Lift Up Your Hearts!

Before I published When We Feel the Darkness Closing In, I asked Copilot to analyze it. Not to analyze the writer's character, or to make suggestions for its improvement, but simply to analyze it. Here is Copilot's response:

What a stirring connection you've drawn between Tolkien’s resolute lines and Sanderson’s towering epic. That quotation pulses with the same kind of heroic endurance that defines much of The Stormlight Archive—where characters are constantly called to rise, even when every light seems to fade.

Tolkien’s verse, in that Anglo-Saxon cadence, echoes a warrior’s defiant cry in the face of inevitable loss. It’s not about delusion or denial, but a deep, unwavering conviction: as the external world crumbles, inner strength must grow fiercer. There’s a spiritual nobility here—not of victory, but of refusal to submit to despair. Courage becomes the last fortress of identity.

That resonates beautifully with what Sanderson often explores—the moral power of perseverance. In Wind and Truth, as in the preceding books, characters like Kaladin and Dalinar grapple with their own breaking points. The greater the darkness, the more luminous their choice to still act with honor. It’s an echo of that Tolkienian ethos: "though doom shall come and dark conquer." It's not just a grim forecast, but a challenge—will you still stand?

This intertextual connection speaks to the timelessness of these themes: that even in defeat, there can be dignity. Even when the arc bends toward darkness, the human (or Alethi, or Elantrian…) spirit can blaze defiantly.

I was impressed with Copilot's take on both authors.

Next, I asked it to write its own essay comparing Wind and Truth with the Tolkien poem.

Resilience in the Shadow of Doom: Tolkien’s Warrior Ethos and Sanderson’s Radiant Resolve

J.R.R. Tolkien’s verse—“Heart shall be bolder, harder be purpose, more proud the spirit as our power lessens!”—is a rallying cry from a fading battlefield, uttered not in the expectation of survival, but in the celebration of courage without hope. This ethos, grounded in the Anglo-Saxon concept of northern courage, reverberates through modern fantasy literature. Nowhere is this echo more profound than in Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth, the sweeping culmination of the first arc of The Stormlight Archive. Though born of different ages and aesthetics, Tolkien’s martial stoicism and Sanderson’s radiant optimism converge in their reverence for characters who shine brightest in their darkest hour.

Tolkien’s lines come from The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, a dramatization of a historical defeat where death is certain and valor is clung to not for victory, but for dignity. His words define heroism as defiance. As the shadow lengthens and ruin seems inevitable, the warrior does not shrink—he strengthens. His “mind shall not falter nor mood waver,” even as “dark conquer[s].”

In Wind and Truth, Sanderson too grapples with doom—but reshapes the terms. His heroes are not fated to fall but must instead choose to rise. Kaladin Stormblessed, wracked by PTSD and despair, stands again and again—because others need him to. Dalinar Kholin embraces responsibility not because he expects to win, but because facing the storm head-on is who he has become. The Light of the Radiants is not a guarantee of salvation, but a symbol of the fight for it.

Where Tolkien venerates heroic death, Sanderson exalts heroic living. His characters endure agony and moral compromise not to achieve eternal glory, but to protect others, to be better than who they were. Yet both authors root their philosophy in the same soil: strength under pressure reveals the truest self.

Tolkien offers a bitter beauty in the last stand. Sanderson offers hope that the stand might not be the last. Yet both share a faith in the power of chosen purpose. When Kaladin whispers his oaths in the face of annihilation, we hear echoes of Tolkien’s dying warrior. When Tolkien’s verse proclaims the heart grows bolder, we see Dalinar’s refusal to be broken.

In the end, Wind and Truth and Tolkien’s verse are not opposites—they are two faces of the same coin. One sings a dirge to loss with pride; the other sings a hymn to endurance with light. Both remind us: when the darkness comes, what matters most is not whether we win—but whether we dare to stand.

I rather like it!