Primal Pattern
During the series, it is revealed that Amber itself is but the first "Shadow" of a Primal pattern located when the Unicorn of Order leads Corwin to a previously unseen location. The Primal Pattern is guarded by a purple Griffin named Wixer that apparently has also been placed there to guard Dworkin (previously thought deceased), as Dworkin has, at this point, lost much of his mental faculties. This Primal Pattern is damaged prior to the events of Nine Princes In Amber Amberite blood was spilled on it — the blood of Martin, son of Random, Oberon's youngest acknowledged child. Oberon attempts to repair the Pattern, although he realizes the process will kill him. Brand, whom Dworkin acknowledged as his most apt pupil in study on the Pattern, suggests that such repair may not be possible. Brand also suggests when Corwin is inscribing his own Pattern that there cannot be two such centers of order in the multiverse, and that it is necessary to destroy Corwin's Pattern before he can inscribe his own. However, Oberon successfully repairs the Pattern, and it is seen to coexist peacefully with Corwin's Pattern - possibly because both are merely reflections of the Pattern in the Jewel of Judgment.
It is implied that nobody could successfully repair the damaged Pattern perfectly, or reproduce it as it originally was: and that their own personality would be inevitably imprinted on it in the attempt. This is accepted — and desired — by Brand, who wished to destroy the Pattern outright and re-create a new Pattern in his own image, with himself as architect of the new Universe: and a fact either not known or misunderstood by Corwin, who attempts to faithfully recreate the old Pattern (after Brand deceives him into believing Oberon to have failed in his attempt to repair the original) only for his new Pattern to not only evolve differently but eventually resist the attempts of the successfully-repaired Pattern to incorporate it. It follows, from this (and from the fact of Corwin's successful creation of a New Pattern, in which he did not die) that it may not have been necessary for Oberon to die in repairing the Old Pattern: and thus that, since Oberon did indeed die, he may even have done so willingly (and known in advance that this was necessary) as a way to avoid imprinting his personality on the Old Pattern at its re-completion. At any rate, after its repair, the Old Pattern (when displaying sentience) does not appear to display any characteristics of Oberon's personality.
Read more about this topic: The Pattern
Famous quotes containing the words primal and/or pattern:
“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)