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 33: A Bath
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Rand al’Thor
Summary
It has been days since Rand sent Perrin away to Ghealdan. He is ashamed of the passion he and Min shared—he believes he raped her. He is chronically tempted to touch the Choedan Kal access ter’angreal he’s hidden away, but refrains from doing so. Dreams plague his sleep covering many different topics. Min comes in (against Rand’s orders), and tells of an urgent viewing: he needs Cadsuane around him, just like Siuan needs Gareth Bryne around her. She also tells him about yet another viewing: “I saw you and another man. I couldn’t make out either face, but I knew one was you. You touched, and seemed to merge into one another, and…one of you dies, and one doesn’t.” Rand takes this to mean that he and Lews Therin will eventually merge and that Lews Therin will be the one to die.[1]
Min insists that Rand needs a bath, and the Maidens help. Rand apologizes for being “a monster” when they slept together. Min informs him that it wasn’t rape, it was two friends “comforting” each other. Rand admits to loving Min, Aviendha, and Elayne. Min tells Rand that she loves him, too, and so do Elayne and Aviendha. She tells him that he cannot send her away for her own protection and that he needs to deal with the Sea Folk. He promises to do so that very day.
REACTION:
In the Wheel of Time community, Min is usually a fan favorite. This chapter is a perfect example as to why. Most of the women in this series – wittingly or not, fairly or not – don’t give their male counterparts a sense of peace when they’re together. In Rand’s case (keeping in mind he grew up without a mother), Egwene talks to him like he’s a fool in need of guidance. Elayne is a chaotic back and forth between fire and ice. Avi spent nearly her entire time with Rand implying that she hates him, and even after he found out that’s not true, she kept up a significant barrier. Moiraine spent nearly all of her time with Rand attempting to bully him. Lanfear tried to seduce him into doing things he doesn’t want to do. The last group of women he spent close time with – the White Tower Aes Sedai – kidnapped him and tortured him for days on end.
Min is the only woman in Rand’s life – maybe since he lost his mother – trying to give him peace. She kind of views that as her primary job – both vocationally as his seer advisor and as someone who loves him. Here she restores Rand to peace when he was on the brink of a mental breakdown. He had been refusing meals, staring at the most powerful sa’angreal in the world all the time, not bathing, and shouting at the walls that he’s the Dragon Reborn. [I mean, I do that, and nobody appreciates it, either.] We learn that the primary cause of this was that he wrongly convinced himself that he’d raped Min. She could have handled that belief from him in a way that focused on her own feelings. I mean, it can’t feel great on her side of things to have someone react to having sex with you in the way that Rand reacts to it. She puts Rand first though, because it’s pretty obvious to her (if not anyone else) that Rand needs that.
To clarify – Min yells at Rand so much in this chapter that he eventually threatens to smack her bottom, and on first blush, her treatment of him might not feel different than how every other woman treats him. HOWEVER.. the difference is that while everyone else is trying to make Rand *do* something, Min is not. She yells at him, ferociously, to get through to him. After she gets through to him, though, she leaves the deciding up to Rand. The following quote is something that Rand would *only* say about Min.
“How do you do it,” he sighed, slumping back in the chair. “Even when you stand me on my head, you make all my troubles shrink.”
She even does what Nyn did with Lan and makes him laugh – asking (hopefully) if Avi is boney and scarred.
In addition to what he thought he did with Min, Rand is also pretty freaked out by the staged fight he had with Perrin. Staged or not, he apparently got so angry during the fight that the rage and desire to hurt Perrin almost overwhelmed him. We learn that he keeps replaying the scene in his mind (hurling Perrin across a throne room) and even dreaming repeatedly about killing him. So yeah… on the brink. The Creator knew he needed Min.
Near the end of the chapter, Min tells Rand about a viewing.
“I saw you and another man. I couldn’t make out either face, but I knew one was you. You touched, and seemed to merge into one another, and….one of you dies, and one doesn’t.”
Rand is elated and thinks that this refers to Lews Therin, and that it means Lews Therin’s voice in his head is real (and not a symptom of madness.) This feels vague enough, and too easy, so Rand is almost certainly wrong in this interpretation of the viewing. But we’ll have to wait and see, I guess.
What do we think about the fact Rand can’t hear Lews Therin to start the chapter? When we pick up with him, he is emotional – and there’s no weeping and wailing voice in his head. When Rand was being tortured in the previous book, he stayed in the Void, repressing his emotions, and Lews Therin got louder and more communicative. I feel like there’s something to that. Again, I guess we’ll see.
Good chapter. I guess we’re finally going to see Rand meet with the Sea Folk (after multiple books of them wanting to meet with him.)