[OB] The Girl Who Looked Up

[shawnhargreaves he/him]

Shallan told a fascinating story, which seems big picture significant and slightly less obscure than the tales we heard in earlier Stormlight books (eg. the Kaladin/Hoid collaboration about Fleet).

There are obvious parallels to the Prometheus legends that occur in so many Earth cultures (climbing up and stealing fire from the gods) but with a massive twist:

Quote

The girl stared at those steps,” Shallan whispered, remembering, “and suddenly the gruesome statues on her side of the wall made sense. The spears. The way it cast everything into shadow. The wall did indeed hide something evil, something frightening. It was the people, like the girl and her village.

Is this a legend about the first humans arriving on Roshar?  Perhaps in Shinovar, where mountains (= wall) initially blocked them from the highstorms?

Or is it a story about the first time humans bonded with spren?

Or was it originally a listener story?

Either way, the "OMG we are the evil ones" realization strikes me as an important bit of foreshadowing.   Particularly coming in such close proximity to the Dalinar chapter where we got the clearest description so far of just how scary the Thrill is, and how completely a human can be controlled by it.

Wild theory: is this is telling us that the voidbringers are corrupted humans, not listeners at all?

[Steeldancer he/him]

I'm partial to it being Elantris. 

[Knabepicer]

It doesn’t seem to make much sense for it to be Elantris when that period of time in its history lasted less than 20 years.

[Leyrann]

4 minutes ago, Knabepicer said:

It doesn’t seem to make much sense for it to be Elantris when that period of time in its history lasted less than 20 years.

A very remarkable 20 11 years though.

But no, I doubt it is Elantris; it seems like it is important to this story, and I agree that it is most likely either about humans arriving on Roshar and originally in Shinovar or about humans being the real problem. Or both.

[The Sovereign]

The revelation at the end that the girl (and her people) were the enemy/badguys/darkness/etc. made me think of the Wundersail story from WOK which ended up being an allegory for Szeth's killings as a Truthless. I suspect I am missing a part here but I get the impression that this is an allegory for the secret that broke the Radiants and eventually the Radiants will discover that the Humans are the problem, not the Listeners.

Edited October 24, 2017 by The Sovereign

[Daishi5]

The wall story seems important, but many parts of it do seem to be modeled after the walls of Elantris.  A giant wall with stairs on the side to keep the "bad people in."  The "bad" people have white hair.  

However, the rest of it is different and I think those differences and the similarities are important.  

The similarities hint that the people who told the story knew about Elantris. 

The differences are harder to figure out what they mean.  In Elantris, the people inside the city knew they were being kept in.  Why do the people in Shallan's story not realize the wall keeps them in?  I like this idea that the story foretells that the humans are the bad guys.  I have felt that the Parshendi acted far to nobly in the Way of Kings for them to be the "bad guys."  (The twist that they are bad guys against their will does throw a wrench in it.)

What does the stealing of stormlight mean?  Did they steal actual investure or the ability to use it?

 

 

[KidWayne he/him]

I'm confused by the contradiction in the story...

At the beginning, we are told...

Quote

“There was a girl,” Shallan said. “This was before storms, before memories, and before legends—but there was still a girl. She wore a long scarf to blow in the wind.”

“The girl in the scarf played and danced, as girls do today,” Shallan said, making the child prance around Pattern. “In fact, most things were the same then as they are today. Except for one big difference. The wall."

A high, terrible wall stretching toward the moons. Blocking the sky, throwing everything around the girl into shadow.

“You see, in those days, a wall kept out the storms,” Shallan said. “It had existed for so long, nobody knew how it had been built. That did not bother them. Why wonder when the mountains began or why the sky was high? Like these things were, so the wall was.”

OK, so there was a wall before storms, but the wall kept out the storms. That's easy enough to reconcile though, the wall kept out the storms so it was considered to be a time before storms. Moving on...

Quote

She approached a man standing behind a small cart of fruit, wearing Kaladin Stormblessed’s face.

“Why is there a wall?” she asked the man selling fruit, speaking with her own voice.

“To keep the bad things out,” he replied.

“What bad things?”

“Very bad things. There is a wall. Do not go beyond it, or you shall die.”

The fruit seller picked up his cart and moved away. And still, the girl looked up at the wall.

So bad things are being kept out by the wall. The little girl will question two others (a woman suckling her child and a boy napping in a tree) who give her similar responses to why there is a wall. Curiously the boy is unaware the wall even exists at first. The story continues...

Quote

“Well,” Shallan continued, speaking from the audience, “these answers did not satisfy the girl who looked up. She reasoned to herself, if the wall kept evil things out, then the space on this side of it should be safe.

