Paper Write-Up
My goals for this essay were simply to illustrate the connection between the many historical representations and explanations for disability, their use as justification in dehumanizing disabled people, and how useful a fantasy setting can be in exploring these concepts. Initially I wanted to write the essay on the infantilization present within The Stormlight Archive, and the strong fandom confirmation of that. However, what I’m interested in as a student mostly finds its way back to religion again and again, and so I decided to go with the flaws of the Vorin Church and how they neatly parallel with, say, Catholic exorcisms. The song is the same no matter how you spin it: discrimination comes back to dehumanization, as nearly all of history has shown. The question was how well such a serious topic can hold up in comparison to, well, a fantasy series so complex it has its own Wikipedia site. I think that while the essay itself is certainly stronger in some parts than others, the basic idea still stands. More than ever fictional characters are how people relate to the world, and we increasingly want to see ourselves in them, know ourselves and be known through them. With that comes the pressure on the author to do research, and do it well. There isn’t enough representation for disabled people, and an even smaller subset is actually good representation. Important also is the idea of plurality, for example one autistic person connecting to an autistic character does not mean every autistic person will see their experiences reflected back the same way. That is also what drew me to The Stormlight Archive, as within a huge cast every single major character is mentally and/or physically disabled. That is not to say there are not criticisms that can still be given (see Renarin as the only “corrupted” character while also the only autistic character, or the series’ habit of people regrowing lost limbs) but that it is refreshing to find a good genre book that gives such authentic voices to the people it sets on the page. Another reason to write this essay is my favorite concept that I have learned in Disability and Literature: the realization that you are disabled only in a society where your mode of thinking/sensory input/physical state of being/medical needs/etc. is not catered to. The world we live in does not have to be disabling and painful to any of us. And the first step towards making it better is lifting up the voices of those hurt, inspiring empathy for others—beginning that deep process of humanization wherever possible—and generally connecting to those we might not otherwise. Getting proximate, and one way to do that is to read. The essay itself could, in honesty, be better if it was written in such an ideal society. I have much to learn, as do all of us. It is good to meet people on ground that they’re already familiar with, and for me, and a surprisingly large amount of others in that world, that ground is a constructed space of fantasy. So be it.
“I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this word.” -Lauren C. Magee
Total paper word count: 1751 words
Total write-up word count: 518 words
-Paper Contents:-
Lauren C. Magee
Professor Foss
Disability and Literature Major Paper
Disability, Corruption, and Humanity in The Stormlight Archive
While contemporary works of fiction have undoubtably improved their representation of disability, characters who possess visible physical or mental afflictions are still unfortunately few and far between. If they are represented, the depiction tends to lean towards the stereotypical and even offensive. Representation becomes increasingly offensive the further back in literary canon one goes, human understanding of disabled bodies often explained and condemned by concepts of religion and sin. These were tools to further other and displace disabled individuals and populations, demeaning their basic humanity. By this function, society itself was and is disabling. However, some contemporary works of fiction have sought to explore disability in the above ways through the lens of a fictional society. In Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive, the character of Renarin illustrates the concept of dehumanization through the societal outcasting of a disabled individual. The Stormlight Archive offers a unique perspective to mental illness, having the magical abilities of its characters intrinsically tied to their own trauma and neurodiversity, and yet condemned by the religious aspect of their world. Renarin, a character otherwise privileged by the social station of prince, is instead barred from every path of life by the combination of his disabilities.
