Elantris: Hope vs. Hatred

In this episode, Caitlin and Ashley discuss Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson, and how hope and hate both motivate people to different ends. Oh, and there's a badass princess as well. 

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Whoops we made a mistake! The event that made Dilaf hate the elantrians happened when he was an adult, not a child. 

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Sources: www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/02/09/hell-history-empty-247257#:~:text=The%20pope%20responded%20that%20hell,really%20do%20hope%20that%20people

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Transcript

Hi and welcome to the Literary Lamp Post podcast where we analyse books and see what we can learn from them. I'm Caitlin, I'm a math grad student but I love English and analysing literature.  And I'm Ashley, an assistant editor and writer. I'm really excited for today's episode. Me too. Because we are talking about one of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson.

He is so good. He's such a cool author, and actually he's the first author we've discussed who is still alive and writing today. , he's genuinely a great author. He mostly writes high fantasy. I'd actually place him up there with George R. R. Martin and Tolkien as one of the greatest high fantasy writers of all time.

And honestly, if you're ready for a break from the popular romanticy genre and think that that's all there is to fantasy, think again and go check out Brandon Sanderson. He's actually brilliant and he churns out books so quickly. He's probably writing right now as we speak and they're all incredibly high quality in everything.

Plot. Characterization, world building. I really love how deep his books are. They're not just a fun read, they actually make you think really deeply about philosophical ideas. And I actually learned a bunch of new words reading his books. Yeah, me too. Because he's got some really cool vocabulary. He writes a lot of series.

They can get pretty intense. And expensive if you're buying them all, which I am. Yeah, me too. His biggest and most well known series is the Stormlight Archive, which is currently at five books and two novellas. And there are also a couple of other series. But he's also got many, many remarkable standalones, one of which we are going to be discussing today.

And that one is Elantris. Elantris is so good. Yeah, it's actually my favourite of all the books he's written, even though it was his first book written in 2005. Alright, so for those of you who have never heard of it, I'm going to give you, not a summary, but just context so you understand more about the world and where we're coming from.

So Elantris is the name of a city that was once a place of wonder and its people were once regular people. Who lived in the cities sprawling in Elantris's shadow, but they were touched by a magical transformation called the Shaode. And then these people became godlike. Their skin would shine kind of silvery.

They became immortal, powerful, able to heal the sick, and wield immense magical power. Elantris was the heart of the kingdom, which was called Arilon. And Arilon is a kingdom that is part of a continent where there are multiple countries, multiple kingdoms. Anyways, 10 years ago, the magic of Elantris failed.

Now, in the present, Elantris is a rotting corpse of a city. The walls are a prison for those inside. Because the Shaod, that magical transformation, still takes people, but instead of gods, it turns them into cursed beings. Their skin mottled with black spots, their bodies unable to heal, their hunger never ending but not needing food and never dying from starvation.

So once glorious, the Elantrians are now exiled to this ruined city and forgotten. So beyond the walls of Elantris, in the kingdom of Arilon, a new government has arisen in the last 10 years and it's very fragile and struggling to maintain power. The people live in fear of the Shaode taking them, dreading the day they might be turned into an Elantrian.

And the neighboring empire of Fjorden, which is led by fanatical priests and an emperor, seeks to spread its oppressive religion to Arilon. So within this context, there are three main characters we're going to be looking at. First of all, there's Prince Rejorden. He's the beloved heir to the throne, engaged to marry a foreign princess.

But, the Shaod takes him at the very start of the book, before he ever gets to meet her, and he's thrown into Elantris. And his father, the King of Arilon, proclaims that Raiden has died of a tragic illness. The second character we're going to look at is Hrathen. He is one of the priests from Fjorden. Very high ranking priest.

He's very calculating and charismatic, and he is given three months to convert Aralon to his empire's religion before his empire destroys Aralon. The last character we're looking at is Princess Serene, the daughter of the king of the neighboring kingdom of Teot, who Was actually engaged to Prince Rayan, but arrives in Aroon early to find her fiance dead and herself locked into a political struggle.

So basically, the plot of this book follows Prince Rayan as he fights for life within a Elantra. and as he eventually starts to unravel the mysteries behind what happened to Elantris. It follows Princess Sereni as she challenges the corruption within Aralon's court and the priest Hrathen as he plots for the conversion.

and potential destruction of the kingdom. So we're going to talk about each of these characters in more detail, the things that they face, and what they represent for us today. So let's start off with Prince Raoden, the son of the king of Aralon, who gets taken by the Shaode and thrown into Lantris. So Raiden displays a couple really important characteristics.