“So, one night while the others of the village slept, she sneaked from her home with a bundle of supplies. She walked toward the wall, and indeed the land was safe. But it was also dark. Always in the shadow of that wall. No sunlight, ever, directly reached the people.”

“The girl traveled far,” Shallan said, looking back toward the stage. “No predators hunted her, and no storms assaulted her. The only wind was the pleasant one that played with her scarf, and the only creatures she saw were the cremlings that clicked at her as she walked.

“At long last, the girl in the scarves stood before the wall. It was truly expansive, running as far as she could see in either direction. And its height! It reached almost to the Tranquiline Halls!”

Shallan stood and walked onto the stage, passing into a different land— an image of fertility, vines, trees, and grass, dominated by that terrible wall. It grew spikes from its front in bristling patches.

OK, so on the side of the wall where the girl lives, it is dark and no sunlight ever directly reached the people. However, at the base of the wall (on her side) it is a land of fertility that is dominated by the wall which has patches of spikes on it. And so...

Quote

“She climbed. There were outcroppings in the wall, things like these spikes or hunched, ugly statues. She had climbed the highest trees all through her youth. She could do this. The climb took days. At night, the girl who looked up would tie herself a hammock out of her scarf and sleep there. She picked out her village at one point, remarking on how small it seemed, now that she was high. As she neared the top, she finally began to fear what she would find on the other side. Unfortunately, this fear did not stop her. She was young, and questions bothered her more than fear. So it was that she finally struggled to the very top and stood to see the other side. The hidden side…”

Next to Shallan, the girl stood triumphantly on the wall’s top, her scarves and white hair streaming out behind her in a sudden wind.

“… and on that side of the wall,” Shallan whispered, “the girl saw steps.”

The back side of the wall was crisscrossed with enormous sets of steps leading down to the ground, so distant.

“The girl stared at those steps,” Shallan whispered, remembering, “and suddenly the gruesome statues on her side of the wall made sense. The spears. The way it cast everything into shadow. The wall did indeed hide something evil, something frightening. It was the people, like the girl and her village.”

OK, so the girl gets to the top and discovers flights of crisscrossing steps. She has an epiphany that people like herself were the evil that was being contained by the wall. The story concludes...

Quote

“That’s how it ended?” Pattern asked.

“No,” Shallan said, Stormlight puffing from her lips. “She goes down, sees a perfect society lit by Stormlight. She steals some and brings it back. The storms come as a punishment, tearing down the wall.”

“Ah…” Pattern said, hovering beside her on the now-dull stage. “So that’s how the storms first began?”

“Of course not,” Shallan said, feeling tired. “It’s a lie, Pattern. A story. It doesn’t mean anything.”

From the top of the wall, the girl takes the stairs down to the other side. There she finds a "perfect society" lit by Stormlight. She steals some and brings it back to her village. As a result the storms come and the wall is destroyed.

Now this is weird. Did the wall keep the storms away from the "evil" side of the wall or just sunlight? If there were no storms, where did the stormlight come from? The only way to get stormlight (i.e. investiture) without the storm would be to get it from a shard. So, if this is the story of how humans arrived on Roshar, settled in Shinovar, and discovered the other species, then how do you explain the destruction of the wall and the appearance of the storms? Is this just a mythologized reality for the humans who left Shinovar to settle in the other lands?

My main objection to this interpretation is that the storms are seen as a punishment. That implies that the girl in the story is playing the role of Prometheus in visiting Olympus/Roshar and stealing fire/stormlight. So, the "perfect" society in the story doesn't fit well with being the non-Shin lands of Roshar as those places aren't divine and its inhabitants (Listeners & Aimians) don't have the power to send storms as a punishment; that sounds like something a Shard would have to do.

Now, I suspect that the land where the Sun doesn't shine is actually Shadesmar. I think this formed the basis for the legends of the Tranquiline Halls (a mythologized memory of "home" and humanity's travels through Shadesmar to Roshar). The steps are an allegorical representation of a shardpool/perpendicularity. The humans saw the native Rosharan populations and their use of stormlight. The stormfather is a congnitive entity (presumably created by - or a sliver of - Adonalsium) that was once separate from Tanavast's cognitive shadow (they are now fused) and he is the one who "punished" the humans with the storms.

What do you think?

(Sorry for the long post)

[KidWayne he/him]

Apologies for the double-post, but this is a completely different thought...

Several have pointed out the Prometheus similarities, what about the Biblical / Adam & Eve analogies?

Compare ...

• "There is a wall. Do not go beyond it, or you shall die."

to Genesis 2:16-17...

