WoK Question - Dalinar’s Trust in his Visions

[aswil]

Hello,

First time poster - please forgive me for any formatting faux pas 

 

I’m doing my first WoK re-read in preparation for Wind and Truth and am confused on some of Dalinar’s logic.

 

From Oathbringer we know Dalinar’s boon and curse from Cultivation, and we also know that he wasn’t 100% clear what either of them were.

 

In WoK chapter 61, Navani and Dalinar are discussing the true nature of his Dalinar’s visions. Navani questions Dalinar’s history with the Old Magic and Dalinar says

Quote

I know exactly what my curse was, and it does not relate to this.

Notably he is open to thinking that the visions could be good or bad, and that they may not necessarily be from the Almighty.

 

So then, since he doesn’t remember seeing the Nightwatcher/Cultivation, wouldn’t he assume they ARE tied to his boon/curse?

Or could the answer simply be he never assumed the visions could be the boon?

Or else perhaps he didn’t know details but knew the boon and curse were both only tied to remembering/forgetting. 
 

Very keen to hear people’s thoughts/what I might have missed!

Edited June 3 by aswil

[Lighteyed Lieutenant he/him]

I believe that Dalinar's "Knowing what my curse was" is refering to his lost knowledge of Evi, and how he can't remember her. 

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, aswil said:

Hello,

First time poster - please forgive me for any formatting faux pas 

I’m doing my first WoK re-read in preparation for Wind and Truth and am confused on some of Dalinar’s logic.

From Oathbringer we know Dalinar’s boon and curse from Cultivation, and we also know that he wasn’t 100% clear what either of them were.

In WoK chapter 61, Navani and Dalinar are discussing the true nature of his Dalinar’s visions. Navani questions Dalinar’s history with the Old Magic and Dalinar says

Spoiler

I know exactly what my curse was, and it does not relate to this.

Notably he is open to thinking that the visions could be good or bad, and that they may not necessarily be from the Almighty.

So then, since he doesn’t remember seeing the Nightwatcher/Cultivation, wouldn’t he assume they ARE tied to his boon/curse?

Or could the answer simply be he never assumed the visions could be the boon?

Or else perhaps he didn’t know details but knew the boon and curse were both only tied to remembering/forgetting. 
 

Very keen to hear people’s thoughts/what I might have missed!

There are two answers to this, one in-world and one author-based. 

1 hour ago, Lighteyed Lieutenant said:

I believe that Dalinar's "Knowing what my curse was" is refering to his lost knowledge of Evi, and how he can't remember her. 

^This is the in-world. When he says "unrelated" he means unrelated to the Curse.

He knows the visions cannot be his Curse (because he knows his curse is forgetting his wife and being unable to hear her name).

That means the visions can only be his Boon (and therefore trustworthy) or unrelated entirely (and therefore suspect, but possibly good). 

As for the author-reason. WoB:

Spoiler

 

Quote

 

cinderwild2323

What is the biggest change you've made based on alpha/beta reader feedback? (This goes for any of your books)

Brandon Sanderson

Probably adding Adolin as a main viewpoint character in the first book, which was done because I had trouble striking the balance between Dalinar worrying he was mad, and being a proactive, confident character. Worried better to externalize some of the, "Am I mad" into his son worrying "My dad has gone crazy" while letting Dalinar be more confident that his visions were something important. (I still let him worry a little, of course, but in the original draft, he felt temperamental from vacillation between these two extremes.)

Bringing Adolin to the forefront in the books has had a huge ripple effect through them, as I've been very fond of how his character has been playing out.

Enasor

May I ask why you choose to use Adolin as the viewpoint character to supplement Dalinar as opposed to Renarin? My understanding is Renarin has always been the "most important brother" within SA, which made me wonder why, based on the beta readers comments, you ultimately decided to use Adolin and not your established character to bring forward the dilemma.

