The Wise Man's Fear Quote Analysis

A person’s belongings reveals a great deal about who they are. A boy’s polished sneakers may display his supercilious attitude, or perhaps signify that he is poor and has few items of worth, thus explaining the importance of keeping his beloved shoes scrubbed clean. A girl’s broken, battered baseball bat (Alliteration) may show off her rebellious nature, or perhaps elucidate how she learned to play baseball because she wanted her father to be proud of her. Objects tell a story. In Patrick Rothfuss’s novel, The Wise Man’s Fear, the protagonist Kvothe recounts his own tale, all of which can be connected to one object or another. Some events that occur to him include being poisoned by a bane that makes him lose all personal restraint, meeting

It is a fleeting reference, but it holds a value of importance. Kvothe, taking the name of Kote in the guise of an innkeeper, attempts to persuade the smith’s apprentice from enlisting into the army by telling him the truth of who he is. For proof of his identity, the smith’s apprentice asks to see the one item only the true Kvothe would possess: “If you really are… Can you show me your shadow cloak then?” (Rothfuss 21-22). This is the first time the reader is introduced to the premise of Kvothe owning a shadow cloak, but it is known immediately to be an item of impossible equivalent. It is an identifier of the great, legendary Kvothe, so by inference it must be the only one of its kind. The book jumps back and forth between the telling of Kvothe’s youth and his present-day life as Kote, so the reader is left in the unknown to what the cloak of shadows is or what exactly it does. All that is known is its incredible power. This mention in itself, however, is not what makes the shadow cloak foreshadowing. While a comment of Kvothe’s shadow cloak has only been made once, there has been multiple references to a shadow cloak of a different owner: “I had seen Haliax wearing shadow all around him like a mantle (Rothfuss 140). Haliax is the leader of the Chandrian, a band of demons that murder Kvothe’s family. He is known in the legends to wear a cloak made of shadows, keeping his face in a perpetual state of

Throughout Kvothe’s retelling of his life, he has yet to mention anything of this sword. This is peculiar, as it is clear that he cherishes and treasures the weapon. He did, after all, wait months for a specially commissioned mount board just so he could prop it up in his tavern’s drinking room. A man would not go to such lengths, or bestow such a fanciful name, for the sake of a common knife. Kvothe’s sword adequately symbolizes his current self: “It wasn’t a particularly beautiful sword, not ornate or eye-catching. It was menacing, in a way” (Rothfuss 6). With this same description, one could also accurately portray Kvothe. Like the sword, Kvothe is unassuming. He is now Kote, a common innkeeper rather than a hero of stories. Yet also like the sword, he holds a hidden danger within him, a sharpness. He may not appear threatening or overly intimidating, but if he wished to, he could skillfully kill. Similarly, both Kvothe and his sword have been taken away from their true purpose. A sword is meant for the battlefield, but instead it is kept pinned to a wall, gathering a layer of dust. Kvothe is meant to adventure and change the world, but instead is holed up in a rustic village in the middle of nowhere, serving apple cider. Perhaps the biggest similarity between Kvothe and his sword is their air of mystery. Although we know that the sword was used to fight, we do not know why, nor for what