You know how I said I had a hot take? Thanks to @basket-of-radiants incredible dealmaking skills (read: bribery), it's seeing the light of day after all.
There are a lot of moments in Stormlight that are generally beloved by the fandom for being willing to directly criticize some of the power imbalances on Roahar that don't work for me, and I'm going to attempt to explain why (under the cut because wow was this hard to condense into something readable)
The Stormlight Archive is first and foremost a story about personal growth. The driving thrust is characters' individual action to change themselves. Everything in these books exists to serve this end, from the oaths, to the shards, to the situations our characters end up in. Individual action, however, is poorly suited to resolving the systemic issues many of our characters face. How do you resolve systemic issues in a story focused on individual actions? You don't.
Okay maybe that's a little harsh. You elect individuals to stand in as representatives of these systems, and then move them to demonstrate the things you intend to say. I think you can see this fairly obviously with something like Jasnah, independently from any council or societal pressures, deciding to end slavery in RoW.
(This type of oversimplification runs the very real risk of implying that these issues are fixable by a "good" beneficiary of said power imbalance, or worse, that "bad" ones are the reason why these issues happen in the first place as opposed to the material benefits for the entire oppressor class. This however that is beyond the scope of this post and has been talked about throughly by people much more clearly than myself.)
The issue at hand:
The moments I'm alluding to up above are ones where characters get a direct verbal confrontation about the society wide issues that I'm so eager to discuss. Examples that come to mind are the Mink's shot at Dalinar over Alethkar's many crimes during the Alethi-Herdaz border wars, Rlain's comment about how the honorspren are collectively biased against singers, and even Kaladin's whole "Amaram owes you an apology" moment in the end of Words of Radiance.
"Hey what gives? That sounds like it's addressing the things you said you wanted!" I hear you cry.
The issue I have, dear reader, is that hand in hand with the story's commitment to exclusively focusing on the individual, these systems are reduced to tools to express very simple sentiments about where these characters are at in that journey, then promptly dropped.
To pick an example, Kaladin has a history of mistreatment and enslavement by lighteyes, and the story doesn't seem particularly interested in how a former slave would move through the world as presented. Kal expresses little to no empathy towards the many people still enslaved during his PoVs in Urithiru or the warcamps. We get a whole day in his head at the start of WaT and it never crosses his mind that slavery just got abolished! This is because as far as the meta narrative is concerned, this aspect is only visible in Kaladin's behavior at the personal growth level— to give him a very strong character relationship to Amaram, and to give him a "character flaw" to "overcome" in his anger.
Conversely, Amaram as the stand-in for the oppressive lighteyes isn't interacting with his class in a way that criticizes the issues with the system, but in a way that highlights his personal flaws in his lust for power and greed. Because of this, the embarrassment of the oppressor is the only kind of catharsis the story is able to offer. To the narrative Amaram losing his position of power by losing face is the same as righting the systemic wrong for the same reason Kal being elevated addresses the slavery concerns in the eyes of the narrative. They have overcome or been beaten down by their personal flaws.
The whole thing falls flat because it's not equipped to grapple with those topics outside of how they make our named characters relate to each other. Once the interpersonal conflict is resolved — the mink falls in with the radiants, Amaram eats a crystal and gets a tummyache — the story loses its vehicle to pick these things apart while the root issue remains untouched. And I'm left to go, hey he's right! Oh we're moving on and there are still thousands more Amarams out there :(
idk i just think that the two aspects of sanderson’s perspective on oppression that piss me off the most is the way that marginalized anger and violence are both viewed as both morally wrong and personally unhealthy, and that racism is something that is only the fault of those who are intentionally racist, and not those who are complicit in the system, both supporting and benefiting from it. it also behaves like the conversation on marginalization should center on the actions and attitude of the oppressed and not the oppressors like we really had a whole ass #not all lighteyes arc like all the poc readers really sat there like “wow kaladin’s bitterness and experiences resonate with me so much and validate my own hurt and anger :^)” only for sanderson to be like “and that was wrong and bad and kaladin needed to personally grow out of *checks notes* being oppressed” like they really pulled that on us.
