WoT Meta: The Difference Between Trauma and Adversity
I think one thing that both Jordan and Sanderson don't get enough credit for, Jordan especially, is how viscerally they depict trauma.
There's a trend, especially in fantasy fiction, of trauma being portrayed as a strengthening experience: something that makes the characters that are traumatized inherently stronger or more worthy people, or else reveals some innate inner strength that allows them to power through the experience. It stems from a conflating of trauma with adversity, depicting them as the same thing. A character's abuse, mistreatment, violation, even rape, are all treated as just another obstacle to overcome to prove the hero's worthiness, or else confer worthiness by virtue of their survival. It's a writing convention that has been around forever, but the extreme popularity of Game of Thrones has caused it's use to skyrocket.
Both Jordan and Sanderson defy this line of thinking however, by demonstrating the difference between trauma and adversity, in ways both subtle and overt.
Both Rand and Egwene go through very traumatic experiences at different points: Rand the Box, and Egwene her enslavement by the Seanchan. These experiences don't make either character inherently better or more worthy. They don't even make them stronger. Rather they create problems for both that last more or less the rest of the series.
Rand suffers from extreme claustrophobia, causing him to panic when he feels physically confined (Far Madding, the Seafolk Cabin, even his own rooms when wounded to a limited extent), and he also develops an extreme aversion to ever placing himself in the power of others, in particular women who can channel, causing to frequently go to extreme, often violent lengths to avoid being vulnerable to women who can channel, even ones he in theory is supposed to trust or love. This I think, one of the reasons he stays away so much from Elayne and Avihenda until near the end of the series, but doesn't try nearly as hard to avoid Min, who can't channel.
Egwene meanwhile develops a tendency to lash out wildly when presented with the possibility of being imprisoned again, reacting to mild threats with irrational terror and anger, from the way she attacks the White Cloaks in TGH, to the way she fights back tooth and nail against the Black Ajah to the point where they beat her senseless. Her hatred of the Seanchan is another symptom, even when irrational or dangerous to her cause.
What interesting is that, Rand believes, or tries to convince himself, that his trauma is just adversity to be overcome, that it's a 'forging' experience, that he went through in order to make him strong enough to do his duty as the Dragon. He echoes many sentiments from Lan and the Borderlanders in this fashion, like any victim of abuse, trying to find rhyme and reason for why he was hurt, and in so doing preventing himself from healing or confronting his pain. This leaves him vulnerable and also stuck in the same cycle of being hurt, lashing out, and convincing himself that the problem was just that he has not yet made himself 'strong' enough that trauma will simply not hurt him any longer. It's no mistake that this vicious cycle culminated in Rand nearly destroying himself, and the world. One of the key parts of Rand's development in the last few books of the series is being able to differentiate between his trauma and adversity, to stop trying to just repress his feelings in an effort to 'power through' and instead accept the pain and suffering he's endured and try and work through it.
Similarly the scars of Egwene's captivity are felt all the way through to the end of the series: even in AMOL it's effects are still showing up, tanking her meeting with Tuon, briefly allowing Messana to take her captive, and causing her to act irrationally in regards to Leliwin. The difference is that Egwene is far better at dealing with with her trauma in part because she experiences true adversity and growth during her time with the Aiel, and learns to tell the difference between the two.
The Wise Ones are harsh with her, but not unfair, they have extremely high expectations but they are not cruel or malicious when she fails to meet those expectations: her punishments are never useless or for their own sake, their is always a lesson or a benefit to them, from having to braid her hair like a child when she is caught acting like a child, to having to run laps in order to both punish her lateness and strength her constitution, to even having to dig holes so that she'll understand the futility of meddling with Sevanna. But most importantly, Egwene from the beginning is made aware that she can, at any time, walk away. That's one of the points of her and Amys's confrontation in TSR: Egwene is with the Wise Ones by choice, and at any time she could leave if she truly wanted too. It is a challenge she must overcome, not something being inflicted on her without her consent. Her meeting of her toh for lying to the Wise One's at the end is the culmination of this arc. At that point she has nothing to gain from the Wise Ones, yet she chooses to be held responsible for her actions anyways, to be accountable and to make right what she had done wrong. That's the difference between the beatings inflicted on her by Renna, and the beating used to help her meet her toh. One she has a chooses as part of accepting responsibility, the other she has forced on her in order to compel her obedience.
This fine distinction is one of the really great thing about WoT, and what to me at least, puts it on a whole other level from Game of Thrones. It shows a better understanding of people and trauma, of what makes people grow and what leaves them scarred, without devolving into cynical 'everything is suffering' nihilism. It neither substitutes trauma for growth, nor presents trauma as a inescapable state in which you will be forever trapped. Instead it presents it as something you can heal from, but only with time, effort, help and being honest about your feelings.
It also dovetails nicely with the ideological conflict at the heart of the series, but more on that in a bit.
