Is Shallan pre-disposed toward alcoholism?

[Seloun]

Shallan seems to do a fair bit of drinking in WoR, in non-social settings:

 

 

It worked. The illusion stayed. “Ha!” Shallan said, getting herself a cup of wine. She walked back and eased onto the bed —flopping down with a cup of red wine did not seem prudent— and looked over the side at the floor, where Pattern sat beneath Veil. He was visible because of the Stormlight.

 

I’ll need to take that into account, Shallan thought. Build illusions so that he can hide in them.

 

“It worked?” Pattern said. “How did you know it would work?”

 

“I didn’t.” Shallan took a sip of wine. “I guessed.”

 

She drank another sip as Pattern hummed. Jasnah would not have approved. Scholarship requires a sharp mind and alert senses. These do not mix with alcohol. Shallan drank the rest of the wine in a gulp.

 

 

“Only a Radiant can open the pathway,” Shallan said, then took a sip of her wine. She liked the warmth it built inside of her. “But we don’t know why, or how. Maybe I’ll count as enough of a Radiant to make it work.”

 

“Perhaps,” Pattern said. “Or you could progress. Become more. There is something more you must do.”

 

...

 

Shallan sat in thought, finishing her wine, until the door to the sitting room burst open, letting in Adolin. He stopped, wild-eyed, regarding her.

 

Her father seems to have a drinking problem (it's indicated that he takes highly intoxicating violet wine); Shallan kills her father at least partly through poisoning his wine (which he slams down without a thought). Jushu certainly has a drinking problem and Balat may also (though probably to a lesser degree). So there's definitely a family history for this.

 

Adolin and Dalinar also drink a lot, but they're generally (if not always) drinking the non-intoxicating versions, and almost always in a social setting. The main thing here is that Shallan seems to drink even when alone, and even when she seems to recognize that it's not necessarily a good idea.

 

That said, plenty of non-PoV characters seem to drink intoxicating wine, though again it's usually in a social setting (Lirin drinks violet wine in TWoK when depressed before the robbery attempt; Navani drinks violet wine while discussing Dalinar's visions in TWoK; Sadeas drinks a lot of violet wine, though he might not be the best role model).

 

Overall though it feels like there's some foreshadowing going on here regarding a potential issue Shallan may have in the future.

[Thought]

First, the amount of adictive behaviors in Shallan's family does indeed indicate a genetic predisposition to adiction (as does the trauma she's suffered), so you are probably onto something.

 

Second, though, historically speaking everyone drank alcohol. Even child beggers (when they could afford it). It was a matter of sanitation: poor sanitary conditions meant water was rarely safe, whereas alcohol has the nice side effect of being a disinfectent. Drinking by herself might just be cultural. Although, given that it seems that a lot of drinking water is highstorm water, this might be far less of an issue.

[RShara]

Do we know how intoxicating red is?  Violet is the most, and orange(?) is barely more than water, but I don't remember red.

[Seloun]

Second, though, historically speaking everyone drank alcohol. Even child beggers (when they could afford it). It was a matter of sanitation: poor sanitary conditions meant water was rarely safe, whereas alcohol has the nice side effect of being a disinfectent. Drinking by herself might just be cultural. Although, given that it seems that a lot of drinking water is highstorm water, this might be far less of an issue.

 

Or boiled the water in e.g. teas, yes. Based on what we've seen, though, rainwater appears to be safe as long as the crem is allowed to settle out of it.

 

That said, culture is certainly part of it:

 

 

Tavinar and his wife hesitantly raised their cups. Shallan had only just begun to study propriety— it was hard to do, as her tutors kept leaving— but she knew that a good Vorin brightlord was not supposed to celebrate drunkenness . Not that they wouldn’t get drunk, but it was the Vorin way not to talk about it. Such niceties were not her father’s strong point.

 

So people getting drunk isn't really a surprise (just a point of embarrassment if overdone). However, in the first excerpt above, Shallan notes Jasnah would have disapproved, and drinks anyway. This is different from the other cases where Shallan notes that Jasnah would have disapproved, e.g.:

 

 

“Before you get sore,” Adolin said. “We’ll give it an hour.”

 

As annoyed as she was at this turn, she couldn’t deny his expertise. Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.

 

In the second excerpt, Shallan specifically mentions that she likes the warmth that it built inside her, leading me to believe it's not just a matter of culture/availability.

