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Part 3, Chapter 19
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Forty Rules of Love, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Spirituality
Connections Across Distance and Time
Appearances vs. Reality
Storytelling and Truth
Summary
Analysis
Sultan Walad. Konya, December 1245. Sultan Walad can’t stand to hear the gossip going around about Rumi, even though Sultan Walad himself knows it’s not true. He thinks that many people in the world struggle to understand what true friendship looks like. It doesn’t help that, while Shams is charismatic, he also has a way of making people dislike him. When Sultan Walad brings these concerns up to Shams, Shams seems unconcerned. He tells a story about how people carry their own fears and biases with them and how the weight of all this can crush them.
Although Sultan Walad is less focused on reputation than his younger brother, Aladdin, he still can’t stand to hear people disrespecting Rumi. It frustrates him that people see Shams as a heretic, only judging surface-level things about him rather than getting to know the depth of Shams’s devotion to spirituality. Sultan Walad proves himself more open-minded than Aladdin, however, when Shams tells a story to explain to Sultan Walad why he shouldn’t worry about the rumors going around in Konya.
Active
Themes
