Philosophical Musings
Much of the use of metaphor in this book as well as others in the series is directed to philosophical contemplation. Although an action story at heart, the sheer length of each volume (averaging around 859 pages in paperback) affords plenty of opportunity for such metaphorical mining of philosophies of life:
“Life is a dream, and everyone wakes eventually.”
Knowing How to Treat Women
Lots of men in these books known how to treat women. Or, at least, that’s what they say to themselves inside their mine. Not many of these very same men are prone to voicing their misogyny out loud. But what else are you going to do with someone who sounds like this?
“She almost hissed the last word.
Mat waved his hands in front of him, frantically dismissing the suggestion. A woman started hissing at him like a kettle, a man with any brains found a way to cool her down fast.”
Tension Among Women
The sexes are different in this world; at least as much as our own. Males distrust females and vice versa. And one other thing that is a shared similarity: women are much more attuned at reading the emotional tenor of a roomful of other women than men will ever be at doing the same with in a room filled other men:
“Her voice faltered at the end, as she caught the mood in the room. A blind goat could have caught it, with Dyelin smug as a cat in the creamery, and Birgitte scowling at her and Aviendha both…Elayne wished her friends could all get on as well as she and Aviendha did, but somehow they managed to rub on together, and she supposed that was really all she could ask from real people. Perfection was a thing for books and gleemen's stories.”
Parallelism
One of the recurring elements which unify the individual volumes together into a series is the inclusion of an epigraph at the end of the narrative that is a quote from one of the invented ancient texts that makes up the mythology of the series. In this particular instance, the quote uses the literary device of parallel structure to driver home its metaphorical imagery:
“We rode on the winds of the rising storm,
We ran to the sounds of the thunder.
We danced among the lightning bolts,
and tore the world asunder.”
Darkness
In what is truly a rarity in fiction of the last half-century or so—including the other entries in this fantasy series—darkness appears more as a literal term in the text than it does as a metaphor. Still, there is simply no escaping the metaphorical darkness in post-19th century fiction. Especially in a volume this size:
“She felt hollow, now, a vast empty space with fears fluttering through the darkness like enormous bats.”
