time. Happy Days. But would this be a good ending?

The Problem 🔗

To keep the story interesting, the author(s) now have to write something to undermine this utopia. This is done in a scene where Rand finds Elayne (a queen in this world, also Rand’s love interest) in the palace gardens. But instead of being surrounded by subjects like she usually is, he finds her alone. Because:

This was a world without problems. A world where people worked out their own grievances easily. A world of giving, not dispute. What would someone need of the Queen?

The authorial intent here is to introduce a small bit of sadness. Elayne now uncharacteristically has “simpering tone, vapid reaction”. Furthermore, we learn that Aviendha (another one of Rand’s love interests), who is a warrior, is now on nursery duty. This is also something out-of-character for her:

He thought Aviendha would be a wonderful mother, but to imagine her seeking to spend all day playing with other people’s children…

Both of these instances are presented to indicate that something is wrong in this world. To punctuate this point, when Rand looks into Elayne’s eyes, he finds the same spooky shadow behind the eyes that were there in the dystopian vision.

The argument here being: that by removing all bad things from the world, Rand has changed people, changed their “essence”. Rand removing all the “Bad” from this world is effectively the same as the Dark One removing all the “Good” from this world.

It’s a poor point: The text is trying to convince me that “lack of good” somehow is the same as “lack of evil”. It’s not! Pure good is good actually! I have genuine respect for Robert Jordan, and Brandon Sanderson, but this is some horseshoe theory nonsense.

On top of that, the point is poorly made. The examples that are picked to showcase this false equivalence are: a monarch and a soldier. A world that doesn’t need either sounds great! A queen not having subjects (due to lack of problems), and a soldier not having a purpose (due to lack of wars): These are good things, actually. Sure they have lost their “essence”, but in exchange there is literally no evil? Are you kidding me? That is the simplest version of the Trolley Problem. The protagonist fails to make what is clearly an easy choice.

The Root Cause 🔗

Now the reason for this flaw existing is quite mundane: the world of Wheel of Time has a God. As with real world, this fictional world thus has to answer the basic question, “Why is there injustice in the world? Why are there children with leukaemia?”. As with real world, attempts at answering this question are evasive, hand-wavy, and never satisfactory. The moment you introduce an all-powerful-omniscient God, the philosophical core of the story crumbles. The best writer in the world couldn’t write out of that plot hole.

Lack of Imagination 🔗

The final fight between the protagonist and the antagonist in The Wheel of Time is an “imagination-off” instead of a Marvel-style punch up. This is a fantastic concept. However our hero, and by extension, the author(s), lose in this particular fight, by failing to imagine a perfect world. Some would consider a literal utopia to be an uninteresting end to a story. Why though? Have we become so cynical that we can’t even imagine a utopia without having to pull it down? It is indeed challenging to write a perfect world while keeping it interesting, but I think fantasy authors should rise up to the challenge.