 

 

Do we know how intoxicating red is?  Violet is the most, and orange(?) is barely more than water, but I don't remember red.

 

As far as I know, there's no specific comparison of how intoxicating red is compared to any of the other colors. We know that violet > yellow > orange, and blue > orange, which would suggest maybe a descending rainbow order, i.e. violet > blue > green > yellow > orange, which would in turn seem to imply red is not very intoxicating; however, Shallan specifically notes that Jasnah wouldn't have approved (and why), which seems to imply that red is fairly intoxicating.

[Glaring at the Survivor]

Red is probably between the two (orange and violet) since it is a color between those two on the color wheel (orange is red and yellow, violet AKA purple is red and blue). They both contain some of the color red itself, so I assume red is in between...

@The person that ninja'd me: I thought yellow was less intoxicating than orange?

Edited March 27, 2014 by Stroniax

[Seloun]

@The person that ninja'd me: I thought yellow was less intoxicating than orange?

 

Probably not. We know orange is basically non-intoxicating (or very slightly) while (em mine):

 

 

The servants poured her wine. Yellow, mildly intoxicating. Father drank violet, prepared in its strength. He settled himself down at the high table, which ran the width of the room— the same room where Helaran had threatened to kill him a year and a half ago . They’d received a brief letter from Helaran six months back, along with a book by the famous Jasnah Kholin for Shallan to read.

 

and

 

 

“I have a serious loathing of being wrong.” Adolin reclined in his chair, one hand resting leisurely on the crystal-topped table, the other swirling wine in his cup. Yellow wine. He wasn’t on duty today, so he could indulge just a tad.

[kaellok]

We know that she is also really good at lying, to others and to herself--and those are the same kinds of people that, in my experience, are also the most prone to addictive personalities.  

[Swimmingly]

Still, Shallan having drunk life chats with a confused and worried Pattern sounds hilarious. Of course, it's possible that Stormlight burns off alcohol.

[AyeJay]

We never see her drink to the point of drunkenness, let alone to excess, so I don't think this will be a problem. 

[Fifth of Daybreak]

Personally, I don't think it's possible for her to have a drinking problem. I suspect she could only get drunk if she wasn't holding stormlight. Pewter had a similar effect on Spook during HoA. Also, Stormlight would heal any liver problems she might have. It definitely would cure any withdrawls symptoms, though I'm not sure if Stormlight could "heal" addictions, since it doesn't seem to have much sway over mental problems. Then again, if Shallan views herself as an alcoholic, that might nullify the healing effect, as with Kaladin and his scars. 

[FingerstyleFunk]

Yeah, considering the strong functional similarities to Allomantic pewter (resisting intoxication, probably healing-related) and Feruchemical gold (eliminating toxin/poison damage, and even headaches and the like), it seems like stormlight would enable largely consequence-free alcoholism. Given all the mentions of her drinking, I wonder if Brandon will play with that idea at all.

 

Quick, everyone get me all your spheres. I'm gonna have some glowing to do on Saturday morning.

[Thought]

Or boiled the water in e.g. teas, yes. Based on what we've seen, though, rainwater appears to be safe as long as the crem is allowed to settle out of it.

 

Actually, it takes about 15 minutes at a boil to purify water, so teas aren't so much for sanitation as they were for caffeine (indeed, many myths claim that tea leaves originated from monks cutting off their eyelids so as to stay awake during meditations). Silver is a better method, but a tad expensive.

That aside, stormlight very likely does prevent intoxication. Although, if Shallan doesn't realize this, she might grow accustomed to drinking in great quantities, and then if she ever loses her power but keeps drinking in the same manner...

[Swimmingly]

Oh, Lopen is gonna have so much fun beating EVERYONE at drinking contests now.

[Chrono]

Shallan could be genetically predispositioned towards  towards alcoholism, but I doubt it. I don't see Shallan as the hard drinking party girl, and she never drinks enough of it to get truly drunk. It's mainly just for the flavor or for the warmth. Alcohol does make you feel warmer, after all. 

 

Of course, she could have to get drunk in order to keep her cover as Veil. I'd laugh so hard if she was in an espionage situation, all cool like, and then she passes out drunk. Cue Adolin finding Shallan in a longcoat and cowboy hat mumbling about fabrials and the mass of Roshar's moons.

