82 pages • 2 hours read
Brandon SandersonRhythm of War
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Understanding and Treating Mental Illness
Kaladin and Shallan face complex mental health challenges. Their journeys illustrate the difficulty of simultaneously managing internal wounds and coping with societal failures to care for the mentally ill.
Since his brother’s death and his enslavement as cannon fodder, Kaladin has had bouts of depression, suicidal ideation, and even the urge to die by suicide. At first, external validation lessens Kaladin’s symptoms: The lightheartedness of Syl, the spren he bonded, helps him overcome some depressive episodes, while protecting fellow bridge runners and warriors allows Kaladin to feel useful, keeping his symptoms at bay. Moreover, friends and allies reassure Kaladin and attempt to support him. Dalinar, when removing Kaladin from active duty, comforts him: “Don’t be ashamed, son. […] That sort of experience leaves scars, same as any wound. It’s all right to admit to them” (147). Adolin drags Kaladin out and surrounds him with good company, providing a caring presence and ensuring that Kaladin does not give into complete isolation: “You don’t have to smile. You don’t have to talk. But if you’re going to be miserable, you might as well do it with friends” (166). Syl commiserates with Kaladin: As she begins to remember her old Knight Radiant, however, she recalls her grief over his death, which lets her understand the darkness Kaladin feels.
However, Rhythm of War makes it clear that without internal changes, Kaladin cannot rely on these external influences to keep him out of depression forever. One year after the events of Oathbringer, Kaladin’s worsening mental health is clear to those around him: He occasionally freezes in battle, exhibiting fantasy-flavored symptoms of PTSD, and distances himself from those he cares about, in a realistic depiction of depression. Though surrounded by friends, Kaladin believes that “he would bring only darkness to those around him. Why would they want to be with him? He wouldn’t want to be with him” (169).
Kaladin’s efforts to help others with depression finally jumpstart the process of healing. He finds new ways to be a protector by ending the ignorance with which mentally ill patients have been treated and discovering effective treatments, such as group therapy for those with battle shock: “For the men chatting together softly […] the change was in not merely knowing that you weren’t alone—but in feeling it. Realizing that no matter how isolated you thought you were, no matter how often your brain told you terrible things, there were others who understood” (430). Also curative is another internal transformation: a vision that helps him cope with his guilt over his brother Teft’s death. In the dream, his brother points out that inevitable death does not mean nothing matters:
the moments we spent with each other are the only things that do matter. […] If you think letting Teft die is a failure—but all the times you supported him are meaningless—then no wonder it always hurts. Instead, if you think of how lucky you both were to be able to help each other when you were together, well, it looks a lot nicer, doesn’t it? (1139).
Shallan’s fears and anxieties manifest as a fantasy version of dissociative identity disorder. She has struggled for years with the pain of killing her parents and, as she re-discovers in Rhythm of War, her original spren. She forced herself to forget these memories, but this maladaptive coping strategy resulted in the creation of personas named Veil, a secretive spy identity, and Radiant, a capable leader. However, the balance between Shallan and the personas is tenuous, and Shallan forces the two to take over for her more and more. Veil explains the function of personas to Adolin as denial made manifest that is no long sufficient:
Radiant and I are coping mechanisms that, for the most part, work. But something deeper has started to manifest. […] Because of things that happened to her—and more, some of the things she was forced to do—she’s beginning to think that “Shallan” is the fake one, the false identity. That there is a monster deep inside that is her real self (427).
To find a more productive and healthy coping strategy and mental health release valve, Veil and Radiant want Shallan to face her past, asking her to remember what happened rather than pushing it away and to trust Adolin to accept her fully. In a moment of truth, Veil forces a confrontation and shows Shallan that she is not weak—surviving her trauma has made her strong. Shallan finds the strength to face her fears and shame and finds a path forward.
Engaging With Other Cultures
Many of Brandon Sanderson’s novels include intercultural or intracultural clashes: Both xenophobic bigotry and classism play major roles in The Stormlight Archive. Rhythm of War foregrounds intercultural conflicts. Interactions between the humans and the listeners (and the Fused who rule them) reveal the dangers of being ruled by prejudice.
Because the novel is primarily interested in the lives of the rulers of humans and listeners, readers are most often seeing the perspective of the privileged few. Those in the lower classes cynically see only similarities between those who oppress them, whether human or Fused. For example, Lirin, during his year in Fused-occupied Urithiru, thinks, “[L]ittle had changed. The same old conflicts consumed the parshmen as easily as they had the Alethi brightlords. People who got a taste of power wanted more, then sought it with the sword” (36). Despite this parallelism of greed, the elite on both sides of the conflict see each other as monstrous and evil.
However, Rhythm of War follows the slow trickle of exposure that melts away these sweeping stereotypes, as multiple characters learn to challenge their own biases about their enemies, even if they still fight for opposing goals. Kaladin notes that many Fused prefer one-on-one fights—their culture is just as honor-bound and codified as that of the knights he is leading, which earns his respect. Likewise, Raboniel, the Fused leading the occupying forces, respects human ingenuity and scientific curiosity. From the very beginning of the invasion, she shows the surrendering Navani respect: “She comes to me as a queen, though she will leave without the title. For now she may speak when she wishes, as befitting her rank” (533). Navani and Raboniel develop a productive and increasingly close personal and professional relationship, with Raboniel giving Navani high praise as a scholar, challenging Navani’s doubts about her capabilities. In turn, Navani sees Raboniel’s humanity in her relationship with her mentally ill daughter.
