#sam vimes hates his darkness for interfering with his good
Not to be all confrontational but if you can read the Watch series without recognizing that Carrot (who starts out as a sixteen year old) learns as much or more from Vimes than Vimes ever does from him, your close reading needs some work.
Vimes is the reason that Carrot is not the most disturbing and terrifying force that the City has ever seen, and the best part is that he literally has zero power over Carrot that is not 100% based in moral suasion. And without that - without the things that Vimes has taught him and the ethics that Vimes brings to the table - Carrot would very, very quickly have turned into a horror-show, and the worst kind of horror-show, because his charisma and Destiny would mean that people would want to obey him.
And this was going to be a quick ranty-post but shit, here, have a huge essay instead.
Hyup. This. Vimes spends the whole series learning - or at least, having his idea of who should be included among the People whom he serves and protects challenged on a regular basis - but not from Carrot.
I’m not sure I totally agree. Carrot is fundamentally a good person. Vimes is a positive influence and a mentor, but Carrot doesn’t follow him blindly. Carrot chooses to follow Vimes because Vimes is a good role model for many things. But without Vimes Carrot wouldn’t turn into a mad king. Carrot is genuinely good and part of that is that he chooses to follow and learn from good influences. Vimes absolutely has an impact on Carrot, but let’s not downplay Carrot’s role.
There is a reason we have the saying “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
Being “a fundamentally good person” is not actually something that exists. You can have a fundamentally well-intentioned person, but the actual “being a good person” is based on what you do. It is based not only on your intentions in your actions, but also their results, your awareness of the results, your decisions and what motivates them.
Carrot spends a huge chunk of Men At Arms being an absolute racist twit about the undead while speaking directly to Angua, a werewolf. He does it because he doesn’t know better, but absolutely no part of his “fundamentally good person”ness stops him, at any point, from literally telling a werewolf that he wishes the undead “would just go back to where they came from”, or that the undead aren’t “our kind of people”, or that he just doesn’t like them.
When he first discovers Angua is a werewolf he literally draws his weapon on her.
Carrot’s initial comments on discovering that Cheery Littlebottom is in fact Cheri Littlebottom and has decided to assert her gender is to act like she’s just shat on the carpet, and includes being horrified and offended, saying “I’ve got nothing against females, I’m pretty sure my stepmother is one” and “[other female dwarves] have the decency not to show it.”
And as noted, in Jingo he comes very close to literally going off to use his charisma to wade into the middle of wars he knows nothing about to Fix Everything, and let me tell you, if you don’t know why the White Saviour complex is a bad thing - !
And even by the point of Thud! Carrot thinks the way to solve the whole “the dwarf and troll officers are quitting” thing is to make it so dwarf and troll officers don’t have to patrol together! …..to impose racial segregation in policing. Aka “the technique best guaranteed to result in police abuse of vulnerable citizens.” Without Vimes nixing it, this would have been the view of Captain Carrot.
That would have gone GREAT, right?
Carrot is a fundamentally honest, honourable, generous and well-intentioned person.
Absolutely no part of that is going to stop him from committing or causing major evil in the world, because of his reality-warping Destiny and Charisma. Because ethics are actually more fucking complicated than that, and intentions are only necessary, not sufficient.
He would never intend to be an evil king. But that means fuck all: the combination of ignorance, self-righteousness (and Carrot DEFINITELY has that problem sometimes) and power would result in evil being the outcome.
What makes Carrot as much of an actual good person as he is?
Is that when he’s wrong about the undead, he stops acting like that. And when Angua smacks him upside the head about being an ass about Cheri, he eventually shuts up about it.
And he chose very good role models to actually imitate, including - significantly - Vimes, so when Vimes says “don’t be a fucking idiot” about going off to Save Klatch, Carrot doesn’t do it.