I am, obviously, extremely fond of how Adolin has been played out so far and while I have no idea where he is going (but zillions of theories), I am curious to know what his initial purpose in the story was. Did you draft the character's personality just for WoK's needs or did you have an idea of what to do with him when you made the change?

Brandon Sanderson

I was well aware that I needed certain things about Renarin to remain off-screen until later books, and him being a viewpoint character early would undermine these later books.

Adolin is a happy surprise and works exactly because he doesn't need to be at the forefront, even after I boosted his role. With Adolin, what you see is really what you get, which is refreshing in the books--but it also means I don't need huge numbers of pages to characterize him, delve into his backstory, etc. He works as a side character who gives more to the story than he demands pages to fullfill that giving, if that makes sense. Renarin is more like a pandora's box. Open him up, and we're committed to a LOT of pages. (Good pages, but that was the problem with TWOK Prime--everyone was demanding so many pages, from Renarn, to Jasnah, to Kaladin, to Taln, that none of their stories could progress.)

Adolin has basically always had the same personality, from TWOK Prime, through the original draft of the published TWOK, to the revision. The changes to making him more strong a viewpoint character were very natural, and he has remained basically the same person all along--just with an increased role in the story, and more development because of it.

I do discovery write character, usually, as a method of keeping the books from becoming slaves to their outlines. This means that Adolin has gone some new directions, but it's been a growth from the person he was in TWOK Prime. (Which you'll be able to see when I release it, sometime in the hopefully not distant future.)

General Reddit 2016 (Aug. 25, 2016)

 

Quote

Questioner

I wondered if there's a bit of you in all the characters... and it's characters where they don't have bits of you that you get stuck with writing them, and how you overcome that?

Brandon Sanderson

<edited for length and relevance>

Dalinar, in the original draft of The Way of Kings. When a character is not clicking 100% it is the biggest problem I run into with books, that takes a lot of drafting to figure out what to do. With Dalinar, if you're not familiar with what happened there, is I split him into two people. It always had his son Adolin, but Adolin had not been a viewpoint character, and the problem I was having with Dalinar was that I wanted to present a strong figure for the leader because people though he was going mad, but I also had to have him talk about this madness, and be really worried about it, and so he came on very weak, because everyone thought he was going mad, and he spent all of his time brooding about going mad. When I took the brooding out to his son, and had Dalinar be like "I'm not mad, something's going on, everyone thinks that I'm crazy, but I can deal with this", and had his son go "my dad, who I love, is going crazy", those two characters actually both became more alive, and worked better, than they had with the conflict of "I'm going crazy" being Dalinar's. So, it takes a lot of work to figure these things out sometimes.

Shadows of Self Newcastle UK signing (Oct. 20, 2015)

So, for Dalinar to be the character he needed to be, the Strong Leader that Beleived in himself - these worries had to be external. There is even a quote in WoKs explaining this very concept directly reflecting the change from WoK Prime:

WoK Ch 22:

Spoiler

“Did you really do it?” Adolin asked. “Is that what you talked about at the meeting with the king two days back?”

“It is,” Dalinar admitted.

That elicited a groan from Adolin. “I was worried already. When I—”

“Adolin,” Dalinar interjected. “Do you trust me?”

Adolin looked at him, the youth’s eyes wide, honest, but pained. “I want to. Storms, Father. I really want to.”

“What I am doing is important. It must be done.”

Adolin leaned in, speaking softly. “And what if they are delusions? What if you’re just…getting old.”

It was the first time someone had confronted him with it so directly. “I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I’d considered it, but there was no sense in second-guessing myself. I believe they’re real. I feel they’re real.”

“But—”

“This is not the place for this discussion, son,” Dalinar said. “We can talk of it later, and I will listen to—and consider—your objections. I promise.”

Adolin drew his lips to a line. “Very well.”

“You are right to be worried for our reputation,” Dalinar said, resting an elbow on the table.

He specifically offloads worrying about the visions to his son, because part of Honor's visions is the feel that they are an important message.