Welcome back to my re-read, recap, and reaction to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. This post will only have spoilers through the current chapter.
You can find my previous chapter recaps HERE.
Chapter 1: High Chasaline
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Perrin Aybara
Perrin Aybara is sitting a few miles south of Dumai’s Wells and contemplating. Today is High Chasaline, a festival where one should think about the good and happy things in one’s life. He finds that very difficult to do. He feels guilty about having led a lot of wolves to their deaths. The Aiel pester him with messages carried by naked Shaido gai’shain because they like to watch him stammer and blush. Perrin watches the Tower Aes Sedai under guard by Asha’man and their Warders under guard by Mayeners. The Aes Sedai do their best to ignore the stilled Sisters in their midst.
Aram suggests killing the Aes Sedai to take that problem off Rand‘s shoulders. Perrin forbids him to speak of it again. Jondyn Barran also mentions that it would be better if the Aes Sedai were dead, which makes Perrin start to fret.
Perrin fears that the temporary alliance between Aiel, Cairhienin, and Mayeners will soon break apart. The Asha’man and the Wise Ones add their negative feelings towards the Aes Sedai and each other to the situation, too.
Loial is also uneasy with the situation of keeping the Aes Sedai prisoners.
REACTION:
In Randland, High Chasaline is a Feast Day. It’s “A Day of Reflection” when you’re supposed to remember all the good things from your life and a day when it is bad luck to voice any complaints. I guess that’s an ironic detail because the rest of the chapter is mostly just Perrin’s observations about negative realities.
Perrin is sitting now in the aftermath of Dumai’s Wells. Some of the wolves who fought there survived but most did not. Perrin feels some guilt over their fate, even if he does not quite come out and feel regret. Most of his thoughts are with Faile. He believes – incorrectly I suspect – that she was glad to see him leave for battle. He also can’t puzzle out her emotions (though it never occurs to him to tell her that he can smell her emotions.) He wants to puzzle it out on his own – and that is his great mistake. Since this is one of the very first things Jordan brings up in this book, I guess the “Perrin – Faile – Berelain” conundrum is likely to be a focal point. Yay? No. Ugh.
Sidenote: It’s hilarious that the Aiel are sending naked captured Shaido to Perrin (they’re naked because they don’t have robes on site, which is the only thing they are culturally permitted to wear) because they realized it makes him blush. These same Aiel, under other circumstances, would blush profusely to see or be the recipient of the most mild public displays of affection. A strange people. Jordan makes this seem realistic, at least, like that cultural practices like this could hypothetically develop among human beings. I also found it interesting that Perrin smelled fury on the captured Shaido, despite her outwardly calm and meek presence. I think this is the first time we’ve been around anyone who could actually smell a gai’shain and verify that the meek display is… a display. I’d guess that the inward starts to better match the outward, over time. We’ve definitely seen gai’shain who seem to actually be pretty meek.
This is like some other version of the idea that if you smile while sad that eventually the action tricks your brain into being happy. If you pretend to be meek, even when you’re a ferocious fighter – it starts to seep in. This could apply to anything, though.
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
The very slow Perrin finally figures out, after about ten times, that the issue is the fact he is reacting. Maybe slow Perrin will figure out the problem with Faile is that he doesn’t communicate with her.
If we’re setting up how the book is going to go with this chapter, it’s also worth noting Aram’s complete lack of anger when talking about killing captives. Jordan is signaling that the former Tinker is broken in some profound (and possibly dangerous) way internally. I guess that is the danger of watching your friends and family be killed and eaten by monsters and then find yourself cast out of what’s left of your community for wanting to fight the monsters.
Loial shows up at the end of the chapter and basically confirms Perrin’s entire POV for the chapter. 1) The entire camp feels like a powder keg waiting on a spark, and 2) keeping Aes Sedai captives is wrong and probably wrong-headed.
I don’t actually think Loial and Perrin are correct about point 2, but neither of them really understand the One Power well enough to know that the Aes Sedai were just knocked from their place as apex predator of Randland. The Wise Ones are essentially their equals (or close enough for the different not to matter) and the Ashaman might be ahead of everyone by a wide margin. Either way, they decide to go find Rand and talk to him about all of this.
2 thoughts on “A Crown of Swords (Chapter 1): High Chasaline”