• And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

First, the girl is the one who goes beyond the wall which mirrors Eve being the first to eat the forbidden fruit.

Then she went beyond the wall, the storms came, the wall went away, and now humans must contend with both good and evil. Innocence is lost and Roshar is cursed by the consequences of sin (which includes both unrestrained evil and the storms).

[Michael Portz he/him]

@KidWayne Why did you cite the whole story, we all literally read a few minutes ago? And I don't see the Shadesmar connection.

36 minutes ago, Daishi5 said:

The wall story seems important, but many parts of it do seem to be modeled after the walls of Elantris.  A giant wall with stairs on the side to keep the "bad people in."  The "bad" people have white hair.  

However, the rest of it is different and I think those differences and the similarities are important.  

The similarities hint that the people who told the story knew about Elantris. 

The differences are harder to figure out what they mean.  In Elantris, the people inside the city knew they were being kept in.  Why do the people in Shallan's story not realize the wall keeps them in? 

What about at least parts of he more-human-population of Roshar were refugees or settlers from Elantris, and in the first few hundreds years people still remembered some aspects of Sel and its history in form of legends, like this story.

[KidWayne he/him]

@Michael Portz I did that to show the inconsistency about the storms at the beginning of the story when compared to the end. I figured that it couldn't hurt to have the source material in a thread devoted to it, especially when that source material can be presented in 735 words. It's also why I put the source material in quotes that can be collapsed.

I'm a details guy. I never could summarize anything to save my life...

 

 

 

[Leyrann]

13 minutes ago, Michael Portz said:

@KidWayne Why did you cite the whole story, we all literally read a few minutes ago? And I don't see the Shadesmar connection.

What about at least parts of he more-human-population of Roshar were refugees or settlers from Elantris, and in the first few hundreds years people still remembered some aspects of Sel and its history in form of legends, like this story.

Sel is often explicitly mentioned as hard to get away from.

And we've seen Galladon in an interlude in WoK, so the timing probably doesn't match either, except if Elantrians can live for thousands for years.

[Daishi5]

Just now, KidWayne said:

@Michael Portz I did that to show the inconsistency about the storms at the beginning of the story when compared to the end. I figured that it couldn't hurt to have the source material in a thread devoted to it, especially when that source material can be presented in 735 words. It's also why I put the source material in quotes that can be collapsed.

I'm a details guy. I never could summarize anything to save my life...

 

 

 

I think the "time before the storms" must have been in a place that either has no storms (another planet), or a place that is completely safe from storms, (shinovar.)  I think it is more likely another planet.  

[Michael Portz he/him]

15 minutes ago, Leyrann said:

Sel is often explicitly mentioned as hard to get away from.

And we've seen Galladon in an interlude in WoK, so the timing probably doesn't match either, except if Elantrians can live for thousands for years.

I more thought of that Odium brought a huge number of humans from Sel to Roshar after splintering Devotion and Dominium to destabilize Honor and Cultivation. The people would of course bring their own old stories and memories with them.

[Michael Portz he/him]

19 minutes ago, KidWayne said:

@Michael Portz I did that to show the inconsistency about the storms at the beginning of the story when compared to the end. I figured that it couldn't hurt to have the source material in a thread devoted to it, especially when that source material can be presented in 735 words. It's also why I put the source material in quotes that can be collapsed.

I'm a details guy. I never could summarize anything to save my life..

Sorry for bickering, but posts based on huge quotations directly interact with my impatience :-)

[Leyrann]

Just now, Michael Portz said:

I more thought of that Odium brought a huge number of humans from Sel to Roshar after splintering Devotion and Dominium to destabilize Honor and Cultivation. The people would of course bring their own old stories and memories with them.

How would that destabilize Honor and Cultivation? They knew about humans - they were humans themselves, before the Shattering. Also, I kind of assumed that Honor and Cultivation created humans on Roshar, or at the very least gave them sentience.

[Michael Portz he/him]

1 minute ago, Leyrann said:

How would that destabilize Honor and Cultivation? They knew about humans - they were humans themselves, before the Shattering. Also, I kind of assumed that Honor and Cultivation created humans on Roshar, or at the very least gave them sentience.

As we don't know when exactly Odium or the humans arrived I feel free to theorize, so I suggest considering the following: In the beginning there were Honor and Cultivation, the Spren and the Listeners. They all had a quite fruitful, quite peaceful and very stable relationship. Then Odium started targeting them. How could he proceed? Full frontal attack? Or could he perhaps attempt to insert a very foreign element into the Rosharian ecosystem, like e.g. Followers of Devotion and/or Dominion? How would they interact with the Listeners? With Honor? With Cultivation? The least one can predict is, that this would certainly put quite a strain on the system.