ok lit crit hat is on and today i wanna talk about *spins wheel* model minorites and marginalized anger in words of radiance! if we look at kaladin’s actual treatment of adolin in wor, he’s grumpy and a little distant but he doesn’t actually antagonize adolin, while, for the first part of wor at least, adolin actively antagonizes him (calling him names, etc.) consider this specific conversation in ch 68 where adolin says “you’re good at military thinking, for a bridgeboy” and kaladin responds with “coincidentally, you’re good at not being unobnoxious, for a prince.” and once adolin’s out of earshot, shallan starts lecturing kaladin about his “”bad attitude”” because he insulted adolin. even though it was a response to adolin specifically making a joke involving kaladin’s trauma / class status. and then kaladin points out that adolin calls him bridgeboy, and shallan completely dismisses him. the entire conversation reads like a microagression and kaladin’s anger gets completely shut down. kaladin’s general bitterness is viewed as a bigger problem than the lighteyes’ casual racism. this is a pattern in wor: it fundamentally views marginalized anger as both (a) unjustified and (b) unhealthy, which i think is a major flaw in sanderson’s perspective
one thing i’m personally not super fond of about sanderson’s world building in stormlight is that the vorin system of gender roles is different from ours in a way that i feel is not as interesting as it could’ve been. although i DO enjoy seeing lots of women in STEM / academia, because it’s so strict and segregated and since womens’ role is strictly academic, he ends up being able to pull this annoying move of having the women technically break gender roles in the book, without really challenging the modern day gender role biases of his actual IRL audience. he’s able to pass off “feminine girl but she has a sword” as revolutionary, because that is revolutionary in alethkar, but to a modern day reader it’s very much 90s’ era “you can have a skirt AND fight” feminism, which isn’t really a new or helpful take on gender anymore. women have been fighting in fantasy for a while – but what we still don’t see is women who break gender roles in other ways. we don’t see masc women. we don’t see women living lifestyles that challenge our societal preconceptions of womens’ roles. so when sanderson aligns his gender roles in this specific way, he gets to make “feminine girl with sword” revolutionary from a watsonian perspective, while avoiding the reality that it’s not really a revolutionary take on gender from a doylist perspective.
I’m relistening to Stormlight Archive now and Kaladin’s arc in WoR and just the way Sanderson frames oppression as all about uwu not all lighteyes pisses me off so much. Lol I think my gf is tired of me pulling my headphones out and grousing about how terrible it all is.
Like!!! Kaladin puts up with so much racial abuse (from the other protagonists) and then is narratively forced to apologize to the people constantly mocking, belittling, and insulting him due to his marginalized status. Shallan’s first thought on seeming him in tunnels is that she wished he’d died in the fall and yet he’s the asshole for... being meticulous about his bodyguard duties? Because he doesn’t let an obvious liar who he has correctly identified as a fraud into a meeting with every single important lighteyes in the war camps? Being a little bit - barely - rude to Adolin? A little cold, a little rude, and yet he’s in the wrong. Wild.
It starts to become really obvious why Sanderson made 3/4 of the main viewpoint characters lighteyes, because he just doesn’t care about exploring the material consequences of the systems he created toward the oppressed. Just sucks.
So much “justified” racism too that’s impossible to ignore. From Mistborn, skaa actually are on average dumber than nobles, have more kids, can’t initially use magic, etc. But but but! Only because the Lord Ruler made them that way! Cept the Lord Ruler’s fake and Sanderson made ~another~ story with race-based eugenics having an in-universe, justified reason for existing (like lighteyes being in charge cause they look like radiants or carried shards).
It sucks cause I like a lot of what Sanderson writes, and I especially like how SA depicts Kaladin’s struggle with depression, but his blind spots (and that’s being generous) are so big they end up consuming the whole work.
yeah i especially agree with the whole shallan adolin & kaladin thing. like they are much ruder to him than he is to them but the narrative frames him as being unreasonable. she stole his boots and adolin still holds a petty grudge for half of wor because kaladin bossed him around at the battle of the tower!! and there’s one instance where he straight up resorts to racist taunts. especially "he just doesn’t care about exploring the material consequences of the systems he created toward the oppressed" and "his blind spots (and that’s being generous) are so big they end up consuming the whole work" like that's exactly the problem!!
like the funniest thing about sanderson’s “being angwy and bitter is bad for you and wrong 🥺” message in wor is that i was reading that the whole time like damn kaladin is being so restrained right now he’s letting so much shit fly he is biting his tongue so hard kaladin wouldn’t you like to go apeshit. like his response to being called bridgeboy in the workplace is just to be a bit snarky and cold in response he even covers for adolin when adolin pulls that trick with dreamstorm, he literally continues working for dalinar after dalinar shuts down his confession about what amaram did to him. the way he’s constantly checking himself and his reactions to blatant racism. it takes sooo much for him to be like “ok we should kill elhokar” like kaladin was reacting the same way i’d react during my elementary school years where i was too shy and let racism fly left and right me now if i was kaladin and had the associated physical capabilities oooh i would’ve thrown hands at the first “bridgeboy”
anyways the thing that pisses me off the most about wor is that the narrative is supposed to be not all lighteyes are racist, except that the point is made using a bunch of lighteyes...who are racist. objectively speaking, all the Good Lighteyes™ say & do racist things in the book. adolin makes fun of kaladin in a brazenly racist way in the first half (and says that it’s natural for lighteyes to rule over darkeyes). shallan repeatedly defends adolin’s use of “bridgeboy”, and steals kaladin’s boots because she wants to test out her new acting skills, dalinar’s a straight up slavery apologist, adolin says some really fucked up shit like “little darkeyed ladies, missing seven teeth and afraid of bathing”....like if you were trying to prove that not all lighteyes were racist maybe don’t prove it w/ racist lighteyes. at NO point do our lighteyed characters get called out on doing racist shit or actually have to recognize their own prejudice.