The first one, and the most obvious, is his absolute and utter optimism. Yeah, so he, when he's first thrown into Elantris, he immediately sees that other people who are in there have completely given up. And from the get go, it's like he's determined to be different. And Raiden was actually optimistic before he was thrown into Elantris.

His best friend Lukel describes him as a person who made people happy and as optimistic and brilliant. Yeah, and Lukel actually says this country needed Raiden. Just pointing out how important he was to the people, how much he wanted things to change. And Raiden's friend, first friend in Elantris, And the other, um, the other, um, the other doctors named Galidon is actually constantly annoyed by how optimistic Riodon is being.

Riodon actually admits that he doesn't feel as much optimism as he's displaying, but he knows that he needs to keep it up because that's what's necessary in order to continue leading the people and giving them a vision of a better life. And he actually even admits to Galidon how terrified he is. And I think that's a really important character trait to be able to admit that you're terrified, but do something anyway.

Exactly. Another quality that Raoden displays is this awesome creativity and ingenuity when it comes to solving problems. Yeah. At the very beginning, when he's thrown into Elantris, he makes a bargain with Galadon to get shown around for 30 days. And within Elantris, there are these gangs and he starts.

watching for patterns and learning about the gangs and eventually he starts tricking the gang leaders and gathering the people who have thrown into Elantris, saving them from the gangs and therefore earning their trust. And then he starts learning what each of these people can do. Can they make shoes?

Can they build? Can they weave? And with these people he starts building a society. So, as we mentioned in the summary, the Elantrian's bodies actually can't heal, and as a result, the pain that they feel upon getting an injury stays the same for all time. It doesn't ever fade. Yeah, so, at one point, Raiden stubs his toe, and you know that pain when you first stub your toe where it's really sharp?

It stays like that. forever because your body can't heal and so you're just stuck with the pain. And a lot of Elantrians find this pain completely overwhelming but once Raoden gives them purpose and something to do they're able to cope with it a lot better and it kind of fades into the background and he brings this creativity and this outside of the box.

thinking to solving problems. For example, every person who's thrown into Elantris is sent with a sacrificial offering of seed corn and Raiden comes up with the idea to save it and start planting it instead of eating it straight away because they're so incredibly hungry. And as a result, they're able to start growing their own food.

He is also determined and optimistic that he's going to solve the mystery of Elantris and what's going on with it. And he approaches it in a more creative way than others have before him. And some of the ways that he does this are just so simple. Like he starts cleaning and making space nice and helps people to be proud of their accomplishments.

And he's determined that through studying the literature of Elantris, he will be able to figure out a solution. to the problems, even though Galadon insists it's a waste of time. Galadon actually says to Raiden, no one is likely to find the answers, but Raiden doesn't give up. Yeah, he insists that he's going to figure it out.

Yeah, his determination also shows up in his insistence that he not let anybody else see just how much pain he is in for the sake of being able to be a leader for them and inspiring them. Oh, and something that we haven't mentioned yet is that within Elantris, nobody actually knows who he is. Now remember, he's the beloved prince of the kingdom, but within Elantris, he doesn't want to be known for his title.

Yeah, people don't recognize him because the shaod is so disfiguring and he uses this to his advantage. He says, If I'm going to do any good in Elantris, I need to win followers because they like what I'm doing, not because they feel a patriotic obligation. Yeah, so you can really see that he doesn't seek power for himself.

He just genuinely wants to help. He wants to give people purpose and make life better for them. in it for power for himself. He shows multiple times through the book that he doesn't want to be deceitful. He wants to maintain the standard of integrity for himself and for others. He doesn't make any huge promises about how he's going to fix everything or cure them or give them the answers.

He tries to attract followers via the evidence of the good that he's doing in the community and he wants to give people a purpose and make life better for them. He's not in it for the power for himself. Another thing I really love about Riordan is how kind he is. On the very first day that he's in Elantris, he sees a boy begging for food and he really, really wants to help this boy.

Despite the fact that he's already in Elantri and so he's already starving, he gives away his food to this boy. And also when he starts gathering people together to help build his new society, he sees value in people who don't always see value in themselves. For example, a simple housewife, she describes herself, who thinks she has no skills.

He sees incredible value in her doing household type things. For example, weaving, and cooking, and organizing. Those kind of things that are overlooked, but really, really important to society. And it's good to acknowledge these things. And it's really cool that Riordan does, and he sees these actions which often go unnoticed and invisible in society, and yet society would collapse without them.

And Raiden's also really kind to a group of people in Elantris called the Hoid. Now these are people who have basically succumbed to the pain and lost their minds but they are unable to die. And even though they can't contribute to anything he sets up a whole system to care for them and feed them.