The Stormlight Archive is centered around the society of the Alethi, which like our own world has a baseline of strict gender roles and expectations. These expectations are even more strict for the elite classes. Men are given the areas of military, leadership, and retaining a patriarchal line; women are given all branches of the arts and sciences; and the fictional clergy, ardents, can exist outside these boundaries in a sort of gender-neutral space, providing they devote themselves to the Vorin Church’s principles. Any deviation from these roles is met with genuine confusion, for example, the discussion of men learning how to read is seen as unnatural. In fact, unnatural, unholy, and unnerving is the connecting theme for any persons that cannot fit into such a rigid society, especially one taught to be in constant fear of the reassurance of demons—the end of the world. Renarin as a man cannot enter any field of the engineering he shows interest in as he is not a woman, but he is barred from the traditional masculine path of fighting because of his condition of epilepsy. The social skills he lacks from being autistic further alienate him from the societal ideal of a man. Other characters comment on how “[he] was disturbing,” “creepy and whiny” (Words of Radiance 1206-1207), and at times he displays the physical characteristics of autism such as stimming, “rocking back and forth with a small motion” or otherwise fidgeting with a small metal box (Words of Radiance 562). He is urged by other characters to join the clergy, but continues to refuse, protesting for two important reasons: the inherent emasculating of that action, and his own psychosis.
Within The Stormlight Archive, magic and mental illness correlate directly, and become natural products of each other. In order to have any magical ability a person must be explicitly and literally traumatized, explained as “a broken soul [having] cracks into which something else can be fit” (Words of Radiance Cover). Unlike other characters, Renarin has no dramatic or obvious breaking point within his backstory, and there is no reason given by the text to think otherwise. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that his trauma is a direct result of prolonged exposure to the very society that he lives in. Rosemarie Garland-Thompson asks, “If disability is inherent in the human, how can it at the same time disqualify us from full membership in the human community?” (Garland-Thompson 339). Although every major character shares a common condition of being in some way disabled, Renarin is the most visible target from the youngest age. He is disqualified through othering and outcasting to the point where he experiences psychosis, manifesting in-universe as terrifying visions of the literal end of the world. The subject matter itself is alienating; any inclination towards the prophetic is seen by the Vorin Church as demonic, frightening and corrupted. Renarin is severely disabled not only by the general society around him, but the religious aspect of it reacting to his disability.
Within our own world psychosis has always been interpreted as sinful. Interpretations of hallucinatory experiences and disorders such as schizophrenia have created a narrative where the “demonic” force explained to be causing the disruption can be cured through holy means, usually exorcism. The belief in demons as a cause of neurodiversity has been studied around the world along with practices such as ritual prayer or belief in possession. One study conducted in Switzerland saw that “prevalence of such practices was significantly related to diagnosis and to church affiliation” (Pfiefer). “Curing” epilepsy is one of the strongest examples of this practice. Louise Jilek-Aall, a researcher of epilepsy in different cultures, states in one study that “an atmosphere of fear, shame and mysticism surrounds epilepsy even in our days in many non‐Western and also in Western cultures” (Jilek-Aall). Institutions such as the Catholic church have preformed exorcisms on epileptic patients, believing them to be infested with demonic spirits. In-world, one of the strongest heretical tenets of the Vorin Church is the “forbidden” claim of seeing visions or prophecy, which ironically is the exact nature of Renarin’s hallucinations (Oathbringer 1121). Further complicating the book’s representation is that by its own standards, Renarin is in fact literally demonic, being the only magical character whose magic is tainted in some way by one of the fictional demons. The exact phrasing used multiple times throughout Oathbringer is “corrupted” (Oathbringer 1132). Despite this apparent sin, he shows no changes in overall personality, continuing to be a thoroughly moral character. However, the ramifications of others finding out are so severe that his cousin attempts to murder him near the end of Oathbringer, her reasoning being that Renarin is a “threat” and that “she had to do what was right.” (Oathbringer 1132). She ultimately fails in the moment before the strike, but not because of a sudden change of tactics. Instead, she sees him for a second as a “trembling child… always misunderstood, laughed at and condemned by people who said similar things about [her] behind her back” (Oathbringer 1132). For a character up until this point totally ruled by cold logic, it is her sudden humanization of Renarin that prevents his murder. Compassion is given when instead of a unfeeling vessel of otherworldly or demonic forces, she sees him as family, saying “I know what you are… you’re my cousin” (Oathbringer 1135).