[Leyrann]

6 minutes ago, Michael Portz said:

As we don't know when exactly Odium or the humans arrived I feel free to theorize, so I suggest considering the following: In the beginning there were Honor and Cultivation, the Spren and the Listeners. They all had a quite fruitful, quite peaceful and very stable relationship. Then Odium started targeting them. How could he proceed? Full frontal attack? Or could he perhaps attempt to insert a very foreign element into the Rosharian ecosystem, like e.g. Followers of Devotion and/or Dominion? How would they interact with the Listeners? With Honor? With Cultivation? The least one can predict is, that this would certainly put quite a strain on the system.

Looks like the best I can bring is an unsourced quote from Coppermind: "Honor is commonly known on Roshar, as God, the Almighty, the creator of mankind." I feel like this is something we should know for certain, but I'm super tired so I don't feel like trying to spit through WoBs or something like that.

[Wreith he/him]

8 minutes ago, Michael Portz said:

As we don't know when exactly Odium or the humans arrived I feel free to theorize, so I suggest considering the following: In the beginning there were Honor and Cultivation, the Spren and the Listeners. They all had a quite fruitful, quite peaceful and very stable relationship. Then Odium started targeting them. How could he proceed? Full frontal attack? Or could he perhaps attempt to insert a very foreign element into the Rosharian ecosystem, like e.g. Followers of Devotion and/or Dominion? How would they interact with the Listeners? With Honor? With Cultivation? The least one can predict is, that this would certainly put quite a strain on the system.

There were humans on Roshar before the shattering of Adonalsium.

 

[shawnhargreaves he/him]

14 minutes ago, Michael Portz said:

I more thought of that Odium brought a huge number of humans from Sel to Roshar after splintering Devotion and Dominium to destabilize Honor and Cultivation. The people would of course bring their own old stories and memories with them.

This timeline doesn't work.  Odium splintered Devotion and Dominion before the events covered in Elantris, so was long gone by the time of the Elantrians being shut in behind that "wall".

I do support the idea of Odium being the one who brought humans to Roshar, but I don't think Shallan's story is an Elantris reference.

[Michael Portz he/him]

3 minutes ago, Leyrann said:

Looks like the best I can bring is an unsourced quote from Coppermind: "Honor is commonly known on Roshar, as God, the Almighty, the creator of mankind." I feel like this is something we should know for certain, but I'm super tired so I don't feel like trying to spit through WoBs or something like that.

That sounds like a quotation from the Vorin believe system, not out of a historical publication.

Sleep well ;-)

[StormingTexan he/him]

@KidWayne I read your first post in this thread and at the end of it instantly thought Adam and Eve then read your second post! The story itself did oddly feel familiar as I read it and I think it is Adam and Eve I was thinking of. This may be present day Shinovar but was a safe haven created by Honor and Cultivation for humans possible an appeasement to the Listeners who were afraid to share their planet with humans unless they were sequestered. The girl follows Eve's path seeking what is forbidden ending the innocence. It really does have a lot of similarities. 

[Michael Portz he/him]

4 minutes ago, Wreith said:

There were humans on Roshar before the shattering of Adonalsium.

 

Ok, thanks for the quote! I should have remembered that myself, but that for we are discussing :-)

What about when we don't put the accent on the race but on the shardic association, something I already attempted above: What DOES happen when a huge number of people (of whatever racial origin) from a different shards influence enters Roshar? Will Dominions people try to rule? Will Devotions people associate with Cultivation?? Will this go seamlessly?

[Calderis he/him]

I felt like the story was far more significant as a parallel to what Shallan is doing to herself with her suppressed memories. 

[Amanuensis he/him]

I'm not entirely on board with it being an Elantris reference, but since I haven't seen it brought up yet...

Quote

The girl started climbing. Had her hair been white when she’d started?

Shallan frowned.

Her hair being or becoming white is significant, I suspect. One possible explanation is that the story does, indeed, vaguely reference Elantrians (although clearly facts have been distorted by time), given the fact that Elantrians have "brilliant white hair."

I have a slightly different idea, however.

What if this play was written about Shallash, or possibly even a biography about her origins? Let me refer you to this image real quick:

Coincidence?

[Michael Portz he/him]

3 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

...

I have a slightly different idea, however.

What if this play was written about Shallash, or possibly even a biography about her origins? Let me refer you to this image real quick:

Coincidence?

Nice catch!

Of course we now have the task of fitting the heralds into Shallans story.

Edited October 24, 2017 by Michael Portz
removed artefact