Unit 2: Witness, Testimony, and Argument — The Well of Ascension

• Read primary source documents and historical accounts alongside The Well of Ascension, developing skills for identifying point of view, evaluating credibility, and synthesizing contradictory accounts.

• Write analytically about primary sources using the corrupted prophecies as a case study in what happens when the archive is compromised and how a careful reader can detect the tampering.

• Understand how to analyze a primary source for perspective, context, purpose, and potential corruption.

• Use evidence from The Well of Ascension to construct an argument about how testimony functions — what makes it reliable, what makes it suspect, and what it means when powerful actors control the historical record.

• How do the prophecies about the Hero of Ages function as a form of testimony in The Well of Ascension — and what does it mean when testimony can be deliberately corrupted?

• What does Elend's struggle to govern a besieged Luthadel reveal about the relationship between personal experience and historical argument?

This unit examines witness, testimony, and the construction of historical argument through The Well of Ascension, the second Mistborn novel. After the fall of the Final Empire, Elend Venture governs a Luthadel under siege — three armies outside the walls, a koloss horde in the east, and a political assembly inside that cannot agree on anything. Meanwhile, Vin and the crew must evaluate increasingly suspect prophecies about the Hero of Ages, a set of ancient texts that Ruin has been subtly editing across centuries to ensure whoever claims the Well of Ascension releases rather than uses its power. Students examine how Sanderson uses the corrupted prophecies as a sustained argument about testimony: who creates it, who controls it, and what happens when the archive of the past is not what it appears to be.