Knit Life
L&L Book Club: The Final Empire parts 4-5
Sep
It’ s 9:20 on Friday night and I wrote most of this post yesterday. I put Mabel to bed and logged on to polish off this last part of the post and before I even made it all the way to the L&L landing page I found out about the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I’m struggling with that news right now. I know she’s been very sick for a long time, and I’m glad she’s not suffering tonight. But I wasn’t ready to lose her.
This week I finished up the first book of the Mistborn Trilogy, but rather than jumping into book 2 next week, let’s take a beat to honor a fallen hero. Next week I’ll be reading “My Own Words” by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I hope you’ll join me.
This week I’ve been reading…
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
Spoilers for Mistborn: The Final Empire Below
Parts 4 and 5 of the Final Empire are about privilege and faith. I won’t give away the dramatic ending of the book, but I think it’s important to talk about the underlying themes.
Despite their misgivings following the crushing defeat of the Skaa army in Part 3, Kelsier’s crew agrees to forge ahead with the plan to overthrow the Lord-Ruler by removing powerful Noble families from the Capital City and disrupting the supply of Atium which will greatly reduce the Lord-Ruler’s power. Aside from it now seeming like a suicide mission, most of the crew is uncomfortable with the way that Kelsier has set himself up to be a religious figure among the Skaa. Whether or not he intended to do it, he has developed a cult-like following and they worry that even if successful they may be replacing one Lord-Ruler with another.
I’ve read other works by Brandon Sanderson, and religion almost always plays a role in his writing. In this case, the reader is challenged to question the idea of faith, both in a deity and in the organizations that form to worship them. The Lord-Ruler is an immortal god-king, with enormous power, and the Ministry that he formed to maintain that power is inherently corrupt. Despite being seemingly immortal however, the journal stolen from his palace reveals that he was born a regular person. The Skaa who are beginning to worship Kelsier are not necessarily better off in the long run. Kelsier isn’t that different from the man the Lord-Ruler used to be.
This resonates with me on a personal level. I grew up Catholic in a home with very conservative ideals regarding religion. As an adult I rode an emotional rollercoaster for years regarding my relationship with the Church, and over time found that my faith was largely performative. I didn’t believe in the Church’s teachings because I actually had faith in them, but rather I’d simply always been told I did and didn’t have a basis for comparison. Mabel is aware of the idea of religion and god, but it’s not something that we feel is important in our daily lives. I suppose I’d describe Kevin and I as “agnostic”. At the end of the day, we just don’t really think it matters whether or not there is a god, and we aren’t really in a position to determine if there is. We want Mabel to make good choices and be a good citizen, not to avoid hell or achieve heaven, but because it is intrinsically right.
The one thing we know for sure is that organized religion almost always becomes corrupt on at least some level. And that’s what I feel like Sanderson is getting at here. No matter the intentions of religious leaders were starting out, and no matter how much faith the followers may have, at the end of the day religions are organized by and practiced by regular people, not gods. And regular people screw up, get angry/vengeful, and frequently fail to recognize their own privilege in comparison to others.
There is a very powerful scene near the end of the book, where Vin confronts Kelsier and the rest of the crew about their inherent privilege. They hate the Nobility, and feel that all Nobles are born bad. They believe the world would be better if the Nobility (which has at this point been identified as a race, different from the Skaa or Terrisman races) were all killed. Vin has fallen in love with the Nobleman Ellend Venture. She demands to know why Kelsier’s crew can’t see that they are, in essence, Nobles themselves. They live like Nobility, they don’t work as slaves in fields, or starve in alleyways the way most Skaa do (the way Vin did for most of her life). But they see themselves as Skaa, without recognizing the privilege that being born ½ Noble, and Allomancers has afforded them.
Although it was unintentional on my part, I’m really glad that I chose to read this book right now. More than ever before, I think it’s important to take a step back and examine the ways that we were born privileged — and how that privilege can be leveraged to benefit the people that have been oppressed as a result of that privilege.
Currently on my needles…
I’ve been hard at work, knitting at almost my regular pre-thumb-debacle speed, stitching away on my Mistborn scarf.
I also cast on a new sweater this week, and I thought about not including this picture because it makes me feel sad, but it also reminds me that RBG has been such an incredible force for positive change in the world.
~Megan-Anne
I dissent.
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