A Distillation of Bliss
Lots of people go to bars looking to find joy as an end product of the distillation process. Even when they find it, of course, it is mere illusion, a confusing of the deadening of senses and the suicide of brain cells with bliss. Not that even this occurs very often. No matter the world, people will look for ways to extract happiness in concentrated form:
“On impulse, she opened herself to saidar and let it fill her, as though all the joy of life in the world had been distilled and every drop in her veins replaced with the essence.”
Bizarre Love Triangle
Of course, everybody loves Rand except for the bad guys. He is the hero, after all. There are, however, at least three women who really love Rand. Two of them are discussing him. One forwards a possibility of how things might turn out for all of them:
“You and I will divide him up like a pie. Maybe we’ll let the third have a bit of crust when she shows up.”
Dreamland
Like any self-respected fantasy novel series, this one features an abundance of meaningful dreams. In fact, it goes one step further in creating an entire world-within-a-world where a kind of magic allows a chosen few to enter right into the dreamworld. As might be expected, it is a place fill with metaphor:
“There was always a sense of light in the World of Dreams, from everywhere and nowhere, as if the darkness itself had some dark glow. But then, dreams were like that, and this was a dream, if not any ordinary dream.”
Trust and Love
The issue of trust is of supreme importance thematically in this book of the series. The issue is raised so often, with such prevalence, and in such a variety of context that it eventually serves as imagery. And where this is imagery, metaphor must be nearby:
“In that old memory he remembered writing that song, because of the love of his life. Trust is the taste of death.”
Is There a Stock Market In This World?
Fantasy genre writers who create entirely imaginary worlds divorced from the one we know and share can never fully develop a unique place. Whether it is the subconscious doing its work, an attempt to make an end run around the divergence through allusion, or just plain sheer laziness, referential connective tissue always pops up eventually. For instance, in this metaphor which is strictly related to having to choose sides in a conflict, but which features a dynamic duo of beasts that cannot help but make one think of this world’s all too unfortunately real Wall Street:
“Cheer the bull, or cheer the bear; cheer both, and you will be trampled and eaten.”
