Oathbringer: the colonizer's fever dream in novel form
Oathbringer is the 3rd novel in The Stormlight Archive, and is the centerpoint of the main conflict for the first half of the series. Where we are roped in in book one with the systemic conflict between lighteyes and darkeyes, that conflict has now expanded to include the parshmen, who are at the true center of this series' moral conflict.
Though some people may claim that Oathbringer, and by extension, The Stormlight Archive, does an adequate job discussing the nuances of the reality/effects of colonization, these claims are sorely misguided. In reality, Oathbringer reads like a colonizer's fever dream, where the colonized peoples really are savages who are hellbent on destroying the world. And that the honorable, civilized descendants of these colonizers, despite being """"flawed""""", are the true heroes in the end. Just when you think we'll get an interesting discussion on any of the sociological problems that are brought up, the story changes direction to focus on hollowed-out personal problems, ultimately resulting in a tepid narrative that's uninterested in reckoning with any of the most important questions.
In addition, Oathbringer is a perfect example of this series' fundamental argument surrounding oppression: That it is a greater sin to be mad at oppression than to have oppressed in the first place.
In this essay, I will point out the colonial framing of this story, where, the reader, instead of thinking about what justice for a colonized people looks like, is more focused on instead on how to stop the colonized savages that are trying to kill all the noble colonizers.
When we last left off our cast in Words of Radiance, there was big talk about this big Evil roaming around who is very Angry, and it could spell the end of the world. We learn of a mysterious phenomenon called "the everstorm," which is backwards and scary (another. essay.), and is causing all the parshmen to transform, and that these two things are working hand in hand.
Kaladin, one of our main characters, is tasked with understanding what this storm means and what the parshmen are up to. In a conversation with Sah, we learn that the parshmen are resisting after thousands of years of having their minds robbed by the humans' violent enslavement of their people.
He takes this information back to the highprinces and leaders at Urithuru, and many of them have little else to say other than, "I understand that they were enslaved, and that's bad, but their leaders going to kill us all. Also, they're going to kill us all because a big Evil controls them, so we have to stop them. It's not their fault." Kaladin is the only person to express any sort of empathy with the parshmen, but is still following the orders of his leaders.
I already found myself raising an eyebrow at this. Is this how the story feigns nuance? By giving the parshmen good reasons for their anger, but still painting them as a threat to goodness by having them follow the commands of a Big Evil? How does the existence of Odium as a villain serve to deepen the questions around the world Sanderson created?
"The conflict with Odium isn't about the world. It's about the self. The Stormlight Archive is a series about flawed people trying to do good things. It's about people having to resist Odium in their day to day lives."
A lot of books are about flawed people trying to do good things. That's like half of literature. It's like bragging about having lettuce in a salad. But it is in The Stormlight Archive specifically where there's this group of disenfranchised people (parshmen) who now got their minds back after thousands of years of slavery, who are now resisting human tyranny, who are still the bad guys because an evil power controls them.
And so, instead of worrying about how they've been treated and how to make things right, we're worried about Odium.
What do we gain from this exercise? Well, hold onto that thought, because there is a second piece of information we get about the parshmen.
The story continues to feign nuance, with the big reveal--allegedly the biggest twist in the first half of the series!
The parshmen are the people indigenous to the planet, and they were colonized many thousands of years ago by the humans. Since then, the humans have enslaved them for generations. Let us set aside the fact that the indigenous people are portrayed as creatures with red and black carapace (???), and focus instead on how the story portrays them resisting slavery and colonization.
We return to Kaladin's POV in the beginning of the book, where he's examining the destruction left behind by the parshmen awakened by the everstorm.