Carrot is absolutely an active part of that process: Carrot chose who to take as his model, Carrot chose who got to put words in his head based on what he saw as the good that Vimes did. It didn’t happen by fiat, and it didn’t happen because Vimes actively intervened: it happened because Carrot the sixteen year old looked at Vimes and SAW someone who was good and decided “I want to be like that.”
But Carrot’s choices to learn, choices to have the humility to realize when he fucked up, choices to keep trying, and his choices in deciding who he wants to be like? That’s what makes him good. And we are given in-text, specific examples of times when his “fundamental goodness” is vastly insufficient to keep him from holding horrible opinions/beliefs and working his way up to do extreme harm.
All this, plus I also can’t help but think of Gaspode’s reasoning in Fifth Element, specifically wondering if Carrot really is as straightforward and ignorant of his effect on others as they tend to think he is. With specific reference to Gavin saving Carrot from Wolfgang and getting killed in the process.
I believe that Carrot came into Ankh Morpork thinking he was or wanting to be a Good Person. Fortunately, for him this means paying attention to what that means. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see if what you’re doing is good or bad when everyone’s response to you is to just go with your flow. Enter Sam Vimes.
Not only is Vimes the way he is without direct prompting from Carrot, he was that way before Carrot came along and he’s that way when not in Carrots presence.* Further, Sam Vimes seems perhaps a bit too stubborn to be affected by Carrots Charisma very much.** More than anything this is what makes Carrot pay attention to who Vimes is as it gives him reason to think he’s doing something wrong. Now, there are other people who appear to avoid the worst of the effects of Carrots aura, but they dont appear to have the moral compass that Vimes does. Maybe Carrot decided to listen to Vimes because he felt Vimes’ compass pointed north, as it were, or maybe not. I think it’s a combination of a little bit of that and mostly the imprinting OP mentioned.
*Carrots charisma has been noted to wear off after a while (it still has lasting effects of course)
**I think pretty much the only time we see Vimes actually fall away to a direct command from Carrot is the aforementioned gonne situation and that was pretty clearly because Carrot played on Vimes’ identity as a watchman, rather than just plain charisma.
This was ringing bells to me, and I was trying to remember what I recently read that had that same kind of theme.
It starts off looking like “angry old person has lost their idealism and is trying to shit on a bright shiny youth and take away their hope”,
but as time goes on it turns out that it’s actually
“angry old person has actually seen enough to completely warrant being angry
but
despite having entirely lost their idealism has not lost their ideals
but
has thoroughly internalized the fact that the world is complicated and that what seems like a great solution when looked at from a simple idealistic perspective may in fact be the kind of thing that leads to exactly the things that caused them to lose their idealism
and therefore
is continuously telling the bright shiny youth that they need to stop charging ahead and if they can’t stop and think for a second before they do something then they should bloody well stop doing anything at all“
… it was Witches Abroad. This same dynamic plays out with Granny Weatherwax and Magrat.There are lots of parallels between Vimes and Esme.
However, Vimes does something Esme doesn’t, which is actually bothers to teach what he knows.
This is something Esme actually gets rightfully called out on by Agnes (and to some extent Pastor Oats) in particular and which she’s aware enough by the time she’s invested in Tiffany that she very explicitly and deliberately finds Tiffany other teachers because the best that she can do is let someone hang around her and attempt to learn from example (which is itself actually quite difficult, because she deliberately lies and obfuscates about what she’s doing and why).
When Carrot starts to wax about how good things could be when there were kings, in Men At Arms, Vimes not only says HELL NO, he then spends the next several pages explaining at length and in detail WHY kings are a bad idea. It’s not necessarily the most coherent explanation, but he’s trying.
When Magrat makes noises about wishing the world good, Esme insults her and tells her she’s a stupid useless child and Magic Is Bad - and then goes on to use magic, because (as Gytha observes in that very book) Esme excludes herself from her own proclamations.
