When I finished rereading The Wise Man’s Fear, I remembered why people are so angry about not having a third installment in the Kingkiller Chronicle after all these years. While I understand the existence of this anger, I cannot sympathize with it. Any other emotion would be justifiable– sadness, distress, longing, concern– but the vitriol Rothfuss has received over the wait has become excessive. There is more to this controversy, which has only increased since he failed to deliver a prologue chapter promised during his 2023 charity stream, but I still find the intensity of fans’ anger unwarranted. That being said, it speaks to the extent of Rothfuss’ talent that people are enraged he has not written more about Kvothe.
The Name of the Wind introduces readers to Kvothe, a legendary magician and fighter, although these two words seem thin and flimsy as ways to describe him. He was born a trouper and trained in sympathetic magic at a young age, before his family was murdered by a mysterious group believed to be legend– the Chandrian. Kvothe then lived in the forest for a few months before moving to the nearest city, Tarbean, and staying there for three years. Eventually, he decided to make his way to the University, where he could continue his studies in sympathy and explore other fields of study such as alchemy, artificing, mathematics, linguistics, and naming (a more esoteric magic). Despite the similarity between Kvothe and Faust’s academic ambitions, they were otherwise unsimilar in their upbringing. Faust, in Goethe’s play, grew up under the tutelage of his father and is wracked with guilt in his old age over poisoning townsfolk under his father’s instruction during a plague. Kvothe’s guilt, however, stems from a feeling that he should have died with the rest of his troupe; later his guilt will be for a different, yet-to-be revealed cause. This was at first disappointing; if they end up the same way– if they really do have the same story, shouldn’t they have the same upbringing? But really all this is about who they become. Their pasts, although different, do indeed take them down the same road eventually. This does not become clear until The Wise Man’s Fear, once Kvothe is strongly encouraged to leave the University for a time because of the enemies he has made both within and without it. That, along with the fact that he has hit a dead end with his studies forces him to reenter the “real world,” just like Faust when the action of the play really kicks up and Mephistopheles takes him gallivanting.
I have so much more to say on the similarities between not only Kvothe and Faust in The Wise Man’s Fear, but also between Kvothe’s love interest Denna and Faust’s beloved Margarete, all of which will have to wait for the time and space in my final paper recapping my work this summer. Over the past few months, I’ve been struck several times by the feeling that this work– the reading, the writing, examining these characters and themes– is what I love doing. I’m grateful to have found my niche and to have had the opportunity to marry my academic interests to personal ones.