He's just really a good person. Raiden has displayed these Five qualities. He has this incredible optimism and creativity. He's really determined, he has integrity, and he's really kind. And these things lead to him being an amazing leader. Through this leadership, Raiden is actually able to make a real difference in Elantris.

Now this is very different to the next character we're going to talk about, Hrathen. Now Hrathen is a priest from the neighboring country of Fjorden. There are two religions featured in this story, two main ones. Shudiroth and Shukoroth. The Fjordan religion is Shudderith, and the people of Fjordan believe that Shudderith is the only true form of religion.

Now what's interesting is that Arilon believes in the same god, they call him the Lord of Creation. But the religion's slightly different. This is Shukorath, and it's less extreme. So the core of the Shudiroth religion is that only one man can serve God directly. This is Wern, the emperor. And then different ranks of priests serve Wern and carry out the words of God.

So in this way, the emperor exerts control over people, like our previous episode where we talk about Shift doing the same thing. And one by one, Fjorden has infiltrated most of the kingdoms on this continent caused the collapse of their governments and converted them basically by force to the Shuddereth religion.

The last two kingdoms standing are Arilon, which is Rhaedon's kingdom, where Elantris is, and Teod, where Princess Serene, Rhaedon's betrothed, is from. So back to Hrathen, he has been sent from Fjorden as a preacher and teacher and he's been given three months to convert Arilon. Before Fjorden is going to come in and conquer, he's been given the task of converting Aralon, and he truly believed that he was Aralon's savior, that he was going to be saving them from destruction by converting them.

He was going to be saving thousands of souls by doing this converting. He believed that the people of Arilon were godless and heretical and he genuinely believed that he was going to be saving their souls by converting them. But he had some less than savory ways to go about this converting process, however.

He gains a sidekick, a priest who is very zealous and starts teaching him the finer points of taking control of a nation. This zealot is named Dilaf. Craython says to him, the first step in taking control of a nation is the simplest. You find someone to hate. So Hrathen leads Dilaf to the idea that the Elantrians are controlled by evil spirits, not God.

But he doesn't actually believe it himself. No, he doesn't. But he wants to create the connection so that people will follow this idea and instead of pity the Elantrians, hate them. He says you will find that hate can unify people more quickly and more fervently than devotion ever could. Oofed. He even says, we're not here to love the people, we are here to help them.

So by all this hate, he actually believes he's going to be helping this country. Of course, by helping them, he means convert them and dominate them. But in his mind, because he's bringing them to the correct religion, he is bringing them to salvation. So he begins teaching against the Elantrians, calling them animals who have lost their right to be men.

They know no God. They can only follow their lust. saying animals are beneath men. This is a common strategy to take over government and install one person who will lead the nation with complete power. We've seen it in history over and over so it's really important to recognise this pattern when it starts to happen and question if a leader of a country is encouraging hatred of a relatively small group of people within that country who already face large challenges to think why that hatred is being stoked.

So Hrathen pretty much has this overarching plan. The people are suffering, Hrathen chooses the enemy as outlined above, he unites the people against this common enemy. In secret though, he actually meets up with the nobles of the country of Aralon. Now the system of power in Aralon is such that those who have the most money have the most power.

People are given their titles based on how much money that they have. Oligarchy. So the nobles only have their power because they are rich. And Hrathen meets with them and convinces them that if they convert or display the same views as him, he will make them even more rich. And so obviously, because they want to move up in the system and gain more power, they are more than happy to do this.

This will mean that the people will end up gravitating towards those nobles who are displaying the same hatred of the Elantrians and support for Hrathen's religion, Shadireth. Hrathen promises then that when the government is overtaken, the nobles will be given special positions in the new government.

Hrathen admits that the nobles actually don't care at all. all about the theology that they are supposedly converting to. They don't believe in God, they just want the power and he's happy to use that to get Shudderith into the government and they are happy to pretend to display quote unquote religious values to get it.

The book says all they needed was an assurance that a sudden outpouring of piety on their parts would be rewarded with temporal blessings, very tangible and spendable ones. And you know, Chorathen genuinely believes he's saving souls from eternal damnation. Therefore, all the hatred ends up being for a good cause, and that makes it okay.

You know, it's kind of the same thing that Christians of old did for generations, conquering nations in the name of saving souls and annihilating entire cultures. And even now, it's something to be aware of and keep an eye out for, because I do think that religions have a habit of falling into these Cycles where they end up seeking power and ultimately it undermines the foundations of the belief that those religions are built on.