We figure out WHY that is, through Lords and Ladies, and through Maskerade and especially and above all through Carpe Jugulum: it’s because she’s always been bad at people, at liking and interacting with people, and she’s lonely, and afraid of her own power, and afraid not only that people dislike her and hold her in contempt but (and this is the worst part) that they’re RIGHT to do so, and she’s never allowed herself to rely on or connect with anybody and she doesn’t TRUST anybody to have her back.
She thinks it’s much more likely - even after all those years, even after Wyrd Sisters and how hard the other two have stuck with her, and after Lords and Ladies and the fact that Magrat ever forgave her for her (bluntly) high handed BS, even after ALL of it - that Magrat explicitly did not invite her to the naming of her daughter, than it is that maybe something just happened to the invite.
And the thing is:
I empathize with Esmerelda Weatherwax so effing hard, man. I know exactly what it feels like when you’re in that moment. When you can’t actually bring yourself just to go down there (or even to storm down there and demand where your invitation got to, what is with this? or even ASK?), despite everything, despite years, because you’re pushy and bossy and loud and abrupt and unpleasant and despite everything maybe they have all just been waiting for you to figure it out and go away, and were too scared to tell you.
As Oats observes, Esme needs someone to beat, or else she beats herself.
But the result is that Esme, whatever her sterling qualities as a witch and as a defender of the world against the shit witches defend against, and all that, is a fuck-awful teacher. And Wyrd Sisters is honestly the perfect example of that.
And the contrast of Esme’s refusal to even discuss with Magrat why the things she says are so, vs Vimes LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING BOY - ! is a good contrast to look at. And moreover I think it’s one that Esme herself would look at: I think there’s a REASON that her response to discovering Tiffany was to send Tiffany around to OTHER witches, ones who WERE better at actually, you know, engaging with people, and being an example rather than a teacher. And I think that was a good call.
Which is the other thing I love about Esme: she DOES figure that out. And it might be too late for her to radically change, but she can at least be AWARE of that and adjust around it.
Vimes had advantages that Esme lacked - Vimes was part of the Watch, which taught its members to work together, because they had to rely on each other.
Witch society discouraged cooperation, and taught its members that competition against all other witches was Just How Things Are Done.
And when Young Sam was in danger of becoming the worst sort of Watchman, Old Sam arrived and taught him what sort of Watchman he needed to be.
Esme had to learn what sort of Witch she wanted to be all on her own, without help from anyone, because back when she was Young Esme showing any sign of weakness to the other Witches would result in social ruin and the destruction of her livelihood.
When Young Sam felt the darkness begin boiling inside him, Old Sam was there to teach him how to leash it in, and to trust in others to help him do it when he needed it - and how to tell who was worthy of that sort of trust.
Esme, whether because of an inborn moral sense or just because she was so contrary that her sister choosing to become a Bad Witch meant that she had to become a Good Witch to spite her, saw no choice but to keep her darkness locked away in the deepest, most remote corners of her soul, and she had to keep everyone at arm’s distance or further because if anyone ever got too close, they might see the inmost self that she was afraid might be hers. And she couldn’t even trust herself - instead, she had to rely on an absolute certainty that everything was black and white, never grey, because grey was just a lighter and more palatable shade of black.
Yup. Which is again tied up in why I think how she handled Tiffany thru to I Shall Wear Midnight* is very indicative of the part where she realized that this entire model fucked her up.
I don’t think the process is finished, mind, as Tiffany is still a bit hyper concerned with Independence in ISWM but even so a lot of the explicit plot of that one is “guess what: try to do everything alone and you’ll LITERALLY FAIL”.
And otherwise not only is Tiffany’s generation of witches more actively, deliberately social and mutually supportive than Esme and Gytha’s, but Annagramma (who is actually the one closest to Esme in behaviour and personality, just having found Eawig as her Mentor) is the explicit benefactress of that support.
Which is to say: they actively and deliberately avoid creating another Esme (and worse, an Esme who WOULDN’T have been as good at being a good witch and so much likelier to go the way of Lily.)
