Upon finishing The Fifth Season, I was confused about a lot of plot points. A lot of the characters jumbled together in my head and I felt like I was missing things. I felt as if there was just too much in Jemisin’s fictional world for me to take in in one reading, and wondered if I should reread the book. Pressed for time just like any college student, I debated whether or not I should do so. However, I went home for fall break resigned to reread, and I’m so glad I did, because I feel as if I gained a completely new, fuller understanding of the book. This inspired me to circle back to my previous blog posts, to my peers’ blog posts, and to Professor McCoy’s comments. I wanted to see if there was anything I had been unable to make strong connections to, that I now feel I have something new to say about. I’d like to tie in points from all three of these: Professor McCoy pointed me to similarities in Michee’s post about philosophical differences between Essun and Ykka to my post about those between Essun and Alabaster, and asked what points Jemisin is making about freedom and resistance through the differences in their attitudes towards their place in life (as orogenes in a highly oppressive society). In addition, in my first blog post, I had written about the self-hatred orogenes displayed as they called themselves “roggas.” Professor McCoy asked about the possibility not only of this slur reflecting self-hatred, but revealing an opportunity for “reclamation” of the word. I think that by discussing Ykka’s character, I can address both of these points. Continue reading “Freedom in Resistance: Ykka”
Philosophical Razors and the Instability of the Stillness
Life in the Stillness is plagued by uncertainty. When the Earth itself is unstable, so is everything built upon it, including knowledge. The incomprehensibility of various “deadciv artifacts” mentioned throughout the text, most notably the obelisks, renders it quite clear that much human ingenuity and understanding have been lost through the ages in Jemisin’s world. However, there is one universal text which seems to endure, guiding humanity season through season: the stonelore. A ubiquitous doctrine, the stonelore seems so completely integrated into the structure of Stillness society that it would collapse were it removed. Yet certain characters, particularly Syenite, are at points made to question this venerated collection of documents–both its completeness and its validity Continue reading “Philosophical Razors and the Instability of the Stillness”
Essun’s Strength in Murder
Essun shows incredible strength throughout the book, persevering through periods of enslavement and great personal loss, including when she forces herself to murder her own son to save him from a life of captivity and servitude. I think my opinion of Essun (or as she is called at the time, Syenite’s) killing of Corundum is likely to be controversial. I do not think Essun is a “bad person” for killing her son: I think she is extraordinarily brave and strong for this act. Essun knows that if Corundum is captured by the Guardians, they will turn him into a node maintainer who is permanently sedated and tortured by the Fulcrum, and bound to a wire chair for the rest of his life. She will not allow this life for her son, and thinks, “She will not let them take him, enslave him, turn his body into a tool and his mind into a weapon and his life into a travesty of freedom” (Jemisin 441). Essun then unleashes all of her power to shatter the world, in turn killing her son, as she believes “Better that a child never have lived at all than live as a slave. Better that he die. Better that she die. Alabaster will hate her for this, for leaving him alone, but Alabaster is not here, and survival is not the same thing as living” (441). Essun understands that there is a fate worse than death, and enslavement by the Fulcrum falls under this category. Her decision to kill her son is out of love for Corundum, who she knows is better off dead than having his mind and body enslaved for his whole life. While most see maternal instinct as caring for and showering children with affection, Essun’s maternal instinct in this dire situation leads her to do the right thing for her son. Continue reading “Essun’s Strength in Murder”
Excavating Old Rock Layers
Something that I couldn’t shake from the back of my mind when reading The Fifth Season was the treatment of Alabaster’s children–otherwise known as the node maintainers.
Learning that they are sedated and used for the ability to quell shakes is disturbing. However, what’s even worse is learning that the affluent stills use these sedated orogenes for their own twisted pleasure. Continue reading “Excavating Old Rock Layers”
“Death of the Author”: Lovecraft vs. Jemisin
While reading about H.P. Lovecraft and his racist and anti-Semitic beliefs in class, I was struck with the memory of a concept that I learned about in the first literature course that I took at Geneseo. “Death of the Author” is an essay written by Roland Barthes in the mid-nineteenth century about his concept of the same name. As a short summary of Barthes’s points, he argues that the consumption of art does not need to be tainted or even affected at all by the beliefs and intentions of its creator. Instead, individual readers can exert their own agency over the work. Continue reading ““Death of the Author”: Lovecraft vs. Jemisin”
Civil Disobedience or Un-civil Disobedience?
Dr. Spencer Crew, former president of the National Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, gave a lecture based on the relationship between civil disobedience, the Underground Railroad and Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was an American slavery abolitionist who focused on the idea of revising the government through civil disobedience rather than overthrowing the system entirely. While the three topics do correlate, I was eager to ask Dr. Crew his opinion on the effectiveness of civil disobedience and whether or not Thoreau and other abolitionists and civil rights activists took the right approach to promoting equality. His answer to my question encouraged me to consider many layers of society and how activism influences public opinion.
Continue reading “Civil Disobedience or Un-civil Disobedience?”
Profanity and World Building
One of my favorite things about The Fifth Season is the incredible amount of detail N.K.Jemisin puts into her worldbuilding. Even the profanity the characters use is appropriate to the world they come from (thank you, Professor McCoy, for pointing this out). However, how do you build a new profane vocabulary? What words do you choose to be considered explicit in the context of a world completely different from our own?
Disclaimer: this post uses profane words.
Themes of Dependency and Power Structure
I am beginning to see the parallels that Jemisin is trying to draw between the real world and the literary world. The demonstration of power structure and divisions among races is something that the book is doing a great job showing. The co-dependency of the Orogenes and the Guardians is something that I would definitely like her to expand upon as I progress through the book to get a better grasp on the outside message that she is attempting to display.
Power Hierarchies and Oppression of Orogenes
Reading Sabrina Chan’s post “Fake News” got me thinking about the concept of power structures and the subjugation of orogenes in The Fifth Season. Sabrina notes that, “Stills maintain their social superiority by passing down ‘stonelore [that tells] them at every turn that [orogenes were] born evil – some kind of agents of Father Earth, monsters that barely qualify as human’ for generations; to the point where even orogenes are raised to believe so. If the stills allow themselves to see orogenes as more than supernatural tools, then they [orogenes] are also forced to acknowledge themselves as the weaker ‘species’.” I think this is a great point: the stills’ dehumanization of the orogenes into tools forces them towards the bottom of the power hierarchy, allowing a much less powerful species to subjugate them by labeling them as “tools” that exist purely for the stills’ benefit. I believe this parallels how black people were dehumanized and subjugated on Earth for centuries. They have been dehumanized by racists who compare them to monkeys, and subjugated through systems such as slavery in America and apartheid in South Africa, in which blacks were suppressed by a white minority for many years. The effects of these systems of subjugation are still felt all over the world today, through racism, poverty, and violence. Continue reading “Power Hierarchies and Oppression of Orogenes”
On Geophagia
In Dr. Farthing’s lab on Monday, one of the things that stood out to me was the discussion of Hoa and the consumption of geological materials. Professor McCoy’s mention of kaolinite led to me researching its potential nutritional value, eventually leading me to the term geophagia, or the eating of geological materials, specifically earth, soil, or clay.
According to the same source, geophagia is defined by psychologists as a form of pica, a mental disorder that is characterized by eating objects of no nutritional value. However, this website does mention that eating clay does not necessarily a pica patient make, as “some cultures promote eating clay as a part of medicinal practice.”