Additionally, autism itself has a strong history of being seen as otherworldly or alien. It is a recognizable flaw of humanity that parents have strong expectations for their children, which directly affects their perception and acceptance of that child. Historically this has led to devastating impacts on the disabled community as parents rationalize that an autistic child is not actually their “true” child. Empathy for another correlates directly with how worthy of humanity we view the person in question. With reference to the above description of the society within Stormlight, Renarin clearly cannot preform, or is prohibited from preforming, the correct actions to be seen as productive. This leads to a diminished sense of personal worth not only from Renarin himself but his family members as well. In flashbacks his father refers to him as “the other one, the invalid,” as compared to his brother, who meets every standard for the ideal man in Alethi society (Oathbringer 890). This sense of ill-worth and othering is not a new concept and has roots in mythology, a usual addition in the fantasy genre. William Arbury writes that “descriptions of unusual individuals who were regarded as ‘changelings’ or ‘feral children’ often included characteristics similar to those of persons currently diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder” (Albury). In essence, the myth of a changeling child simply states that the given child cannot possibly be truly human, or else they would not act in the way that they do. Albury identifies that the myth spans from folklore fairy creatures to Christian demonic forces “stealing” a child. Furthermore, he states that “at one level the metaphors of changeling, feral child, and extraterrestrial all identify the autistic person as someone whose defining characteristics are non-human” (Albury). This passage alludes that the most notable parts of an autistic person, to a disabling world, are the characteristics that set them apart from the rest of that world. Once again, they are not viewed as human, because to be human is to be “correct.” Multiple times throughout The Stormlight Archive, characters comment only on the surface level of Renarin’s character, the traits that they find odd or disturbing. Even his name disturbs people, as it is linguistic nonsense that means “’Like one who was born onto himself.’” (Oathbringer 515). For a good portion of Oathbringer, his father forgets that he has a second child, focused on the achievements of his first son. Ironically his brother is the first major character to try to understand Renarin, positively thinking of him as “erratic, but once you got to know him, you realized he wasn’t trying to be esoteric” (Oathbringer 114). Along with the unfortunately literal demonic possession, this paints a picture of stark outcasting. In such a rigid social culture, there is little motivation to try to humanize a person already rendered mostly invisible.
Displayed is only the smallest sample of the systematic discrimination and othering that abled people have perpetrated against the disabled. As more contemporary works have been written there has been a natural increase in diversity as more writers are empowered to enter the field. Taking from historical sources and lenses of criticism these novels are pushing the boundaries of our social sphere more than ever before. Fantasy, in the past a rather locked genre for one privileged demographic, is experiencing a reassurance of its own, a new understanding of cultures of disability and mental health. This is a realization that these stories are worth telling and portraying, and portraying well. Aspects of our society from well-meaning parents to entire church organizations continue to discriminate and offer false perspectives on disabled lives. By creating empathy through the context of a different world, it is entirely possible that more readers will understand the disabled community, and the dehumanization that still touches a majority of our modern world.
Works Cited & Referenced
Albury, William R. “From Changelings to Extraterrestrials: Depictions of Autism in Popular Culture – Hektoen International.” Hektoen International, hekint.org/2017/01/30/from-changelings-to-extraterrestrials-depictions-of-autism-in-popular-culture/.
Garland-Thompson, Rosemarie. “The Case for Conserving Disability.” 2012. PDF File.
Irmak, M. Kemal. “Schizophrenia or Possession?” SpringerLink, Springer US, 27 Dec. 2012, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-012-9673-y.
Jilek‐Aall, Louise. “Morbus Sacer in Africa: Some Religious Aspects of Epilepsy in Traditional Cultures.” Epilepsia, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (10.1111), 2 Aug. 2005, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1999.tb00723.x.
Pfeifer, Samuel. “Belief in Demons and Exorcism in Psychiatric Patients in Switzerland.” British Journal of Medical Psychology, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (10.1111), 12 July 2011, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1994.tb01794.x.
Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. 2010. Print.
Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. 2014. Print.
Sanderson, Brandon. Oathbringer. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. 2017. Print.