[Seloun]

Stormlight making you immune to intoxication is an interesting point; I don't think we've seen anything conclusive in either direction, but it's probably a reasonable assumption based on what we know about the healing capabilities of Stormlight.

 

However, I will maintain that this still seems like a point of interest. The main bit in my opinion is that Shallan spends basically all of WoR asking herself WWJ(asnah)D to solve her problems; the only time she does something different is in the first excerpt with the wine. It's also worth noting that alcoholism or addictive behavior might be problematic even if it doesn't necessarily lead to intoxication; in particular, it might be a prelude to being addicted to other things (I will point out that Kaladin describes his reliance on Stormlight in terms that resemble something addictive).

[name_here]

In pre-industrial cultures, everyone drank alcohol; while it's not generally concentrated enough to properly disinfect the drink, making it generally involves high heat. We've never seen her actually get drunk, so I wouldn't say it's a sign of any underlying problem and is entirely normal for the culture. Jasnah might exclusively drink stormwater or teas, but Shallan doesn't imitate her atheism either.

[kari-no-sugata]

I remember Brandon saying that he doesn't have a "study" in the normal writer's sense and tends to write on his laptop wherever he feels comfortable (or something like that), so I can sort of imagine Shallan's very casual studying attitude coming from that. However, I'd very much doubt that he writes and drinks (unlike some authors)!

 

Thinking about it, I guess it is possible for Shallan to develop a "drinking problem" (even if we ignore her family): she's been relying on lying to herself, distracting herself etc as a way to avoid pain. If she's forced to confront some of her deeper problems, particularly with her family, then it might bring her a lot of mental pain and she may (unconsciously) turn to drink to help her cope.

 

In the meantime, there's a perfectly innocent explanation for drinking moderate amounts of weak alcohol:

http://www.beekmanwine.com/prevtopx.htm

 

Basically because it was often safer than drinking water...

[Seloun]

I agree that wine drinking is readily explainable through cultural and sanitation reasons. The main point is that how Shallan is approaching her drinking appears to be different from how the other protagonists treat it. It's also the one area where Shallan specifically disregards Jasnah's advice. Note that Jasnah's atheism isn't really a counterpoint; Jasnah specifically avoids being confrontational about Shallan's beliefs and at least indirectly supports her convictions, as evidenced by the Book of Endless Pages.

 

Dalinar certainly has a big issue with overimbibing, and despite being tempted to do otherwise, Adolin also follows his father's lead regarding alcohol. Kaladin doesn't seem to ever drink (minor exception during the bar scene) though that's also potentially explained by having fewer opportunities to indulge.

 

Every other time Shallan thinks back and considers what Jasnah would do or say, she heeds the advice:

 

 

But if she left them, she’d probably die out here, alone. Stormfather! What could she do? She felt like sitting down and sobbing. After everything that had happened, now this?

Control is the basis of all power.

 

How would Jasnah respond to this situation?

 

The answer was simple. She would be Jasnah.

 

“I will allow you to assist me,” Shallan said. She somehow kept her voice even, despite the anxious terror she felt inside.
 

 

 

Unfortunately, something needed to be done about Tvlakv. She couldn’t have him regarding her as something to be sold back to those missing her— that was discomfortingly close to viewing her as a slave. If she let him continue in such a mindset, she’d spend the entire trip worrying about him and his thugs.

 

So what would Jasnah do, in this situation?

 

Gritting her teeth, Shallan slipped down off the wagon, stepping gingerly on her wounded feet . She could walk, barely. She waited for the painspren to retreat, then— covering up her agony —she approached the meager fire and sat down. “Tag, you are excused.”

 

 

She looked at him, his ridges casting shadows in the light of her spheres. She’d renewed those in the highstorm last night, while she was cooped up in her box of a wagon. Pattern had started buzzing in the middle of the storm— a strange, angry sound. After that, he’d ranted in a language she didn’t understand, panicking Gaz and the other soldiers she’d invited into the shelter. Luckily, they took it for granted that terrible things happened during highstorms, and none had spoken of it since.

 

Fool, she told herself , flipping to an empty page in the notes. Start acting like a scholar. Jasnah would be disappointed. She wrote down what Pattern had said just now.

 

Plus the quote in the original post about getting sore while riding, and probably many indirect examples (e.g. when she draw Jasnah into her self-portrait before the initial Shattered Plains meeting).