So for Hreithin, the end justifies the means and I quote, The oppression of a few brings salvation to the many. And the hatred and harm actually weighs on him that he's doing this and it weighs on his conscience. He feels guilty. Because even though he believes that he's doing the right thing, it doesn't feel right to him because he doesn't actually genuinely hate them.

The book tells us that he admits to himself he was using them, holding them up as an enemy to unite his followers. He felt guilty. The Elantrians he had seen were not devils, but wretches, afflicted as if by a terrible disease. They deserved pity, not condemnation. It's worth noting that the emperor of Fjorden.

One is willing to destroy entire countries if they don't convert for the greater good and that it's worth harming a few for the rest to be saved. So they claim to be righteous and follow the same god that Shukorath follows but honestly betray everything that Shukorath uphold. Remember Shukorath is the religion that Arilon and Teod have.

The things that they uphold are grace, love, free will, but instead Wern uses coercion and suppression ultimately for power and a way of using religion to control people.

You know, I wonder if this is how people of faith justify supporting leaders who claim to be Christians but don't actually display the character traits consistent with their faith.

That the force and harm that those leaders then use is worth it because their souls are saved and through their leadership and the force of their converting everybody in the country that they're ultimately saving souls. This is genuinely problematic, especially in the realm of Christianity, because in doing this, they're actually betraying the core of Jesus teachings.

I don't think we should prioritise religious identity over integrity. Something Wern and the Shudiroth priests are doing, and something that Raiden didn't do. And we can actually see that Raiden has some of this going on in his head because he realises and he feels that he is doing wrong. And he's able to justify it and do it, but he does have this sense that deep down he's betraying God.

his own integrity by doing this. And you know the phrase actions speak louder than words. I know you hear it a lot, but it's so true. It's such a major point today. any situation. See if people are backing up their words with actions. That's where critical thinking is really important. And we talked about that in our last episode on The Last Battle.

If you want to hear a bit more about that, go and listen to that. Dilar, Craithon's underling, on the other hand, genuinely hates the Elantrians from the very beginning and he actively wants them to be destroyed. He wants to get revenge on the entire group for a mistake that one of them made when he was a child.

His hatred of the Elantrians is real. He genuinely wants them to be destroyed. And this actually reminds me a little bit of how Christians often tell others that they hope that they go to hell. In fact, recently, Pope Francis said that he likes to think that hell is empty and this sparked a ton of backlash from christians and that is really horrifying that people who profess christianity would genuinely wish eternal damnation on others.

Many christians today are known for their hatred of others who believe differently than they do. rather than the love of others that Jesus preached. They try to change what they see to be wrong in people through hatred, which goes against the core teachings of Christianity. So we have Hrathen and his method of leadership, which embodies calculation and wanting control.

He preaches things he doesn't even believe in. in order to take control of the society. He basically does the wrong thing for what he believes is right. And this is completely different from Raiden. Raiden leads by building people up, whereas Hrathen leads by tearing other people down. The last character that we're going to be talking about today is Princess Serene.

She is the daughter of the king of Teode, which is the only other country on the continent that has not been conquered by Fjorden. Now, Sireni is engaged to Raiden for political reasons, but she arrives in Aralon to discover that her fiancé has died, and because of a particular clause in their marriage contract, she's now considered his widowed wife, and she's not allowed to remarry.

So she has to stay in Arilon and become a part of the court. Serene is very perceptive. As soon as she arrives in Arilon and realizes that Hrathen is preaching against the Elantrians and Trying to convert people. She gets really suspicious of him, given that he was involved in the fall of a couple of the other nations on the continent.

She asks this critical question of what their motivations might be. She's also very interested in politics and government. She was a diplomat for her father and she's able to grasp the complex political situation in Aralon. She picks up on the anger of the peasants who have been beaten down by noblemen and she's able to see that the noblemen's greed is the biggest problem.

And she notices strange things happening and uses them to piece together the bigger picture. Serenity is also Quite clever, and she's able to strategically use people's perceptions of her to her advantage. Yeah, so at the beginning she's told she's a foolish woman by the king, so she starts playing into that stereotype in order to get information and to get into places she wouldn't normally be allowed in.

For example, she rocks up to the throne room in order to gather information under the guise of a painting session. in the middle of the throne room and the king is like, what are you doing? And she's like, I just wanted to paint. And as she says, it's so much easier to manipulate people when they assume you don't have enough wits to remember your own name.

And she uses this method to start strategizing, networking, and eavesdropping in the king's court, as well as in her conversations with Kraton, who knows she acts stupid, but can't contradict her. And so she in turn ruins his sermons with this method. Yeah. And in this way, she's able to demonstrate her political savvy.

