Author Topic: Spoilers (Most likely) about WoK and Elantris  (Read 1596 times)

therealadaam

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Spoilers (Most likely) about WoK and Elantris
« on: December 28, 2010, 11:47:07 PM »
Has anyone else noticed that twice in Sanderson's work he has a charactor say or think, "Better to exist in agony than to vanish entirely."
In Elantris it was Galleon in the first or second Raoden chapter.
In WoK it was Szeth.

Has anyone else noticed this? And what are your thoughts? I'd think existing in agony would be far worse than just vanishing.

andygal

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Re: Spoilers (Most likely) about WoK and Elantris
« Reply #1 on: December 29, 2010, 12:12:23 AM »
I....go back and forth on this issue. On one hand, if you exist there's always at least theoretically some hope of escaping and being able to exist in something other then  agony, plus I have terrible issues with ceasing to exist On the other hand, if you were stuck in agony for eternity with little real hope of escape eventually you might not want  to exist at all.

CabbyHat

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Re: Spoilers (Most likely) about WoK and Elantris
« Reply #2 on: December 30, 2010, 01:11:59 PM »
It's one of those things that I don't think anyone would really be qualified to make a decision about unless they'd experienced it, and given the context of this particular dilemma I doubt anybody I know is going to be able to tell me about their first-hand experience. That being said, I'd rather exist than just cease to be. Pain is something you can learn to cope with, even if, like the Hoed, that coping mechanism is madness.
Just an idle comment. My comments are often idle. I can never get them to do any solid work.

therealadaam

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Re: Spoilers (Most likely) about WoK and Elantris
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2011, 06:32:51 PM »
Interesting. I would think that madness is less "coping" and more being driven mad :p
I would rather not exist than be mad.

CabbyHat

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Re: Spoilers (Most likely) about WoK and Elantris
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2011, 05:45:32 PM »
Coping doesn't necessarily mean coping *well.* Going mad might simply be the way your brain handles the pain, rather than dealing with it head-on and bearing the full force of it. The implication that I got from the part in Elantris where Raoden is Hoed was that whenever he tried to think coherently, the pain overwhelmed him and he couldn't deal with it. So rather than doing that, he just went into kind of a mindless state where he was divorced from the pain.
Just an idle comment. My comments are often idle. I can never get them to do any solid work.