 

I'm not saying that Shallan tries to act just like Jasnah (she clearly does not) but when she specifically asks herself about what Jasnah would have done (or if she would have disapproved) she follows that advice. Except for the drinking. There's a pattern, and the drinking scene doesn't fit.

[Swimmingly]

By the way, a T-shirt with Jasnah's face in a religious and "What Would Jasnah Do?" needs to be a thing. Along with "I Am Offend!" and "I Am A Stick!".

[Aminar]

I believe Wines follow the rainbow(RoyGBiv. Red would be the least intoxicating, and moving up. Mainly because I swear Indigo wine was mentioned once.)

As for Shallan's predisposition, moat likely. Humanity seems to predisposed to alchohal abuse(real world and fictional). She's got a huge history of trauma which adds to the likelihood. But we haven't seen her getting frequently drunk. Just, drinking frequently. So long as we get better drinking scenes than Inheritence we should be fine.

[11thorderknight]

I interpreted "Jasnah would not have approved" as meaning that Shallan is finally starting to realize that she doesn't have to become a clone of Jasnah in order to learn from her. Jasnah was all about scholarship, study, reason - she was (is) a philosopher at heart. Shallan is not - she's an artist. She needs a grounding in scholarship in order to have a base from which to build her art, but her tools, her methods, for creating new knowledge are going to be different from Jasnah's. 

 

Anyway, that was my take on it.

[Seloun]

I interpreted "Jasnah would not have approved" as meaning that Shallan is finally starting to realize that she doesn't have to become a clone of Jasnah in order to learn from her. Jasnah was all about scholarship, study, reason - she was (is) a philosopher at heart. Shallan is not - she's an artist. She needs a grounding in scholarship in order to have a base from which to build her art, but her tools, her methods, for creating new knowledge are going to be different from Jasnah's. 

 

 

The thing is, Shallan still continues to WWJD past that scene. Besides the 'sore horse' scene above, there's:

 

 

“A great many things make more sense now. I will tell Navani about you, but nobody else, and I will swear her to secrecy. She can keep a secret, if she has to.”

 

She opened her mouth to say yes, but stopped herself. Was that what Jasnah would have said?

 

And Shallan is absolutely a scholar. Her specialization is not necessarily history, like Jasnah, but there's no question whatsoever that Shallan sees herself the same way. This is pretty clear in virtually all of her scenes; one place where it's explicitly referenced is:

 

 

A test of some sort. “Well,” Shallan said, “most indigenous populations— the Silnasen natives, the Reshi peoples, the runners of the Iri plains— have no real concept of assassination. From what I know, they don’t seem to have much use for battle at all. Hunters are too valuable , and so a ‘war’ in these cultures will involve a lot of shouting and posturing, but few deaths. That kind of boastful society doesn’t seem the type to have assassins.”

 

And yet the Parshendi had sent one. Against the Alethi.

 

Mraize was studying her— watching her with unreadable eyes, long blowgun held lightly in his fingertips. “I see,” he finally said, “Tyn chose a scholar to be her apprentice this time around? I find that unusual.”

 

Shallan blushed. It occurred to her that this person she became when she put on the hat and dark hair was not an imitation of someone else, not a different person. It was just a version of Shallan herself.

 

In TWoK she often talks about her artistic ability in the context of furthering scholarship:

 

 

The world was a wondrous place. She hungered to learn more, wished to observe each and every one of its creatures, to have sketches of them in her books. To organize Roshar by capturing it in images. The books she read, though wonderful, all felt incomplete. Each author would be good with words or with drawings, but rarely both. And if the author was good with both, then her grasp of science would be poor.

 

There were so many holes in their understanding. Holes that Shallan could fill.

 

It's probably inaccurate to say that Shallan is primarily an artist; art is her talent, but it's not the core of what she is, any more than fighting is the core of what Kaladin is, despite his skill at it.

 

Even besides that point, it's unclear why her viewing herself as an artist rather than a scholar would lead her to specifically disregard Jasnah's disapproval regarding intoxication.

 

Shallan's Jasnahgnosticism holds for everything besides this one thing. It stands out. I concede it may ultimately mean nothing, but it's a break in a otherwise consistent pattern.

[Eejit]

Thinking "what would Jasnah do in response to these events/circumstances" is not the same as seeking her approval at every turn. One can emulate a person's actions without copying all of their personal attitudes.