She pretty much takes over Raiden's place as opposition to the king and through her political maneuvering, she's able to worm her way into the court. She gains the trust of all of the women of the court and. Even though they are convinced that the only thing that they can do is embroider and gossip, she teaches them how to sword fight.

And she's able to convince the lords who worked with Raiden to work with her and trust her. And she ends up playing a pivotal role in the unfolding of the political dynamic. Serenity also becomes known for her morals and for standing up. For the Elantrians, in fact, she believes it's her duty to stand up for them after Kraton starts being against them.

And so we can see that she uses her strengths to stand up for what's right. She even decides that she wants to feed the Elantrians, both opposing Kraton and also showing compassion for those who are hurting. Serenity also doesn't mind breaking the mold. She does the things that others would not dream of doing, for example, feeding the Elantrians and as such upsetting the balance of power.

She humanizes the Elantrians and disrupts Hrithin's plans. And she even stands up to the king and intimidates him into doing the right thing. She's also interested in geopolitical dynamics and politics. She acts as a diplomat for her father and in sword fighting and other non feminine things. And that actually raises a pretty interesting question.

What actually defines feminine and non feminine things? See, in Aralon, the men don't swordfight either, so they don't actually have the grounds to object to the women swordfighting. So do you think if women started doing the fighting, would fighting be considered a feminine thing and beneath men? Well, what I see happening is that a lot of men consider feminine.

things beneath them, while women tend to see masculine things as things that they're barred from. You know, I've thought about this a fair bit. And I think that originally in society, men and women tended to gravitate towards things that they were naturally better at. For example, maybe most women were better at childcare and maybe most men were better at hunting and fighting and things that required physical strength.

But I think over time, those things got ingrained in society. And instead of doing the things that you were good at, you did the things that society told you that you needed to do. And so then even if somebody is better at the thing that the opposite gender is good at, they're not allowed to do it because society tells them that that's just how men and women's roles are.

Not necessarily taking into account that those. roles were based on strengths rather than prescriptive. And I think that over time, this led to this power imbalance between men and women where men ended up holding a lot more of the societal power and women's roles were defined by what men allowed them to do.

In fact, Serene even comments that in her home country of Teod, where there was a lot more equality between men between men and women, that they say they give their women more freedom, but there's still the impression that the freedom was theirs to give in the first place. So I think that's an ongoing conversation that it's important that we continue to have.

Oh, it definitely is. And another thing about Sereniy is, despite being kind of the Stereotypical strong independent woman, she still deeply longs to be loved and to have a relationship. This gives her some very human depth. She finds it hard to love herself because she feels rejected by others. Men don't accept her because they're intimidated by her, or can't match her, or see her as a leader instead of a partner.

And women don't accept her because she's different from them. And this is something she has to work through throughout the course of the book. What I think is really awesome about the character of Serenity is that she ultimately is not willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of being loved. She remains true to herself despite it causing challenges in her relationships.

So, how is Serenity a leader? She leads with strategy and shrewdness. She finds a way to speak up against injustice, even though at the beginning her voice is not heard. Despite that, she persists and she finds a way to get around the rules. So there you have three main characters in the book Elantris and the different ways they lead and make a difference in their spheres.

The first half of the book introduces the characters and who they are, sets up their characteristics, defines what they want, what they're trying to achieve, and the second half of the book watches as these three characters intersect and how the dynamics play out. play out. And we see how the problem of Elantris is solved.

How the government experiences another collapse. And we see how these three leaders lives play out. How they clash, how they work together to bring about some really major things. And there are some really thoughtful reflections on a lot of things far beyond anything that we've discussed here. And it also has romance.

mystery, adventure, some really great characters who we haven't mentioned, some completely unexpected plot twists, and a really well developed world. And we can learn a lot from it. But we're not going to spoil it, so go read it. We highly recommend this book. However, we do need to add a little bit of a warning.

There are some pretty gruesome scenes, so if that kind of thing bothers you, maybe look up a summary first. And I would not recommend this book for kids. So, Caitlin, what do you think are our biggest takeaways from Brandon Sanderson's Elantris? Well, for me, I think the biggest takeaways are that true religion can never include hatred, and leadership should never include hatred.

The strength of a leader is not how they tear others down, but how they build them up. And I really love Serenity's journey of learning to love herself and refusing to sacrifice herself in order to be loved. Oh yeah, me too. And on that note, thank you for joining us for this episode of the Literary Lamp Post.

We hope that you will join us next time. We are taking a bit of a turn from the fantasy genre and going back to some classics. We're going to be discussing Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at the Literary Lamp post as well as subscribing on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast platform to make sure you don't miss any of our new episodes.

Thank you for listening and see you next time. 


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