Ruin In The Mistborn Series

In the Mistborn series, by Brandon Sanderson, the main, overarching villain, Ruin, is used to represent the very nature of destruction and to reinforce the recurring belief in the book that all things, good or bad, must come to an end.

Ruin, a deity that embodies the essence of destruction, serves as a peculiar, shadowy villain throughout the entire series. Throughout the books, Ruin puts into place many events, most importantly, the corruption of the main character, Vin’s mother and, consequently, Vin herself. This is the earliest instance of Ruin’s touch in the entire book series, and it serves to develop a reasoning behind Ruin’s actions and how he will go to any amount of planning to achieve his goal. Without Ruin establishing a connection

An early example Ruin’s influence causing new beginnings is when one of Vin’s mentors, Kelsier, is imprisoned as a virtual slave and witnesses the death of his wife, all according to Ruin’s plan. While this may seem like another example of Ruin’s malevolence, the following actions of Kelsier show that good can come out of dark places. Kelsier eventually grows to be a father figure towards Vin, instilling in her the qualities and ideas that would eventually lead to Ruin’s own destruction. Furthermore, after escaping from his incarceration, Kelsier was trained by an enigmatic old man that turned out to be crazy, allowing him to be controlled by Ruin. Without the old man, Kelsier would never have fully developed his powers, and the events of the book series would never have taken place. Kelsier stresses throughout the series that the man he was died in prison, and from a literary standpoint, he’s not that wrong. After that first rebirth, many other events sculpted him into the character that could help save the world, and one of those defining moments was his training with the old man. Additionally, at the very end of the book series Vin and another major character die to finally destroy Ruin, making it seem like Ruin succeeded in some small part by taking away the people that were set up to be the leaders of future civilizations. However, their actions proceeding their death allowed a prosperous civilization to develop over the following millennium, as chronicled by the next section of the Mistborn series. They were symbolically reborn as the essence of what civilization should be, and this could only take place because of Ruin’s pushes and influence in the past. In this, Ruin is unique. He not only acts as a villain and destroyer but also as the force that pushes the characters into