the name of the wind analysis — ch 1

Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 20

Hey friends, long time no write about the Name of the Wind, Kingkiller, etc. I’ve intended to do a Name of the Wind analysis reread (not to mention the other books) for some time now. — 

You should assume spoilers henceforth! Forthwith! This post shall take a fortnight of hours to read!

Table of Contents

Note about me:

Sorry it took so long to reboot this. Time’s just precious and it’s more like a bit here, a bit there situation for me. If you have a good time, subscribe to stay updated the second I release more:

If you feel like browsing around the site to related articles, I’ve interviewed well known science fiction and fantasy authors, written about scifi and fantasy, made a list of hundreds of free scifi stories on Gutenberg, talked on panels at speculative fiction conferences, and offered gobs of resources to writers and creatives.

Name of the Wind Analysis — Ch 20:

I find myself delightfully frustrated this morning because it seems to me that no one has all of the pieces. It feels in the community like that point in solving the puzzle where everyone has completed large chunks. Maybe some of us have worked on a scene with a bird, others have filled in the edges and corners, still others have put together everything containing the color blue.

But it’s not done

One of these frustrations, for instance, is if I’m wrong about Felurian specifically. I don’t think I am with Denna and Auri, but if Felurian is not a moon goddess, but the sex goddess Usnea (Venus) whose other form is the old man’s beard, and if this duality doesn’t translate to the “night with no moon,” then it’s really problematic. Because in that case, Kvothe didn’t sleep with the moon goddess, but with the Draugar or something similar. Something that will kill him, but for different reasons. Death owns his death. 

I don’t think that’s the case, but it definitely illustrates how various pieces of this don’t connect together. They can’t all be one way and also all another. 

Had Kvothe been in Tarbean before? Do we have any indication of this? I mean he asks it himself. If we assume he had, what are the consequences?

What is “Nalt?” It’s a name he uses so automatically for Kvothe, it almost sounds to me like a racial slur. Is it because of Emperor Nalto? Or something else? 

And is it accurate because Kvothe forget the fallacy that’s important? 

Anyways. 

“I would dream of my parents, alive and singing. In my dream their deaths had been a mistake, a misunderstanding, a new play they had been rehearsing. And for a few moments I had relief from the great blanketing grief that was constantly crushing me. I hugged them and we laughed at my foolish worry. I sang with them, and for a moment everything was wonderful. Wonderful.

READ NEXT:  Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 3

Is this even remotely possible? 

I suppose again if his family are the Seven and their bodies were homunculi but other than that? 

something else that really struck me about this chapter is the name Jake. This is a book that shares personalities, it shares etymologies, it shares resources and magic systems, but I really can’t think of a time outside of the insult above with Nalt where it shares names. And the only other Jake we know is the Jake and the frame story so I kind of wonder if the guys that have thought that Newhere is close to Tarbean are right. I personally have always assumed it was either inside the Eld or in some sort of third place. that’s literally nowhere between the spaces or the realm of the dead or a piece of the Fae.

but if I’m wrong and it’s actually on the map somewhere, then I really do wonder about this young boy Jake from the wagon ride into the big city 

Man that line still gives me so many memories growing up poor, knowing the poor, knowing good friends who grew up in third world contexts:

“That was the first night of nearly three years I spent in Tarbean.”

I’ll put this at the end of each chapter so we can actually navigate the text. Because this is getting unwieldy — we’re going to eventually have dozens of links — I’m going to just link to the category from here on out:


Be sure to share and comment. And subscribe.

Comment early, comment often, keep it civil:

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Please comment & share with friends how you prefer to share:

Follow The Showbear Family Circus on WordPress.com

Thanks for reading the Showbear Family Circus.
  1. Like this, very noir. Can smell the stale smoke and caustic aroma of burnt coffee. That mewling grunt of a…

  2. Years ago, (Egad, 50 years ago!) I was attending Cal (Berkeley) I happened to be downtown, just coming out of…

Copyright © 2010— 2023 Lancelot Schaubert.
All Rights Reserved.
If we catch you using any of the substance of this site to train any form of artificial intelligence, we will prosecute
to the fullest extent permitted by any law.

Human children and adults always welcome
to learn bountifully and in joy.