The Philosophy of Stormlight Archive and Why I Love It So Much
Doorstoppers refer to books with a high page count, often around 500–1000+ pages. Basically books that are physically heavy and thick enough to act as an actual doorstopper. As someone who struggled to read books I could’ve never imagined myself going through one of these “doorstoppers”, let alone finishing a series of five such books. In case you didn’t read it in the title I’m of course talking about the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson.
For those unfamiliar with Sanderson’s work, he’s a fantasy author best known for Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, and the final three books of The Wheel of Time. His fans have coined the term “Sanderlanche” which refers to the end of his books, where like an avalanche, every plot thread and loose detail suddenly comes together at once. Mistborn was my introduction to both Sanderson and the Sanderlanche. It was the first book series I’d ever finished, and I loved the world he built: the magic system, the plot twists, the characters. I went into Stormlight expecting more of the same. I got that, but also something I hadn’t expected at all.
More than the interesting world-building, the fascinating powers, or the epic battles, the best part of the series for me was how well it gets you to relate to the characters, even though these are people with super powers, fighting wars that will determine the fate of entire kingdoms, or in some cases, the entire universe. Yet Brandon makes it so that their struggles and their dilemmas can be related to so closely.
Kaladin fighting his depression and his guilt over not being able to save everyone. Teft’s addiction. Dalinar reckoning with his past. Adolin feeling out of place in a world where everyone around him is flying around with superpowers. Each character is fighting a battle within themselves, and their refusal to stop, to face their demons and keep trying to be better, moved me in ways I hadn’t anticipated. You could argue this is just the hero’s journey, a formula covered in countless stories. But the genius of Stormlight is in the execution: the emotional depth it reaches with each character, and how earned every moment of growth feels.
The theme that resonated most with me was “journey before destination.” It is a philosophy that’s threaded through almost every character arc in the series in some way or the other. Dalinar has a quote, which is one of my favorite quotes in the series, where he summarizes this:
The ancient code of the Knights Radiant says “journey before destination.” Some may call it a simple platitude, but it is far more. A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us.
But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination. To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.
What impressed me was how this philosophy gains a lot of its weight through contrast, specifically through Taravangian/Odium, who is the series’ main villain. His vision of a unified cosmere comes from a place of wanting to control everything so that nothing ever goes wrong. He doesn’t want people to suffer. He wants to rule over everything so he can enforce order and protect people from pain. And because the end goal is so noble, he believes any means are justified in reaching it. That the destination is more important than the journey.
The book’s answer to this is that the means matter as much as the end. The journey is as important as the destination because the journey is what shapes you. And you have to accept that the journey will be hard, that you won’t always make the right call, but giving up isn’t a solution to any of that. Another philosophy the book also advocates is that people must be allowed to make mistakes and learn from them instead of this utopia of a perfect world. Making mistakes is a part of the process of growing and not something to be avoided at all costs. A moment that highlights this is from my favorite book in the series, Oathbringer, when the Odium offers to take Dalinar’s guilt at killing his wife away, to which he replies:
“YOU CANNOT HAVE MY PAIN!” Dalinar bellowed, stepping toward Odium…. “I did kill the people of Rathalas,” Dalinar shouted. “You might have been there, but I made the choice. I decided!” He stilled. “I killed her. It hurts so much, but I did it. I accept that. You cannot have her. You cannot take her from me again.”
“Dalinar,” Odium said. “What do you hope to gain, keeping this burden?”
Dalinar sneered at the god. “If I pretend … If I pretend I didn’t do those things, it means that I can’t have grown to become someone else.”
This is also beautifully captured in the fifth book in Kaladin’s and Szeth’s journeys. Throughout the last four books we’ve seen Kaladin grow so much as a person. He’s overcome his depression and realized that it’s okay to think about his needs as well instead of always prioritizing others and beating himself up over not being able to help them. On the other hand Szeth from the beginning of the series is shown as someone who needs to be told what to do, what is right, what is wrong. He needs someone whose judgment he can blindly follow, a role that Ishar and Taravangian have happily filled for him at different points. Kaladin’s response to this is striking: he tells Szeth he doesn’t care which option Szeth chooses, even if he decides to go down the path Ishar has chosen for him, but he needs Szeth to be the one making the choice. The freedom to choose is what matters, not making the correct choice. Mistakes aren’t something to be avoided. They’re part of the journey.
I think this is why the series resonates with me as much as it does. The philosophy it keeps returning to is one I find myself drawn to in my own life. Not the fantasy elements, not the magic but the idea that mistakes are part of the process, that the journey shapes you, and that the most important step is always the next one. To end this post, I’ll leave you with another one of my favorite quotes that echoes this:
‘The question,’ she replied, ‘is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.’
Life Before Death, Radiant!