Themes and Allusions
Robert Jordan has stated that he consciously intended the early chapters of The Eye of the World to evoke the Shire of Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Other strong allusions to The Lord of the Rings exist as well, particularly the incorporeal and invisible Dark Lord, the dark home realm of Mordor compared to Thakan'dar (as well as Shayol Ghul to the fiery pit of Mount Doom). Additional similarities exist between Trollocs and Orcs, Myrddraal and Nazgûl, Padan Fain and Gollum, Lan and Aragorn, Moiraine and Gandalf, Baerlon and Bree, The Mountains of Mist and The Misty Mountains, The Ways and Moria, The Black Wind and The Balrog, and the Green Man and Treebeard.
The Eye of the World is a coming of age story (Bildungsroman), in which young people mature, experience new things, and accept greater responsibilities. Another theme prominent in the book is the nature of trust; the people of the Two Rivers have to rely on Moiraine, but they fear she is only manipulating them and using them for her own ends.
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“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)