Being-With and Being-As in Brando Sando

Brandon Sanderson himself has admitted that he might have gotten a bit carried away with his prologues in The Way of Kings, the first volume of the incredible Stormlight Archive. Technically, Sanderson only has a prelude and a prologue and a first chapter, but “preludes” and “prologues” are just po-tay-toes and po-tah-toes, and that first chapter—set eight months before the rest of the book from the point-of-view of a character we never see again—is clearly nothing more than a prologue in a trench coat. Thus, I consider the full functional count of prologues to be a whopping three. Sanderson has said that he wouldn’t do this again and wouldn’t recommend that others attempt such a thing, but I’ll be making a case here for why Sanderson’s seemingly odd decision actually pays off in some interesting ways. I’ll do so by looking particularly at chapter 1 (or, as I would have it, prologue 3), and in my never-ending quest to attain ever-greater heights of nerdiness I will be thinking about things through the lens of Heideggerian phenomenology.

You and I might go about our daily lives blithely assuming that we can, in fact, meet other people and hang out with our friends, but life is not so simple for certain philosophers. Husserl, a brilliant thinker and terrible writer, was only barely able to persuade himself that people could actually encounter one another—a fact which I can only assume made parties difficult for the poor fellow. Heidegger, on the other hand, is much more willing to say—“Look obviously we can encounter each other”—and instead gets on with the business of describing exactly what that looks like.[1] In fact, Heidegger argues that we are innately aware that other minds exist as part of our most basic experience of being alive. I could, of course, say more, but I sense myself drifting away from Brando Sando and further into phenomenological jargon, so I’m going to stop myself and boil this down to three key Heideggerian terms that I want to define for the purposes of reading prologue 3 of The Way of Kings.

1) Being-With: This is the most basic kind of being with others, and it does not involve really knowing a person in any meaningful way. When you pour yourself a bowl of Cheerios, then you know—without consciously thinking about it—that those Cheerios were made through the agency of other persons for persons like yourself to eat. Thus, your encounter with Cheerios places you in a world where you are being-with others in the broadest sense (see, was that really so difficult Husserl? Didn’t need any apperception of a transcendental ego or anything!).

2) Being-there-with: This is the kind of being-there-with we experience when we move beyond merely inferring the presence of other minds and even beyond meeting someone on a purely superficial level. You probably were not being-there-with the cashier who checked you out at the grocery store. The two of you met and interacted, but you likely interacted with one another more or less as abstractions.[2] On the other hand, when you’re listening to a friend process their latest breakup—really attending to them with all of the care you can muster—then you are being-there-with them. They are real to you not as a particular iteration of the general category “other person” but as the infinitely unique phenomenon of Fred or Jackie or Jess.

3) Being-there-as: Ok, I admit it, I made this one up. You got me, phenomenology police. Heidegger doesn’t talk about this because it is absolutely and irrevocably impossible when being-there in our day-to-day lives in the world, which is Heidegger's concern.[3] My concern, however, is with reading and the kind of “living” that we do within the world of a book, and when we’re reading a book we have the crazy and valuable opportunity to be-there-as someone else. When George Eliot immerses me in the point-of-view of Dorothea Brooke, for example, I am being-there-as Dorothea, whereas when Eliot merely describes Dorothea I am being-with her and when I connect with Dorothea from the point-of-view of her sister Celia I am being-there-with Dorothea. You and I can never be-there-as anyone else outside the boundaries of a book, so it is a phenomenon absolutely unique to reading and for that reason, I think, one of the most precious aspects of reading.

Alright, now I know by now you might be thinking that I lured you here with promises of Brandon Sanderson only to trap you in an infinite pit of Heideggerian gobbledygook, but fear not—the time for Branderson Sanderson is now. Below are the first three paragraphs of the third prologue:

“‘I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Cenn asked.

The weathered veteran beside Cenn turned and inspected him. The veteran wore a full beard, cut short. At the sides, the black hairs were starting to give way to grey.

I’m going to die, Cenn thought, clutching his spear—the shaft slick with sweat. I’m going to die. Oh, Stormfather. I’m going to die. . . .”

Up through the first two paragraphs, it is not entirely clear whether we are occupying Cenn’s point-of-view; we could be occupying a more objective point-of-view in that first line. However, by the second line there are indications that we are at least closer to Cenn’s lens on the world than we are to the “weathered veteran,” since we are not given the veteran’s name and we see him as Cenn sees him. The third paragraph solidifies our position within Cenn’s point-of-view—we are seeing the world of Roshar as Cenn sees it and feels it, and Sanderson gives us access to the boy’s frantic internal dialogue: “I’m going to die...I’m going to die....” Now, that said, there’s a difference between being shown the world from a character’s point-of-view and being-there-as that character. To establish that connection requires attention on the part of the reader and talent on the part of the writer. Beyond that, it simply takes time for the “real world” to fade to the back of our minds and the book’s world to solidify itself in the foreground and begin to feel—in some sense—“real.”

