Emily Leland

Frances McCue
Honors 205
18 November 2015
Trobriand Links to Ademre
In 1793 a French ship called Esprance blundered into an island not far from Papua
New Guinea that was populated by a people now called the Trobrianders. It wasnt until more
than a century later that a Methodist missionary became the first European to permanently
settle there. A decade after that the Trobriand Islands were officially colonized by the Australian
government, and Europeans began to visit more frequently to trade. Much to everyones
consternation the cultural practices of those living on the islands were worlds away from those
accepted by westerners. In 1915 a man named Bronislaw Manilowski came to the islands in
order to do a formal anthropological study of the people living there. His most striking
observations were those concerning Trobriand customs around sex, all of which centered on the
idea that women became pregnant as a result of an ancestral spirit of the dead, a Baloma,
entering their bodies, not by having sex.
It is important to note that the Trobrianders still have a cohesive cultural identity and that
many of their societal structures exist similarly today to how they did when Manilowski first
documented their customs. However, with the introduction of formal western education and
modern medicine the belief that sex does not have anything to with the conception of children is
fading away. It is with that historical belief and its possible historical causes and effects that this
paper is concerned.
As with most customs in subsistence horticulturalist societies, the food available to
people in the region has often been cited as an influence on cultural practices. The Trobriand
Islands have a hot, humid climate year round, and the staple food of the Trobriand, the yam,
does well with such weather. Some varieties of these yams contain chemicals with

contraceptive effects, which could historically have blurred the causal relationship between sex
and pregnancy. This confusion affected many other aspects of life. For example, the culture was
matrilineal, with mothers and not fathers giving children their true names. And because sex was
not believed to have consequences, young people were encouraged to experiment sexually and
take many casual lovers over the course of their early adolescence before they got serious and
married someone.
There are parallels to this belief and its effects in the fantasy novel The Wise Mans
Fear. Like most classic fantasy novels The Wise Mans Fear heavily relies on the medieval
settings and cultural practices of Europe for its main setting. However, the author, Patrick
Rothfuss, introduces a place called Ademre, which his hero, Kvothe, visits in the course of a
long journey. Rothfuss has previously stated that he knew about the Trobriand before writing the
book, and it is clear upon close examination that there are distinct similarities between the
Trobriand and the Adem.
When speaking to locals Kvothe discovers that the Adem believe that women simply
ripen [] like fruit and that men have no part in [conception] (Rothfuss 839). Among the
Adem this is cited as the reason for the matriarchal structure of the society, one expression of
which is that only women can give names to children and only a high ranking wise woman can
give true names to people who have been officially inducted into the mercenary society. This
mirrors the matrilineal importance of names in Trobriand society where mothers give their
children the name of an ancestor in their matrilineage which is the first public recognition of the
infants matrilineal identity (Weiner 56). There is also a similarity in that very few villagers []
are called by their true ancestral names (Weiner 56). Among both the Adem and the Trobriand
the formal ancestral names given by women are considered too private and important to use
every day. More casual nicknames are given by other members of the society of both genders
for this less important role. Matrilineal names are an important effect of the disbelief of the
existence of fathers, but are by no means the only ones.

Most importantly there are parallels between the Trobrianders and the Adems sexual
practices. Trobriand society encouraged the young to begin playing erotic games from the age
of seven or eight years old and to begin to pursue sexual partners in earnest four or five years
later (Weiner 66). Children of both genders were expected to wear minimal clothing, an
extremely short grass skirt for girls and a loin cloth for boys. Sex and nudity were seen as
natural things that children and young adults needed to learn about and experience. Similarly
there is no nudity taboo among the Adem and children are unembarrassed by sexual
references. For example in the public baths Kvothe discovers that all through the building the
Adem mingle without any regard for age, gender, or state of undress (Rothfuss 765). In both
cultures children are exposed to both nudity and sex as a matter of course.
The strongest link between the Adem and the Trobriand, aside from the core belief that
sex and pregnancy are unrelated, is the absence of a limit on the number of sexual partners.
As Weiner explains young people among the Trobriand change[d] partners often and without
reproach (Weiner 67). Women were expected to be as assertive and dominant as men when
pursuing lovers. They were eventually expected to settle down and marry one particular person
but it was an important political step based on matrilineal alliances and not something done
solely for love. The Adems customs are similar in many ways to these practices, except that
they lack the cultural concept of closed marriage. The standards for sexual conduct are
consistent across both genders as with Trobriand customs. In essence the entire society
functions under an open relationship where people might choose to live together but not be
sexually monogamous. Adem do not feel it important to keep someone elses sex to
[them]selves like a miser hoarding gold (Rothfuss 794). That sexual openness and lack of
rigidity is the most notable effect of a cultural disbelief of sex leading to pregnancy in both
societies. When the consequences of having sex are not apparent there is much less need for
society to police relationships and generate cultural frameworks for defining and proclaiming

said relationships. In the Trobriand Islands those frameworks arent used until people settle
down in their early thirties, and in Ademre they simply arent used at all.
The apparent link between the Trobriand Islanders and the Adem in The Wise Mans
Fear is an important piece of understanding the novel as a whole and the influence novels can
have on the public. By expanding the cultural scope of the novel and exposing both his
characters and the reader to a possibly alien set of cultural norms, Rothfuss is better able to
develop how his character thinks about cultural practices and possibilities, taking the reader
along for that journey. The book, despite not having what would be classically described as
literary merit, is expansive in its development of different cultural settings and does not shy
away from the customs surrounding sex, a topic filled with taboos and plagued by narrow
conceptions in western culture. In describing Adem culture in the context of a larger story that
brings readers in, Rothfuss has managed to expose millions of people to ideas that were
previously limited to anthropological case studies tucked away in the stacks at universities. The
more best-selling authors are recognized for taking the time to do the research that goes into
developing a good setting the more information can come out of ivory towers and into the hands
of people who would never be able to invest their time in things like researching the Trobriand.

Works Cited
Rothfuss, Patrick. The Wise Man's Fear. New York: DAW, 2011. Print.
Weiner, Annette B. The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1988. Print.