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Well, with the below suggestion that this board should be closed, after giving a bit more time for people to write about river of souls or get things off their chest, I thought I’d get this one off my chest

My apologies, but this is a lengthy post.

I'm currently listening to the audio version of the Wheel of Time books, and am nearing the end of The Shadow Rising. I've found listening to the audio is good, as it doesn't allow me to skip sections on characters I don’t like, as I can with the books, and I can’t speed read either, which has helped draw my attention to pieces I've skimmed over in the past.

A couple of such points in the fourth book solidify my overall view on the Pattern.

These are the history of the Aiel that Rand views, and also his inner dialogue around the train of circumstances that lead to his birth, and the many places where things could have gone differently, and Rand never born.

I’ve read that War and Peace provided some inspiration to the Wheel of Time. I have recently finished reading War and Peace, and one idea that Tolstoy presents that I think Jordan picked up, was the idea of free will vs inevitability.

I may have misinterpreted Tolstoy’s comments, but to me he was saying that the more you know about any decision / action a person has taken, the more you see it wasn’t truly free will, but a result of inevitability. This isn’t to say the person didn’t have a choice, and didn’t have the freedom to make a decision, but that in the situation they were in, given the person’s nature, history, and the current circumstances, they were always going to make the decision or take the action that they did, so it was inevitable.

I think Jordan has taken this, and in the Wheel of Time, every decision and action is inevitable.

Thus it isn’t amazing that Rand was born, it was always going to happen, because every decision and action leading to it was always going to take place.

Now, if that was all that was happening in the Wheel of Time, I would be okay with it, but it seems to me that the Pattern takes an active part in ‘twisting things’ to ensure that the Dark One remains imprisoned, and that I take issue with.

Now, it seems that the Pattern is very much the jail keeper of the Dark One, as long as the Wheel keeps spinning, the Dark One stays imprisoned, and so the Pattern ensures that the spinning continues.

This means that the Pattern ensures that all events that occur will ensure that for the next battle, the Dark One is defeated. We can see that even with Balefire, theoretically unravelling the Weave, the Pattern has it set up so that the outcome will still be as planned (such as Mat dying and being reborn, breaking his tie to the Horn).

To do this, the Pattern has two tools at its disposal: births, and Ta’Veren.

The first point is that it appears that the Pattern can select which souls are born for each birth, to ensure that when that person being born is in a position to make decisions / take actions, the right decisions / actions will be made for the Wheel to keep spinning.

This for instance means that the Pattern ensured that the Aiel were going to go through the troubled period they had during the breaking of the world, by making sure the right souls were born for the Aiel to be continually attacked, to ensure the split of the Tinkers, and Aiel taking up weapons etc. It also ensured that the means would be in place for certain Aiel to be able to relive the past and see what happened to the Aiel.

All this was done to ensure that when Rand was reborn, he could go to the Aiel and gain them as followers, and when Couladin did the inevitable deal with Asmodean, there were some Aiel who remembered the past and so were able to positively identify Rand as the true Car’a’carn, who could then lead the required Aiel, while the ones who split off were in a position to do what was required elsewhere in the world in order for the Wheel to keep spinning.

The second point is that at certain points, while the correct souls have been born to create the right decisions / actions (such as the Two Rivers folk all being quite stubborn, leading to Rand, Perrin, Mat, Egwene and Nynaeve having the right attitudes required for the decisions to be made), sometimes this will lead to the incorrect decisions /actions being made later.

This is where Ta’veren come in, to enter the situation and force people to take a decision that they would otherwise not have made (such as the Two Rivers fold retreating to Emond’s Field at Perrin’s urging, when they otherwise were not going to retreat), again to ensure the correct decisions and actions are taken for the Wheel to keep spinning.

At this point, given the Pattern is happily putting people into situations where they will suffer greatly, and still reserve the right to override the decisions that they would have made themselves, that I see little difference between the Wheel of Time as is and the versions that Rand saw in his fight with the Dark One.

The vision with the Dark One victorious showed everyone making decisions based on no perception of good, with the vision of no Dark One showing everyone making decisions based on no perception of evil. In both visions it isn’t that people’s choices were any more or less inevitable than in the current world, it is just that we don’t see what their decision would have been with both good and evil present.

However, with the Dark One nonexistent or broken free, it is likely that in either vision, the Pattern wouldn’t be in existence, forcing people’s decisions and overriding their decisions where necessary.

Fortunately, it seems most people are blissfully unaware of the situation, with Moiraine making comments about how Rand’s or Mat’s actions may backfire on themselves, or lead to them being caught by the Pattern or the like, when in actuality all their decisions / actions to be made was already planned for by the Pattern.

Similarly, Mat’s ‘running from fate’ was only achieving exactly what fate (the Pattern) had in store for him, it wasn’t that he had no hope of escaping, and that whatever he did he would still end up meeting his fate, it was that his exact actions were what were required for his fate to occur.

Rand / Lews Therin talk about why do they keep being reborn, with the conclusion that it is to have the opportunity to love again. While this is a nice view, I think it is somewhat based on having memory of what has occurred before, which isn’t present for the vast majority of the time. In addition, it is at the whim of the Pattern as to whether they will get the opportunity to love again or not.

Similarly, Egwene before she dies thinks about the fact that Gawyn and her will be reborn, and be together again in the future. This will only occur if it suits the Pattern to occur, otherwise they may be doomed to never meet again in the future. In the meantime, both their deaths / ill fated romance was exactly what the Pattern ensured occurred.

It seems that the only point where the Pattern doesn’t have complete control, and where inevitability breaks down, is when it comes to the battles between the Champion of Light and the Dark One. Here for brief moments the Champion’s decision isn’t truly inevitable, there are two (or more) possible choices that the Champion can make, all as possible / inevitable as each other, and this is where the Dark One has the possibility of breaking free.

In summary, while I think that either vision wasn’t pleasant, I feel that the status quo wasn’t any better, and that Rand would have been better off trying to find some way to destroy the Dark One, Creator and Pattern all three, and leave the world to continue on in its own inevitability, without any meddling by the Pattern.

And in that, I find myself agreeing more with Moridin’s viewpoint (a man doomed to be spun out by the Pattern again and again to serve the Dark One) than Rand’s.