Here, at long last, Kaladin found signs of the fight he’d expected during his initial trip to Alethkar. The gates to the inner city lay broken. The guardhouse had been burned, and arrowheads still stuck from some of the wood beams they passed. This was a conquered city. But where had the humans been moved? Should he be looking for a prison camp, or a heaping pyre of burned bones? Considering the idea made him sick. “Is this what it’s about?” Kaladin said as they walked down a roadway in the inner city. “Is this what you want, Sah? To conquer the kingdom? Destroy humankind?” Is this what no longer being a slave is about, Sah? Conquering kingdoms and destroying civilization? “Storms, I don’t know,” he said. “But I can’t be a slave again, Kal. I won’t let them take Vai and imprison her. Would you defend them, after what they did to you?” “They’re my people.” Does it make sense to you that Kaladin would so quickly defend the people involved in his being branded and enslaved? No? I agree. His character is terribly inconsistent in this novel, but that's another essay. “That’s no excuse. If one of ‘your people’ murders another, don’t you put them in prison? What is a just punishment for enslaving my entire race?” Syl soared past, her face peeking from a shimmering haze of mist. She caught his eye, then zipped over to a windowsill and settled down, taking the shape of a small rock. “I…” Kaladin said. “I don’t know, Sah. But a war to exterminate one side or the other can’t be the answer.” “You can fight alongside us, Kal. It doesn’t have to be about humans against parshmen. It can be nobler than that. Oppressed against the oppressors.”
Though I love it, this last line is quite sad; almost as if it's an indictment of the novel's flattening of its own story.
In this scene, Kaladin is actually the privileged person for once, having to listen to an oppressed person explain why he is angry. Though Kaladin is the only one (besides Moash) among the human cast to express any sort of sympathy for the parshmen, he is portrayed here as the more reasonable person in the conversation. He condemns the irrational violence of the parshmen, telling them that escalating this behavior to a war of extermination can't be the answer.
As readers, we're likely also thinking that Sah may be sympathetic, but this sort of violence is not the answer! (Maybe someone out there is, in which case, salute) We may even be curious about Kaladin's internal turmoil here, since he's sympathizing with Sah as well. But the main point of contention here is the parshmen's violent behavior, which is a result of their anger.
This same framing between civil colonizer/irrational colonized is seen in a conversation between Venli, a parshman fighter, and Dalinar, a descendant of the human colonizers. Here, Dalinar is very honorably and graciously trying to tell Venli that war isn't the answer.
Very carefully look at how this conversation is structured.
She yanked her arm out of his hand and attuned Irritation. “How … why have you brought me here?” Angry, irrational parshman! “I want to talk.” Noble, logical colonizer! “Of course you do. Now that you’re losing, now that we’ve seized your capital, now you want to talk. What of the years spent slaughtering my people on the Shattered Plains?” It had been a game to them. Listener spy reports had shown the humans had enjoyed the sport on the Shattered Plains. Claiming wealth, and listener lives, as part of a grand contest. “We were willing to talk, when you sent your emissary,” Dalinar said. “The Shardbearer. I’m willing to talk again now. I want to forget old grievances, even those personal to me.” Notice how Dalinar, who was directly involved in the creation of those grievances, is being portrayed as the one who wants peace. Notice how it's Venli who wants to maintain this cycle of violence.
The conversation continues, where Dalinar now begins """negotiating""" with Venli.
“Please, just hear me out. I need to know. What would a truce between our people cost?" The context for this question is already foolish, because one side has been directly involved in the almost extinction of the other side. It's like the bully asking the bullied for a truce. But it is reasonable for Dalinar to ask this as it makes sense for his character. “A truce?” she asked to Amusement, stopping near the balcony. “A truce?” “Peace. No Desolation. No war. What would it cost?” There is no truce or peace without justice! “Well, for a start, it would cost your kingdom.” He grimaced. His words were dead, like those of all humans, but he wore his feelings on his face. So much passion and emotion. Is that why the spren betrayed us for them? “What is Alethkar to you?” he said. “I can help you build a new nation on the Shattered Plains. I will give you laborers to raise cities, ardents to teach any skill you want. Wealth, as payment in ransom for Kholinar and its people. A formal apology. Whatever you demand.” “I demand that we keep Alethkar.” This exchange suggests that Venli wants her people in Alethkar, and wants the humans kicked out. This is why Dalinar offers her and her people a different place to live instead. His face became a mask of pain, his brow furrowed. “Why must you live there? To you, Alethkar is a place to conquer. But it’s my homeland.” She attuned Reprimand. “Don’t you understand? The people who live there—the singers, my cousins—are from Alethkar. That is their homeland too. The only difference between them and you is that they were born as slaves, and you as their master!” Dalinar did not commit the crimes of his ancestors, as he told another monarch who didn't want to work with him in a different scene. He was just born in Alethkar and grew up there. It is literally where he's from. But Venli showed up only now with some army, ready to take it from him, even though she was never raised in Alethi culture.