The arcs of the two listeners, Venli and Rlain, show an even more nuanced perspective of cross-cultural tolerance. Venli serves several masters: She works for Leshwi and Raboniel, Fused who were brought back because of Venli’s research; she is covertly trying to gather a group of likeminded listeners together to escape Fused rule; and she bonded an honorspren instead of a voidspren, harnessing the powers normally only given to humans and developing the sense of honor and personal sacrifice necessary to gain greater access to her spren’s magic. These multiple allegiances teach Venli how to appreciate other ways of being—a skill that will become useful when her small band joins the listeners who survived the Everstorm. Similarly, the many identity aspects of Rlain, a listener who has been a human soldier since his acceptance by and elevation with the Bridge Four, challenge others’ prejudices. The humans around Rlain often resort to stereotypes: He does not like wearing warform, which makes humans distrust him; however, workform makes people think they can treat him as a servant. Rlain both pursues Radiant status and stands up for himself rather than accept a lesser version of it: When Kaladin tries to convince Rlain to bond with an unwilling spren, saying that given spren distrust of parshmen, Rlain should take what he can get, Rlain replies, “I have no interest in taking ‘what I can get.’ […] I will wait for a spren who will bond me for who I am—and the honor I represent” (215).
Even human ideas of spren change, as several characters explore the Cognitive Realm, see the culture of the city there, and understand that the spren are a fully developed society rather than simply bits of magical essence. As Shallan points out, “Too often humans—even some spren—regarded all spren as basically the same in personality and temperament. That was wrong. They might not be as fractured as the many nations of men, but they were not a monoculture” (366). Adolin must learn to understand the differences between spren to make his argument at his trial, playing on the beliefs of spren factions and capitalizing on fractures between subgroups. Meanwhile, spren like Syl, the Stormfather, and the Sibling realize that they can change and grow, despite their and humans’ assumptions to the contrary. Syl picks up gravitas and emotional weight as she recovers memories of her ancient Radiant Knight, the Stormfather learns to value mercy and self-control alongside warrior instincts, and the Sibling loses some of her mistrust of humans to bond with Navani. The overall thrust of the novel is that prejudice grows when groups are isolated; exposure and collaboration lead to tolerance and acceptance.
Organized Religion Versus Belief
Religion plays an important role in The Stormlight Archive. The Alethi and many other human nations follow the Vorinism. The Vorin deity is the Shard Honor, primarily called the Almighty.
In the novels, faith in the Almighty or other belief systems are sometimes in conflict with the institution of the Vorin Church, a powerful and ubiquitous entity whose dogma comes with strict rules of behavior and gender norms, which can be broken only by ardents, or priests. One example is the differentiation between male and female spheres. Warfare is a male art, while scholarship and writing are female arts; this means men are not allowed to read or write beyond simple glyphs, so they instead rely on their wives, sisters, or other trusted women to scribe. The Church is embedded in the structures of Alethi power, as ardents are typically highly placed advisers to monarchs and also control other societal functions like hospitals.
Dalinar and Navani embody these kinds of internecine differences. Navani works very closely with the ardents that are her fellow scientists and scholars, whom she trusts implicitly. She is a strong devotee of the Almighty and happy to obey the Church’s strictures; she often turns to ritualized prayer in moments of high stress. In contrast, Dalinar, in his many visions, learns that Honor, the Shard known as the Almighty, is dead. He also decides, in Oathbringer, to use his privileged position to learn to read and write since he is incredibly protected from Church retribution. Nevertheless, Dalinar is not an atheist. Rather, he “claims there’s another true God somewhere in a place beyond Shadesmar” (220)—his increasingly mystical connected with his bonded spren, the Stormfather, seemingly has given Dalinar access to new versions of higher powers. Dalinar’s iconoclasm allows others to form their own versions of belief as well. For example, the knight Godeke concludes that the dead Honor was simply one aspect of the Almighty—the Almighty cannot die because he lives in humans. Meanwhile, Dalinar’s decision to learn to write empowers doubt in otherwise devout Vorinists: “How can it be forbidden for a person to see the holy words of the Almighty, solely because that person is male?” (328).
Finally, there are those like Jasnah, who acknowledge the magical energy that comes from the Shards but refuse to worship them as divine: “Jasnah says that a being having vast powers doesn’t make them God, and concludes—from the way the world works—that an omnipotent, loving deity cannot exist” (220). As Queen of Alethkar, the somewhat openly atheist Jasnah works to undermine the hold the Church has over society; she proposes laws undoing some of Alethi honor culture and researches the history of the world to develop a secular understanding of Shard influence and power. Still, Jasnah values the work of previous religiously devout scholars even if their efforts came from a different ideology: “Ideas are not useless simply because they involve religious thinking […] Nearly all of the ancient scholars I revere were religious, and I appreciate how their faith shaped them, even if I do not appreciate the faith itself” (1093).
Dalinar decides to publish his challenges to Vorinism in a memoir that comprises a kind of conversion narrative and a bridge between Church adherents, believers like him, and atheists. He asks Jasnah to write the undertext, or traditional marginalia, knowing that she will not go easy on his ideas. Dalinar welcomes the valuable insight her commentary will bring. He knows he and Jasnah will never agree on details but hopes that their collaboration “could show that [they] agree on the more important matters. After all, if an avowed atheist and a man starting his own religion can unite, then who can object that their personal differences are too large to surmount?” (1094).
Related Titles
By Brandon Sanderson
