Eye of the World: Early Chapters

Spoiler alert, again!

How far along am I? Rand has just gotten back to Emond's Field after the Trolloc attack on his farm house.

The first thing I remember thinking when I read EotW the first time, was how much the beginning was like The Fellowship of the Ring, and the flight of Frodo and the other hobbits to Bree, and then Rivendell. I got that feeling again as I was reading the beginning chapters. I have since read that Jordan purposefully created the Two Rivers to be similar to the Shire. What he wanted to do was begin like Tolkien, then see where he could go with it.

All of this is perfectly fine with me, I imagine there aren't many fantasy stories that don't borrow ideas from myth, and Tolkien might as well be myth to a lot of us. He was dead before I was born, even. Jordan borrowed many elements of his stories to use as skeletons for his characters. Rand as Tyr, Mat as Odin, and Perrin as Thor/Perun, etc. Many of the Forsaken are named similarly to demons from various traditions. Jordan could then flesh these characters out creating something new, from a framework that has existed for a long, long time. When reading, we might deep down feel a sense of grandeur at these characters, because some elements that make them up are ancient, or just as good as ancient. Sometimes we know where we've seen these parts before (A Short Cut to Mushrooms, from FotR) and sometimes it lies on the edge of remembrance, just out of reach (do I really remember Tyr from Norse mythology?).

The point of all of this is that I see the value in borrowing from other mythos while creating a new one. Fantasy is a giant web of myths, always being spun out from the center by new creators.