Do you see how twisted this is?
Dalinar is somehow the victim in this scenario where a colonized, native person is telling him she wants to live on her ancestors' land. By the way, this scene itself is dumb, because it demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of how "Land Back" works, but that's for later on. He winced. “Perhaps some other accommodation, then. A … dividing of the kingdom? A parshman highprince?” He seemed shocked to be considering it. She attuned Resolve. “Your tone implies you know that would be impossible. There can be no accommodation, human. Send me from this place. We can meet on the battlefield.”
Dalinar is portrayed as being conflicted here about what to do with this complicated mess. This is fine, I guess. It works for his character. But that isn't what matters here. What matters here is the way this conversation is structured.
Venli here, a descendant of the colonized indigenous people, wants war. Dalinar, a descendant of the colonizers, does not want war. He wants peace. Why can't Venli and her people just see that? How can Venli want to kick out the humans! They're from there! They didn't even commit those colonizing crimes--those happened literally thousands of years ago!
This is how we have to pretend this story is handling colonization in a nuanced way. As if it's not the opposite way in real life. The way that Oathbringer, and by extension, this series, handles colonization, just isn't based in reality.
When we look at efforts to de-colonize (after centuries of colonization) in real life, it's not about kicking people out of the land and taking their houses. That's what colonizers do. It's what Oathbringer claims decolonial resistance is.
Colonization isn't a process that starts A and ends at Z. It's like a machine. And this machine only benefits the colonizer (and their descendants) at the expense of the colonized (and their descendants).
When we look at the colonization of the U.S, we find that there are ongoing atrocities affecting mostly indigenous people, from the creations of pipelines that harm the land for the benefit of the machine, to the federal government still taking land from Native tribes for the benefit of this machine, to entire languages not existing only a couple of hundred years later because it benefitted the machine, and so on.
When you hear about decolonial resistance in this aspect, hundreds of years later, it's not about taking up arms and kicking people out of houses. Decolonial resistance is closer to asking someone to take their foot off your neck. Like asking that the machine be stopped. Because you just want to be left alone. It's stuff like:
Banning pipelines/fracking on tribal land
also, not stealing more land, cause the federal gov't still keeps taking inches!!
also can y'all stop separating children from their families
The onus lies with the person in charge of the machine. It's not the colonized person who wants "trouble." It's the colonizer who does, because they benefit from it. So when the machine runner says, no, I want to keep running the machine, it forces those who are opposed to the machine to apply force to stop it.
That's why the conversation between Dalinar and Venli was so nonsensical. One, because Dalinar was the rational, level headed person in the discussion who didn't want a war, but because two, Venli wants to literally take the kingdom away and push out the humans, who were living so peacefully. The only way to defend this is if humans just now showed up to Roshar and began their conquest, but then the conflict stops being nuanced, you see. Because then, we would be rooting for the parshmen to kick them out. And how would we root for the violent, genocidaires then?
The only realistic aspect of this is that the colonized person wanting the machine to stop (slavery) is creating a lot of trouble for the colonizers. But that's not even a tertiary concern in the series' narrative.
Overall, that's my major issue with Oathbringer. Decolonial resistance and conversations about colonization are not only inaccurately portrayed, it is insultingly inaccurately portrayed. Where we could have had interesting explorations into the different ideologies/feelings/beliefs of humans and parshmen with regards to colonization (deepening the world!), we're instead left with a fever dream of a portrayal of this theme. Instead of worrying about how to make things right for parshmen, we now have to worry about beating Odium! The real bad guy! Who's controlling them!! Which essentially just flattens the entire story!
Also, since we're here and I'm already being indulgent:
Notice the series' tendency to villainize anger at injustice is coming to a head here, with our main villain being Odium. Remember when Kaladin was described as being "odious" in Words of Radiance because he didn't like racism? When he was described as dark and twisted for being mad at Amaram for enslaving him? When he was described as "not being himself" when he was upset at Adolin calling him a bridgeboy on their first interaction? Remember Moash being constantly portrayed as the bitter darkeyes who just wants revenge, despite having also experienced horrific things at the hand of lighteyes?
Well, it seems that was just a taste of what was to come.