I think specific bits of Maskerade (namely: Agnes calling her RIGHT OUT in SO MANY WORDS - “I’d rather be someone else’s voice than a sour old woman with no friends who’s just a bit cleverer than everyone, bullying people all the time” - right when she was in fact realizing how small her world could be) and all of Carpe Jugulum (and arguably The Sea and Little Fishes) forced Esme to actually recognize the huge, gaping flaws in how things went and not want this new, hyper-bright girl she’d just found who went off to rescue her brother from the Fairie Queen to get stuck with them. And to try to manage things so that it might go differently.
(There’s also a lot to be said about the NATURE of existing in a city, as Vimes must, vs being able to be the Old Witch Out In The Woods in a rural context: when there’s six people to one room flat, you want to get anything done you HAVE to cooperate and work in supportive groups. There’s hella downsides to that, too! But.)
(*the last book I don’t really include, because among other things it really was unfinished when Pterry died and thanks to him being contrary we can’t even quite know HOW much difference there would be between a draft at that point of completion and an actual Finished Book because he destroyed all his drafts after publication. Which is entirely a legit thing for him to do, but results in things being Opaque.)
I cannot express how incredibly happy I am that Discworld Discourse has appeared on my dash.
One thing I think is interesting about the Carrot-Vimes dynamic is that we all know Carrot can Influence almost anyone. Even the most aware individuals at best kinda know when they’re being Influenced by his magical-royal-charisma, and still find themselves going along with it anyway. But it doesn’t properly work on Vimes. Genetics on the Disc work differently to our own and Vimes, I think, inherited Old Stoneface’s mental immunity to kingship. Carrot, in all of Ankh-Morpork, found and latched on to the one man who could actually guide him.
And that’s important. He chose a good role model, and that was vital, but more than just finding someone who knew right from wrong, he found someone who could be trusted to truly have his own will. And I think it’s possible that under the layers of cheerful obfuscation, Carrot knows this. Carrot knows he can do wrong, and he knows he can Influence people, and what he needs more than anything is someone like Vimes. Because Carrot knows, eventually at least, that, unlike so many other people, if Vimes agrees with his idea it’s because Vimes is agreeing with the idea and not just agreeing withCarrot.
Crack theory time, and one that Sam Vimes would absolutely detest: He and Carrot are written in to narrative causality around the good king and his wise adviser. Carrot is clearly some sort of narrativly ordained king of the people, but what is a true and noble archetypal king without a trusted mentor and sage? The Vimeses exist a narrative counterpart and parallel lineage to the “rightful kings”.
Ankh-Morpork has always been a city of duality, two halves, two founders, why not two lines? The line of the kings of rule, who speak and are listened to, who wield the power of the king. And the line of the voices of Law to act as a counterbalance, who are ruled bythe people, and serve justice. The king rules from the top down with his voice, and the Law rules from the bottom up, as the voice of the people.
Vimes and Granny Weatherwax both exist as grumpy, bitter bastions of justice who are very clear about the fact they will never rule but they’re bloody well keeping an eye on whoever is. Both of them strive to be Good and struggle with a world that makes is hard, people who’s stupidity makes it hard, and a deep well of darkness in them both that must be overcome. But it’s from different directions for each of them.
Sam Vimes set out to be good, and knows he has failed at times but he always wanted to be good I guess? The world may have beaten him down but his internal compass naturally aims due Good, and he feels good when he achieves it. But Esme? Not so much. Esme is good in spite of her natural inclinations. She felt her sister stripped her of her agency in becoming evil because she had to be the good one. Esme isGood and, as with most things she sets her mind to, she’s good at it, if not nice, but she resents it. Deep down, she wanted to be bad, to be evil, or at the very least, she wanted the optionto at least give evil a try or to be good by choice, not duty.
And I think that’s a fundamental divider, they both have darkness inside but the things that push Vimes to it are external, while the things that pull Granny to the dark come from herself. Sam feels rewarded for overcoming the darkness to do good, but Esme just feels robbed.