So let’s skip ahead a bit. Midway through the prologue/chapter, in the midst of the skirmish, Sanderson writes:

“After the first few exchanges, Dallet took Cenn by the shoulder and placed him in the rank at the very bottom of the V pattern. Cenn, however, was worthless. When Kaladin’s team engaged enemy squads, all of his training fled him. It took everything he had to just remain there, holding his spear outward and trying to look threatening.”

Now, out of context, this could almost pass for a narrator’s god’s-eye perspective on the battle, but one sentence confirms that that is not the case and highlights how close Sanderson has drawn us to Cenn’s lens: “Cenn, however, was worthless.” Does Sanderson think Cenn was worthless? Does the narrator? Neither of those interpretations even cross my mind as I am reading—caught up in the speedy clip of Sanderson’s prose. Instead, it is obvious to me that it is Cenn himself who thinks he is worthless. This is Cenn’s perspective on himself just as the rest of the passage is Cenn’s perspective on everything else. At this point, Sanderson doesn’t even need to do anything to let me know that we are occupying Cenn’s perspective because I’ve been in Cenn’s point-of-view since the very beginning, and I cling to it now, since Cenn and I alike are both newcomers to this world of battle and bloodshed. His confusion becomes mine and so does his understanding. By this point, I have gone beyond merely being-with Cenn or even being-there-with Cenn; I am being-there-as Cenn.[4]

But why? Why begin the novel this way? It would be a perfectly normal way to start a novel if Cenn were a main character or even a significant side character, but for the rest of the novel Cenn is not merely absent—he is dead. He dies in the aftermath of the battle recounted in this prologue/chapter, so why does Sanderson take the time to build up my connection to a point-of-view character only to immediately kill that character off? There are several possible reasons, I think, but the one that I want to focus on here is the powerful way in which it expands the scope of our empathy within the novel's world. It is easy, in a novel, to start thinking as if our main characters are innately more valuable as people than everybody else—as if they are the only ones who truly have a sparklingly individual way of being in the world. But that’s a dangerous way of reading because the way we read often shapes the way we live, and it’s vital to remember that each of our neighbors are the main characters of their own story, just as much as we are the main character of ours. George Eliot expresses this brilliantly in Middlemarch when she justifies her decision to show us the point-of-view of the cold and self-centered Causabon instead of the point-of-view of the heroine Dorothea:

“One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea—but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage? ...In spite of the blinking eyes and white moles objectionable to Celia, and the want of muscular curve which was morally painful to Sir James, Mr. Casaubon had an intense consciousness within him, and was spiritually a-hungered like the rest of us.”

Eliot—with her characteristically strong narratorial presence—insists that we see her world from multiple points of view, not forgetting that even the less likable characters are teeming with hopes and dreams. Similarly, by beginning the novel proper with an entire chapter from the point-of-view of a poor, doomed young soldier within Kaladin’s division of spearmen Sanderson challenges us to ask: but why always Kaladin? We can carry with us the memory of Cenn’s fear and hope and remember that each nameless soldier throughout the novel who dies beside Kaladin—or even at the end of Kaladin’s spear—had hopes and fears too. Furthermore, by empathizing with Cenn, we are drawn closer to Kaladin as well. Kaladin’s determination to see the full value of every person he leads—especially boys like Cenn—is a core aspect of who he is, and by giving us a little boost in our empathy for Cenn we are primed to more easily adopt Kaladin’s deeply compassionate perspective. Thus, being-there-as Cenn prepares us to be-there-as Kaladin—and perhaps prepares us to be-there-with our neighbors just a little bit better as well.

There’s plenty more to be said about this prologue, but I’ll cut my rambling there. Do you agree? Do you have a different perspective on any of this? Can you think of some other benefits of spending this time in Cenn’s point of view? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

[1] In fairness, most evidence seems to suggest that Heidegger wasn’t much good at parties either. Believing in the possibility of being-with didn’t necessarily make old Martin actually pleasant to be with. [2] This is not inevitably the case. Heidegger might not agree, but I think that some people have the gift of intending towards almost everyone as a fully individuated person, and they have my deepest respect. [3] Being-there or Dasein is Heidegger’s term for the unique kind of “being” that you and I have and are (the kind of being that involves trying to understand why we are being, the kind that roses and dogs and forks don’t have). [4] Sanderson almost always writes in this way—always aiming to immerse his readers in one point-of-view or another (and typically changing pov’s often). We could contrast this with novels where we remain always in the first-person point-of-view of a character narrator (e.g. Naomi Kovik’s Scholomance) or even with novels using third-person narration where we be-there-as only one character throughout (e.g. Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor).