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               On the first page of The Obelisk Gate Hoa tells the reader that “relationships chisel the final shape of one’s being.” This idea is a concrete theme throughout the series as it focuses on the ways that characters are an amalgamation of the people they have impactful bonds with. This becomes especially poignant when (spoilers!) at the end of The Stone Sky Essun is transformed into a stone eater made out of jasper, an aggregate rock. Aggregates are a unique formulation composed of many other types of rocks; like aggregates, Jemisin’s novels display how people’s relationships impact who they are and how they relate to others. This is most prominently shown in the relationships between Essun and Schaffa as well as Essun and Nassun. Essun’s relationship to Schaffa impacts her relationship with Nassun and, in turn, these relationships impact Essun’s and Nassun’s development as people.

               Jemisin takes special care to demonstrate the complexities that come with love, namely in that love is not always given in the form we desire. There is a destructive nature in how Schaffa loves Essun in her youth, which is then recycled in Essun’s love for Nassun. Namely, in both relationships there is the use of violence in the form of breaking a child’s hand in order to impart a lesson of control so that the respective child in the situation can remain safe in their environments. Schaffa needs to teach Essun how to control her orogeny so that she could survive in the Fulcrum, where she would be swiftly killed if she were to show even a miniscule lack of control. Essun, in turn, thought of this method as the best way to teach her own child control to keep her from being discovered as an orogene in a town where she would be culled for any display of such power.

               Neither of these situations are clearcut, neither wholly good nor necessarily completely bad. Rather, they are complex situations that are (within the realm of the world) considered necessary for the overall safety of the child. Obviously, this then impacts how the children see the adults that hurt them. Essun grows to be fearful towards Schaffa and unable to understand why he hurts her and grows up to think that pain was a necessary way to show love. Her way of thinking thus impacts her relationship with her daughter, as Nassun “has never seen any proof of” the love that Essun “occasionally” said she had for her (The Obelisk Gate 78). Instead, Nassun and Essun lack a strong connection.

               The weak connections between adult and child are also represented in the lack of respect that Schaffa has for Essun and Essun has for Nassun. Despite their protective natures, neither Schaffa nor Essun saw the respective child in their relationships as people. Schaffa loved Essun not as a person but more as an object, as something that needed to be controlled. This is best shown when Schaffa and Essun reunite in Meov with Schaffa intent on killing her for escaping from the Fulcrum:

He does genuinely care about her. . .She’s his little one, and he has protected her in more ways than she knows. The thought of her agonizing death is unbearable to him. . . Did [Essun] not know that Schaffa would love her son as he loved her? He would lay the boy down gently, so gently, in the wire chair.

(The Obelisk Gate 38-39)

While Schaffa is willing to do everything he can to protect Essun, he also sees her as a product, as showcased by how he is so willing to put her son in a node, guaranteeing him a life of pain. Meanwhile, Essun initially holds little regard towards Nassun, seeing her as little more than the idea of a daughter. The Fifth Season begins with Essun desperate to find her missing child after discovering her toddler murdered; her journey is more motivated by the idea of her child being lost rather than concern for Nassun as a person, as she never imparts much characterization of Nassun nor personalization towards their relationship. Thus Essun’s relationship to her daughter, while unconditional, is more surface level—the love for a child rather than a love for this specific child.

               But this changes between Essun and Nassun throughout the series as Essun begins to respect her daughter’s autonomy. Their relationship changes primarily from Essun’s side, as she learns more about Nassun’s growth and comes to accept Nassun as her own person with her own needs that may differ from Essun’s desires. This is best represented when Essun discovers that Nassun is traveling with Schaffa. Essun’s initial reaction is a desire to kill Schaffa for all the pain he put her through, but resigns when she realizes that Schaffa is to Nassun everything that Essun never was:

You didn’t save her from Jija. You haven’t been there when she’s needed you, here at the literal end of the world. How dare you presume to protect her? Gray Man and Schaffa; she has found her own, better, protectors. She has found the strength to protect herself. You are so very proud of her. And you don’t dare to go anywhere near her, ever again.

(The Stone Sky 171)

Essun sees that Nassun has (presumably) found people that care for her and give her the type of love that she needed. A type of love that Essun is still learning to provide by that point in the series, which is why she resolves to stay away from her so that she can never hurt her daughter again.

                It is not until Essun learns that Nassun plans on using The Obelisk Gate that she dares to infiltrate on Nassun’s new life, and only then with the intention of keeping Nassun alive. Essun knows that if Nassun uses the gate, she would most likely die, so instead of letting her daughter be hurt once more Essun rushes to the other side of the world in order to save her. Yet when it comes down to a power struggle between the pair, a struggle between saving the world and saving a single life, Essun lays down her own to save her daughter. “[Nassun] is prepared for the inevitability of her own death. You aren’t. Oh, Earth, you can’t just watch another of your children die” (The Stone Sky 385). Essun ultimately forgoes the fate of the world in order to save her child because she would rather have her daughter alive and happy than have her daughter dead and the world saved.

                It is in this final act, the one that shows just how much Essun has come to understand her daughter and finally give her the love that she needs, that Nassun begins to accept her mother in return:

Because the world took and took and took from you, too, after all. She knows this. And yet, for some reason that she does not think she’ll ever understand…even as you died, you were reaching for the Moon. And for her.

(The Stone Sky 387)

Nassun recognizes that, despite all of the hardship that the world has put her through, Essun chooses love and the possibility for change, for redemption. By reaching for the moon, Nassun knows that Essun wants to save the world, to put an end to all the Seasons forevermore. Yet she still reaches for Nassun. Yet she still, ultimately, chooses to forgo her own life, forsake the world, to save Nassun. Essun thus makes the same choice Nassun intended to make—she chose the life of one over that of the world. Poetically,  Nassun then also chooses what her mother aimed for: she chooses to bring the moon back into orbit and end the Seasons forever.

                Hoa states in a conversation with Essun that he thinks “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back” (The Stone Sky 285). I think Jemisin demonstrates this clearly through Essun’s relationships with Schaffa and Nassun. She loved Schaffa as a child and was not given the correct protection and love that she needed, and in turn she failed to see or know the kind of love that Nassun needed from her. We absorb the important people in our lives and how they treat us. But we ultimately get to choose if we want to change how we love someone in return. Nassun did not get to choose how Essun loved her, nor could Essun choose how Nassun loved her in return. But both, ultimately, chose to change and to love one another differently. While they still hold onto the ways they were loved, they show that love, like rocks, are malleable—metamorphic. Love is about changing while acknowledging the parts that make you up. Essun and Nassun choose to embrace their aggregate love by taking on one another’s choices for the world, allowing them to finally love each other in the ways that they needed.

Earlier in this semester I wrote my ThinkING Essay on how in The Broken Earth trilogy N.K. Jemisin uses geological disasters to show how richer classes are more likely to survive, and yet, regardless, how geological disasters are great equalizers of Jemisin’s world and our own. In my essay, I compared and contrasted disasters in the series to disasters in the real world, and how Jemisin effectively (and sometimes ineffectively) created analogies, and therefore a mirror, for how our own world works. Since completing the trilogy, my point of view on this has not shifted much; if anything, I believe the further we got in the series, the less the world of Jemisin resembled our own, and therefore her analogies became less effective in some ways. The fact that by the end of The Stone Sky it was solely up to a handful of characters (namely Essun, Nassun, and Hoa) to change the fate of the world completely severed the series from reality for me; it came to resemble more clichéd speculative fiction works that I had hoped Jemisin would overcome. That is not to say she did not overcome any clichés, however. In this essay, I would like to examine how Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy exists within the speculative fiction (that is, science fiction and fantasy) genre as a whole; what Jemisin has said about her writing process, what kind of industry the series exists within, what kinds of prejudice the series received after release, and, finally, the awards the series won, and why.

To begin with what N.K. Jemisin has said about her writing process, I am going to refer back to an article we read titled “Creating races,” posted on Jemisin’s website. What appeared to me to be the most relevant about this post was Jemisin’s explanation of her use of “race” or “people” instead of “species.” When I first read this article, I felt this was relevant—Jemisin had thought about this terminology in her writing process, and it reminded me of conversations that were currently underway in the Dungeons & Dragons community at this time. Regardless, in this article Jemisin says, “I think using ‘species’ may feed into the tendency of fantasy to treat groups that are equally sapient as somehow lesser because they’re different. ‘Race’ emphasizes personhood, IMO, where ‘species’ emphasizes inhumanity.” In this regard, I agree with Jemisin. It shows that she has spent a lot of time researching the prejudice that has existed in the speculative fiction genre; what particularly resonated with me was how she explained how the human race in the fantasy genre is almost always depicted as white, while the other “races,” such as orcs, demons, etc. were meant to depict non-white races. As I had already been familiar with this issue in the genre, again, it was encouraging to see a modern fantasy author engaging with the issue and providing their own interpretation in a published speculative fiction series.

Now that I have established an understanding of N.K. Jemisin’s writing process, I would like to provide an analysis of the genre in which The Broken Earth trilogy could possibly fall. Before I do this, I would like to first state that the existence of genre is almost irrelevant to the existence of a fictional work; most times, genre merely exists to inform the reader that what they are about to read may be somewhat similar to other works that they have read. That aside, upon first glance, The Broken Earth trilogy appears to be somewhere in the speculative fiction genre. Breaking that down, the series appears to be an amalgamation of science fantasy. Science fantasy usually refers to science fiction works that have loose rules for how their world works; I attribute this genre to The Broken Earth trilogy due to Jemisin’s use of magic. Magic is a hot term when trying to determine fantasy; using that term in your writing will almost always earn you a placement in the fantasy genre. However, Jemisin’s world also has features of science fiction; there is, or was, technology, and the world itself has many features of an apocalyptic event. This, as well, would earn the trilogy a placement in the post-apocalyptic fiction genre, save for aspects of magic and technology still placing it science fantasy, as well as the fact that Jemisin places her story more during an apocalypse. Due to Alabaster’s splitting of the world, and the recurring Fifth Seasons in general, Jemisin’s world appears to take place in a cyclic apocalyptic, then post-apocalyptic world. With all this taken into account, I would place Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy in the science fantasy genre still, but in a post-apocalyptic world.

As I am personally interested in pursuing a career in the publishing industry, I was interested in investigating N.K. Jemisin’s publishing journey in regards to The Broken Earth trilogy. To begin with what I could find in the acknowledgements of The Fifth Season, the first book in the series (though not Jemisin’s debut novel—that credit goes to The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms), Jemisin cites an editor, Devi Pillai, and an agent, Lucienne Diver. In the acknowledgements, as well, Jemisin says, “The Broken Earth trilogy is the most challenging work I’ve ever written, and at certain points during The Fifth Season the task seemed so overwhelming I thought about quitting.” I felt that quote was very poignant, and highly reminiscent of many writer’s journeys to publishing a novel. What I was more interested in, however, was if Jemisin had faced any challenges in publishing the novel itself. With an agent and an editor, she was halfway there, but even so, manuscripts can be rejected for almost any reason. Luckily enough, I found an article by The Guardian that interviewed Jemisin on her thoughts on publishing; in one particular quote that struck me, Jemisin says, “she never thought she’d be published. ‘I honestly didn’t think I had a chance. You just didn’t see characters like me in fiction.’” This provides a good transition into discussing justice, particularly racial justice, in regards to Jemisin and The Broken Earth trilogy.

N.K. Jemisin’s candor and transparency about the publishing of The Broken Earth trilogy is a refreshing and realistic outlook on how the publishing industry functions in the United States and Europe (Jemisin’s publisher, Orbit Books, is based in London). Issues about racial justice, in particular, are brought up in regard to Jemisin’s publishing. In another honest quote from The Guardian article about one of her first novels, The Killing Moon, Jemisin says, “It was the mid 2000s, and at that time science fiction and fantasy publishers were not super interested in stories with black casts by black writers. They had done some stories with black casts by white writers, but they were not interested in those stories coming from people who actually were black.” Jemisin goes on to explain that she would receive rejection letters explaining how publishers would not be sure how to market her book, or what her audience would be. Jemisin states that the implication she received from those letters was that “fantasy readers don’t want to read about black people. Black people don’t want to read fantasy. So what do we do?” It is an issue that is multi-facetted. Bizarrely, publishers had been publishing fantasy novels with Black characters written by those least equipped to write a Black perspective—that being white writers. What the publishers perhaps did not understand is that if chances with audiences are not taken, new opportunities to develop new audiences will never arise.

A decade later, after The Broken Earth trilogy was published, evidence can be seen for the popularity of the series and the increasing diversity of fantasy and science fiction readers. Though the issue of racial injustice in the publishing industry had not been completely cured (to this day, there are still issues), Jemisin had her trilogy published and being read by readers around the globe. Her success was reflected in the nominations and subsequent award-winning of each book in her trilogy. However, as we discussed in class, Jemisin still faced issues even after winning the Hugo Awards three times in a row, and the Nebula Award for The Stone Sky. Societal issues such as Gamergate and, of particular importance to the Hugo Awards, the Sad Puppies campaign, on which Jemisin states in an article by The Atlantic, “Basically, [it’s] the science-fiction microcosmic version of what’s been happening on the large-scale political level and what’s been happening in other fields like with Gamergate in gaming. It’s the same sort of reactionary pushback that is generally by a relatively small number of very loud people.” In a genre that has inherently had multiple issues with racism and sexism for decades, unfortunately, this kind of pushback was seen as relatively expected in regard to Jemisin’s success. Regardless of “merit” in Jemisin’s work, her success in the speculative fiction genre and the publishing industry as a whole is a step forward for diversity, and, therefore, better stories.

Earlier in the semester, I reflected on N. K. Jemisin’s use of unyieldingly strong power—that of Orogenes and the Earth’s in her first novel of The Broken Earth trilogy, The Fifth Season—and how it stands against those who attempt to harness or manipulate it. I claimed that, “both the natural world and orogenes…[are] subjected to great degrees of restraint by individuals in power,” (Avila) all the while containing an immense amount of power within themselves. In navigating the rest of The Broken Earth trilogy, I have examined this notion further, revisiting the conclusion that humans and the geological environment that surrounds them have autonomy regardless of oppression. Therefore, trying to put restraints on those that have and can develop autonomy is not only a pointless effort, but one rooted in a desire for personal gain. I described how, “Orogenes—under the watchful eye of a discriminatory society, the Fulcrum and their Guardians (if given the ‘opportunity’)—and the geological world—at the hands of law makers, large corporations, humanity, and capitalism—are both underestimated in their capabilities,” (Avila) and that limitations, such as these, are to no avail if the ones implementing these limits don’t understand, or refuse to acknowledge, that they are severely unmatched in their strength compared to the ones they try to control. In their underestimation and, more importantly, exploitation of others, they are blind to signs of resistance and ignorant to the failure of prior attempts to dominate people and places. This observation, both in the novels and in actuality, can get others considering how they approach learning about and interacting with the natural world and others in it. 

Fracking & Faults: A History of Exploitation & Enslavement

There are several repercussions to all parties when it comes to dismissing, placing restraints on, and trying to defy powerful, living beings. All that is sentient comes with stressors and, with it, its breaking points. Earth has its fault lines and, similarly, humans have their physical and emotional boundaries. Both, when subjected to centuries of abuse and misuse, are subject to snap under pressure. 

Firstly, let us explore this concept under the lens of N. K. Jemisin’s world in The Broken Earth novels. The first in the trilogy, The Fifth Season, introduces readers to the supercontinent of ‘The Stillness’ and the power dynamics within it: Orogenes, both in/from the Fulcrum and out of it, under the firm hand of Guardians and stills, being forced to serve them and their seismic needs in order to keep the overly active Earth at bay. Orogenes that do not find themselves constrained by the internment of the Fulcrum are referred to as ‘ferals’ (as if the animalistic treatment of Orogenes wasn’t enough to convince stills and Guardians that they should not be considered human). Regardless of background, all oroegenes are expected to be enslaved and utilized to protect the continent and its inhabitants from cataclysmic events or minor geological inconveniences. One of the major characters in the trilogy, Alabaster, notes in the first book, “‘They are gods in chains…The tamers of the wild earth, themselves to be bridled and muzzled,’” (Jemisin 167). Similar to how orogenic people are viewed and assumed to be subservient, the geosphere below them—Father Earth, as Jemisin’s characters refer to him—has historically been used as a source of power by humans of all abilities (Orogenes, Guardians, stills, stone eaters, etc). In the second novel, The Obelisk Gate, we learn that humans originally began digging into Father Earth to contain and use his power for a variety of reasons. Jemisin delves into the specifics of this repeated cycle of exploitation in the final novel of the trilogy, specifically, but more on that later. 

There are obvious parallels between Father Earth and the Earth we know in the real world: both under constant suffering of human induced climate problems and self-indulgent practices that deplete them of their natural resources. However, a quality they seem to share with orogenes and marginalized people alike is that of overpowered beings refusing to acknowledge their humanity or existence as a living entity. For centuries, people on The Stillness have rejected the idea of orogenes being people and Father Earth being alive, both with their own intentions, drives, and [super]natural abilities. Likewise, people in marginalized communities and the Earth, as we know it, have been subjected to others ignoring their basic needs for respect and survival. Jemisin draws attention to this and urges readers to reflect on the power dynamics of their environment through the use of her ‘fictional’ world.

Shakes & Eruptions: ‘Unexpected’ Resistance

Because those in power have been, and are, so accustomed to the ones they enslave being subservient, they are constantly under the impression that resistance is the last thing they have to worry about. I noted in my previous reflection on Jemisin’s novels, “Stills and Guardians, much like companies and everyday people in relation to the earth, are so convinced that the power they hold over orogenes is so absolute and concrete, they would never expect them to act on their own accord…” (Avila). However, regardless of circumstance, the oppressed always have the strength to establish a sense of autonomy, even if it’s rooted deep within them. There are several accounts of resistance in Jemisin’s trilogy and several countries’ histories in the real world, especially when examining first hand accounts of those who have been oppressed. To understand why an entire group of people (or, in Jemisin’s case, an entire sentient globe) chose paths of defiance against those who have enslaved them for so long, one must be conscious of two concepts. One, that oppressors will most likely attempt to record the history of the oppressed—often shaping the minds of readers and researchers into perceiving the oppressed as ‘deserving of their suffering’—and two, that the most accurate depiction of ones experience with discrimination and resistance will always be written by the abused. 

To begin with a prime example of opposition in an unjust society, Ella Forbes’ essay, African Resistance to Enslavement: The Nature of the Evidentiary Record, goes into detail on how false narratives led those who participated in the slave trade and people, centuries after, who learn the eurocentric history of slavery, to assume enslaved people were passive or too weak to resist. She explains how very little resistance was recorded or released publicly to enforce this narrative, though, she writes, “The narratives of Africans who had been enslaved offer the most Afrocentric look at resistance…although Eurocentric writers have dismissed them as abolitionist propaganda,” (Forbes, 39-40). Comparably, there are several instances in The Broken Earth trilogy where the practice of resistance was heavily erased through ‘Imperial history’ excerpts, typically found at the end of chapters in the novels, or was made to feel impossible through heavy surveillance. (Contrarily, in terms of the Fulcrum or fragment complexes, where Tuners were held, [again, more on these later], little or concentrated surveillance was presented to those being forced into labor because they were brainwashed to be cooperative: “No need for guards when you can convince people to collaborate in their own internment.” (The Stone Sky, Jemisin 5).) 

In order to contrast these narratives, Jemisin’s use of changing perspectives between chapters assists the reader in understanding the actuality of a suppressed person’s suffering, and, ultimately, the motivation to fight against their oppressors. For instance, Jemisin guides readers through the first novel by switching the perspective of narration from Essun to Syenite to Damaya. Once it’s revealed that they are all the same character, just at different times in her life, readers have a better understanding of Essuns overall experiences, eventually leading her (Syenite) to destroy the city of Allia and the island of Meov when under the attack of Fulcrum Guardians. In the second book, The Obelisk Gate, readers are given a surprising point of view to read from: (Damaya/Syenite’s) Guardian Schaffa. It is through this narration that we learn he, and all Guardians, are technically under the control of Father Earth himself, and have been for hundreds to thousands of years. However, when Schaffa develops a close relationship to Nassun, Essun’s daughter, his will overpowers that of the Earth’s and his commands. This painful act of defiance—quite literally, as it is killing Schaffa to do so—is another experience that would have been overlooked if the narrative had only stuck with a single character’s perspective. While it is disclosed that Father Earth was the true entity and source of control behind the cruelty of the Guardians, it is fully unveiled in the final book that this forced mastery was also a personal, confrontational reaction to years of exploitation at the hands of people who did not acknowledge the personification of the Earth. These people, the Sylanagistine, sparked the war among humanity the characters in Jemisin’s novels are presented with and must navigate for survival.

A Blind Eye to Rubble: Neglected Warning Signs

The ancient people and society of Syl Anagist is made known to readers in The Stone Sky, the final book in the trilogy. Here is where N. K. Jemisin reveals the parallels between that world and the current one of The Stillness (like a reverse foreshadowing). To name a few:

• In the world of Syl Anagist, orogenic power is combined with magic, harnessed from the core of the Earth. The individuals who can channel this unification of abilities are called Tuners. I don’t think I have to explain who they compare to the most in The Stillness.
• Tuners live and work out of a complex of buildings that surround a cities ‘local fragment’ (later known as the obelisks in The Stillness), where they are not permitted to leave unless for work or with a Conductor (those who oversee and give them orders). Their own ‘Fulcrum’ and set of ‘Guardians,’ how fitting.
• Surrounding each fragment/obelisk, there are thick vines (‘sinklines’) with Tuners intertwined in a half-dead state to power the magic within the fragments, providing a constant source of power to the surrounding city (Jemisin 262). These can be connected to the node stations in The Stillness, where strong, young Orogenes are put in wire chairs to keep the strata stable for its surrounding Comms. 

When the Tuners came to realize their eventual fate was to either be killed or placed into a sinkline, that their existence was merely for the depletion of the Earth’s resources, and they were forever meant to serve others that saw them as less than human, they devised a plan to destroy the Conductors’ attempt at containing more magic. This resulted in the loss of the Moon: dooming it into an abnormal orbit away from the Earth, causing the deadly Seasons on the continent of The Stillness. The Earth combatted this act as best as he could, using the power of the fragments the way the Tuners did to cause this catastrophe in the first place. As a form of merciful vengeance, he turned Tuners into what the people on The Stillness know as stone eaters. (It is also speculated that he turned Conductors into Guardians by placing shards of iron from the Earth’s core into their sessapaines). The stone eaters, and this mostly unknown history of the world, act as a warning sign to future generations and societies of people who try to dehumanize and utilize people for their abilities and identities. 

In reference to the world we live in today, there is a widely ‘understood’ concept of history repeating itself, as people refuse to acknowledge historical warning signals and allow major unjust or destructive events to occur. Japan, most notably, has its own cautions set in stone. Martin Fackler, in an article titled Tsunami Warnings, Written in Stone, investigates centuries old stone tablets across the coast of Japan with messages carved into them: warnings to not build structures, live, or frequent certain places because of previous destruction in them caused by tsunamis. He explains how some people abide by these instructions, while others (mainly modern architects, engineers, and companies) were convinced that “advanced technology and higher seawalls would protect vulnerable areas…” (Fackler). When driven by greed, personal gain, superiority complexes, and insensible perspectives, whole areas of the world, and groups of people within them, can meet detrimental fates. This is true for business and home owners on the coast of Japanese islands, as well as the Earth and characters in Jemisin’s trilogy, who endured traumatizing experiences founded on the ignorance of others. When starting to explain the world of Syl Anagist to the reader, Hoa, the primary narrator, states, “Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place,” (Jemisin 7) as to further establish this positionality.

Emancipated Respiration: Conclusion

A combination of unwillingness to accept cautionary tales, underestimation, and forced utilization of living beings under the control of others has helped form the basis of atrocities in The Broken Earth trilogy and several issues of discrimination and exploitation our own world. See, the oppressed have always been dismissed as weak in physical and emotional capability. Conquerors never want to admit that their ‘submissive’ counterparts live and potentially function under their own free will. That they, too, have the potential to start wars and end them. The Earth and the humanity it inhabits are subject to the depletion of their strength by people in all positions of power. However, historian Will Durant has written, “Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.”* While this can exhibit the idea that civilization lives because the earth has allowed them to, and that this can change at any point, his sentiment leaves me wondering: Is anyone really in control of anything? The ability to live [breathe] and produce life is not a privilege granted to establish dominance: it is to be used as a means of connection and collaboration. While we can’t preach this to the ground below us, we can start with the people who dig their toes into the sand and dirt of Father Earth for the fun of it.

*I made the mistake of crediting this quote to Robert Byrne in my precursor essay to this post. It was, indeed, coined by American historian and writer Will Durant. Sincerest apologies!

There have been few books in recent memory that have gotten me to think quite as much as N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy. A grand fantasy tale involving its own form of magic in various forms as well as fully fleshed out histories and societies of its own, the series had me gripped from the very start and held my attention for much of its duration. There are several different themes at play throughout the book, themes that inform the decision making and development of many characters in the series. And many of these themes can be traced back to how they relate to the very earth itself, as well as the magic-esk orogeny used to control it. Orogeny is many things in the world of the Stillness, inspiring awe and fear, hate and reverence. But the aspect that I focused on for much of my early readings of the book was the sense of justice that came bundled along with it. What I had focused on originally had been the power dynamic between the orogenes and the stills, those with and without the ability to control the earth respectively. How the expected dynamic between the two groups had been turned on its head as those with these powers were hunted by those who lacked them. And though my thoughts on the world of the Stillness have changed, the many ways justice, or the lack of it, is embodied by the earth and orogeny do much to embody my understanding of the books and their characters. 

The focus of the series has to do with orogenes and their interactions with both the earth itself as well as the people that they share the Stillness with. It is these interactions that influence much of what is considered just within the world, and my perception of it has evolved along with the characters’ understanding of it. To start, the relationship between the stills and the orogenes is one where justice is thrown to the wayside. Orogenes are feared and despised by those that lack their power and are hunted simply for existing. Whether or not their fear is based on actual backing or purely superstition does not matter to them, as their fear only adds to their hatred. Several examples of this blind hatred can be seen throughout the books, particularly in the third book, The Stone Sky. At the end of many of the book’s chapters, there will be a historical passage about an instance where an orogene revealed who they truly were through use of their powers, only to be brutally tortured and murdered by the stills they had known before. Many of these orogenes use their powers to help their villages, only for their kindness to be met with hate and violence. While my understanding of the power dynamic between these groups at the start of the series was already clear, the plethora of examples that Jemisin provides the reader only serves to further prove the unjust nature of this hatred; how it stems from a lack of understanding, and how the innocent are more than often slaughtered simply for the crime of existing. 

Regarding this sense of justice, there is another relationship worth exploring within the Stillness; that of the relationship between humanity and Father Earth. Within the story, it is revealed that the earth is more than just soil and minerals, but has a consciousness of its own. It is the force that controls the Guardians, as well as the force responsible for all the natural disasters that humanity faces on the surface. Father Earth, as the earth is called by the characters, seeks revenge on humanity for the loss of his child, the Moon. Though the people alive now were in no way responsible for the loss of the Moon, Father Earth continues to barrage the surface with these attacks through the fuel of revenge. And though the consciousness embodying the earth may feel as though these attacks are justified, there is no justice to a natural disaster. A natural disaster is indiscriminate in who it hurts, there can be no targets of the damage that they cause. The earthquakes and tsunamis that the people of the Stillness face care little whether one is a still or an orogene. And this disregard for life is reflected much in the real-world consequences of natural disasters. As me and my group saw when studying the effects of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the loss of life there was in no way just. The people who lost their lives were not killed for any higher purpose. And even beyond the senseless death, the amount of history that was lost through the destruction of art was indiscriminate as well. There is no justice to natural disasters, and whether they are fueled by revenge or not, the death caused by natural disasters can never be justified. 

Aside from Father Earth, the other force that takes the movement of the earth into their own hands is the orogenes. And being the ones who get to choose how the earth moves at many times, their own personal sense of what is right and wrong gets put to the test once they set about using their powers towards some sort of goal. A clear example of this can be seen at the very start of the first book, The Fifth Season, when the character Alabaster decides to destroy the city of Yumenes. Alabaster, after having suffered for many years from working under the Fulcrum, finally decides that enough is enough and chooses to destroy the capital city using a fault line. To do so, he uses the orogeny of the many node maintainers to fuel his own, killing them as a result. However, he is successful, and before long the entirety of the Stillness is plunged into a Fifth Season that will last for thousands of years. Alabaster’s actions in this moment are motivated by many different factors, but despite all the death he inflicts upon the world one of his main motives is love. He holds so much love for the node maintainers who have been forced by both the Fulcrum as well as the whole of society to serve as little more than tools, so much so that he would justify killing them as an act of mercy. Though the loss of life in any sense is inherently bad, Alabaster takes the justice of the world into his own hands and chooses who is worthy to live or die, motivated by hate, love, or even a mixture of both at times. It is not his right to decide what is morally correct, and yet through his connection to the earth he is allowed the opportunity to do just that. 

Regarding the idea of love and hate interacting through the medium of orogeny, there is no character in Jemisin’s trilogy that embodies this quite like Essun. Essun’s journey across the Stillness is motivated by a multitude of things, constantly changing as more and more information comes to light. Her journey at first is motivated by the desire to kill her former husband for murdering their son, and to save her daughter from him. As the plot progresses, though, and Essun becomes more and more intertwined with the people of Castrima, Essun’s focus later becomes keeping her fellow com members alive, even at the cost of halting her search for her daughter. But even though her direction changes, her motivations are still tied to both love and hatred. Being one of the most powerful orogenes of all time allows her the ability to hold the fate of many people’s lives in her hands, and oftentimes she teeters between wanting to cut all ties or create friendships, such as when she uses the force of her abilities to intimidate the Castrimans to follow her orders. These values of love and hate also define much of her relationships with others, often holding intense feelings of hate towards people like Jija before she later realizes that it is worth more to love those she still has. The worth of each value is sometimes ignored for the other, but Essun always seems to bounce between the two. And as these values are so impactful to Essun as a character, her orogeny is also intertwined with them. Essun proves time and time again that she is willing to cause destruction if it is for the sake of those she loves, or even as a weapon against those she hates. The earth becomes a vessel for her, defending or attacking those who she deems fit to protect or attack. While Alabaster’s sense of justice is explored in his decision to destroy Yumenes, Essun’s morals are put to the test around every corner of the book, all the way to the end where she is faced with the decision of stopping her daughter from destroying the world or fighting to save it. Her journey evolves alongside her abilities, but her connection to these values of love and hatred remain constant throughout her story. 

Orogeny is an interesting basis for a story. While supernatural abilities are common in the world of literature, the way that the world of the Stillness has evolved around the presence of this ability and the people who wield it reinforces its importance. But the influence of the earth is revealed by the third book to be so much more than just the materials of orogeny. It comes to represent so much for each of the characters, ranging from morality to revenge to even the simple feeling of love, serving as the connection between characters. The world of The Broken Earth Trilogy is one that is filled with strife. With chaos and injustice, values that can unfortunately be seen reflected in our own world. But after having finished the series, I can say that there is also hope in unlikely places. There are people who try to defy the unfair odds. And there is love, love between people and love through the earth. Jemisin has crafted a world that is not black and white and shows the readers the truth of how things are through a fantastical lens. It was a joy to read the series, and I can only hope that the value of love that she explores can make its way more and more into our world. 

In my first ThinkING essay that I published back in February of 2022, I chose to discuss the loss of power the orogenes experience as a result of the skills that are bestowed upon them and how this loss compels them to use their orogeny as a means to exact justice within an oppressive system, in relation to the first novel of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy, The Fifth Season. Throughout my essay, I focused on Jemisin’s exploration of the duality of orogeny as she illustrates how the orogene’s power is restrained in an effort to prevent destruction and turmoil, while demonstrating how this limitation of their power can be perceived as a forceful attempt to control them. Although I conveyed my thoughts on power and justice within the novel, I neglected to incorporate a geological concept to substantiate my thinking about them. Towards the end of my first essay, I briefly mentioned the concept of catastrophism to illustrate how the orogenes may be perceived as catastrophes, but I never fully explained or expanded on my thought process. Thus, as I have been given the opportunity to reflect and reconsider the essay I wrote after reading the Broken Earth Trilogy in its entirety, it is my belief that Jemisin uses the concept of catastrophism to illustrate the orogene’s response to the injustice and loss of power they endure with love as their driving force. 

Throughout the Broken Earth Trilogy, it is clear from the first novel, The Fifth Season, that there is an injustice within the system of the Stillness. Jemisin is quite transparent about the overt distinction between the stills and the orogenes, as the latter are trapped within a continuous cycle in which they experience the loss of power and are denied several forms of freedom. The most distinct example of this is the Fulcrum where orogenes “are legally permitted to practice the otherwise-illegal craft of orogeny under strict organizational rules and with the close supervision of the Guardian order” (The Fifth Season 460). Thus, as I mentioned in my first essay, once an orogene enters the Fulcrum they are stripped of their power and their humanity. Jemisin provides her readers with an insight to this order of life within the Fulcrum through Damaya’s experience there. She learns quite quickly of the injustice of the system she has been placed in as she is informed that she will be judged by the behavior of the other children within the Fulcrum and that “friends do not exist. The Fulcrum is not a school. Grits are not children. Orogenes are not people. Weapons have no need of friends” (The Fifth Season 297). Therefore, it is quite evident that the Fulcrum is an oppressive system that treats the orogenes as less than human. 

Although the Fulcrum is not the sole reason orogenes are compelled to use their orogeny as a means to exact justice for the loss of power they experience within their lives, it does perpetuate this loss and illustrate the severity of the injustice they endure. Therefore, one could imagine the type of response an orogene may have when this lack of power and justice affects the ones they care and love for. Over the course of the Broken Earth Trilogy, Jemisin displays the lengths some of the orogenes will go to in an effort to protect the ones they love and to exact justice for those they can’t protect. In doing so, it appears as though she uses the concept of catastrophism, a “sudden, typically unpredicted natural disaster that leads to abrupt changes in a culture or lifestyle that has been stable for a long time,” as Amos Nur and Dawn Burgess define it in the introduction to their book Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology, and the Wrath of God, to illustrate the intensity of their response. With that being said, the first glimpse at a catastrophic response by an orogene to the lack of power and justice is within the first novel of the Broken Earth Trilogy, The Fifth Season, when Essun uses her orogeny to ice the entire town of Tirimo. Jemisin begins this novel describing the way Essun “cover[s] Uche’s broken little body with a blanket–except his face, because he is afraid of the dark” (The Fifth Season 1) after she discovers his dead body on the floor in the den of their home. As the story progresses, Jemisin discloses that the cause of Uche’s death was his father, Jija, discovering that he was an orogene, thus illustrating the fear the stills have towards orogenes and how they use their fear to justify their treatment of them. Furthermore, Essun is aware that Jija is responsible for killing their son and uses this anger she has towards him, as well as the love she has for her son, as her motivation to avenge Uche’s death and to exact justice for the abuse enacted upon all orogenes. In doing so, Essun uses this moment as an opportunity to chastise all of Tirimo even though “Jija’s the one to blame for Uche, some part of [her] knows that–but Jija grew up here in Tirimo. The kind of hate that can make a man murder his own son? It came from everyone around [her]” (The Fifth Season 57). Thus, Essun acknowledges that yes, Jija was the one responsible for murdering Uche, but he is a product of his environment–an environment in which he was taught to loathe the orogenes because of the skills they possess. Therefore, “these people killed Uche. Their hate, their fear, their unprovoked violence. They. (He.) Killed [Uche]” (The Fifth Season 58). As a result of this, Essun uses her orogeny to ice Tirimo, “from your feet, the circle of frost and swirling snow begins to expand. Rapidly” (The Fifth Season 58). Essun’s ability to destroy Tirimo and cause an abrupt change within the comm illustrates how orogene’s response to a lack of power and justice can be perceived as a form of catastrophe, with regard to the way in which their orogeny operates. For instance, as I mentioned previously, Nur and Burgess defines catastrophism as “sudden,” while in The Fifth Season Jemisn also defines orogeny as “sudden” when Essun begins to ice Tirimo, “that’s why people like these fear people like you, because you’re beyond sense and preparation. You’re a surprise, like a sudden toothache, like a heart attack” (The Fifth Season 56). Thus, it appears as though Jemisin uses Essun icing Tirimo as a form of catastrophism to illustrate an orogenes response to a lack of power and justice, as well as to demonstrate how the love Essun has for her son was the catalyst for her response.

Like mother, like daughter, another instance in which the concept of catstrophism is used to illustrate an orogene’s response to the lack of power and justice is displayed in the third novel of the Broken Earth Trilogy, The Stone Sky, through Nassun’s character and her relationship with Schaffa. Jemisin’s readers are first introduced to the connection Nassun and Schaffa form in her second novel of the trilogy, The Obelisk Gate. Throughout this novel, Schaffa becomes a true parental figure to Nassun as he demonstrates how much he loves and cares for her by taking her in at Found Moon and protecting her from her father, Jija. Nassun is quick to return this affection to him as she is very adamant about healing him and “offering herself” to soothe the discomfort of the corestone in his head “as it punishes him with lashes of silver pain” (The Obelisk Gate 301). The connection between the two of them only grows stronger over the course of The Obelisk Gate and throughout The Stone Sky as Nassun discloses “you’re the only one I love, Schaffa” (The Stone Sky 91), while also promoting him to a new role within her life, “you’re not my guardian anymore, you’re…You’re my new father” (The Stone Sky 199). Thus, it becomes evident that their love for one another makes their situation more complex as Nassun is left to make the difficult decision of keeping Schaffa alive or ending the world’s hatred–she cannot have both. Ultimately, Nassun’s love for Schaffa serves as her motivator in deciding to “change the world” (The Stone Sky 344) in order to keep him alive and in her life. However, as Nassun begins the process of activating the Obelisk Gate, Essun appears in Corepoint before she can open the Gate and turn herself into stone. In this moment, in which Essun intervenes in an attempt to prevent her daughter from killing herself, it is clear through Hoa’s narration that they are both motivated by their love, “she is just as determined as you. Just as driven by love–you for her, and she for Schaffa” (The Stone Sky 383). Thus, Essun comes to the realization that if she continues to fight Nassun on her decision to open the Gate and protect the one she loves they will both die, so she gives up and releases her control of the Gate. It is because of Essun’s sacrifice that Nassun decides to complete her mother’s task and use the Gate to return the Moon to orbit. In doing so, Nassun “ends the Seasons”and “fix[es] the world” (The Stone Sky 387). Therefore, it is my belief that Jemisin uses Nassun’s activation of the Obelisk Gate as a form of catastrophism to illustrate her response to a lack of power and justice. The opening of the Gate causes an abrupt change to the society they live in, just as a catastrophe “leads to an abrupt change in a culture or lifestyle” (Nur and Burgess). Although Nassun could not protect Essun from turning herself into stone, she uses this loss as her motivation to exact justice for all her mother endured as an orogene.

Thus, after reading the Broken Earth Trilogy in its entirety, it has become clear to me that love is a very powerful concept that has the ability to motivate and create change in a world that lacks power and justice. I’ve learned through Jemisin and the characters she created within this trilogy that even “when the world is hard, love must be harder still” (The Stone Sky 321).

Love and geology may not be synonymous, but their relationship in N.K. Jemisin’s, The Broken Earth trilogy, is surprisingly solid. The characters in Jemisin’s trilogy lived lives where unpredictability was considered the norm. Because of this less-than-fortunate lifestyle, the love stories that came about were always faced with challenges that were not necessarily solvable. Only the healthiest, wealthiest, and most intelligent could survive during the seasons, and not every family/relationship made this cut. Sacrifices are often non-negotiable and intense, as Essun experienced first-hand many different times. One such sacrifice included suffocating her own child rather than letting him be taken by the Guardians of the Fulcrum. This act also drove a wedge between Essun and her child’s father/her long-time friend, mentor, and lover, Alabaster. Sacrifice is necessary in unpredictable times. Attachment without fear is a luxury few, if any, can afford.

In my original ThinkING Essay, I chose to write about balance. While the topic of balance remains an important part of the trilogy and relates closely to geological concepts, it is not always realistically attainable. Keeping the Earth restrained to create forced equilibrium will ultimately result in retaliation. As the series progressed, ideas and opinions began to shift. The use of aggressive force to keep balance, or in some cases love, will often end up backfiring. Each relationship that Essun experiences has some sort of impact on her, and causes her life to shift in one way or another.

Every character, in this trilogy as well as in reality, has their own story. Motives cannot always be understood, and decisions cannot always be explained without context. Certain things require trust, which is a difficult request to make when the world is constantly changing and falling apart around these characters. The unique romantic relationships that Essun experiences throughout The Broken Earth trilogy are each important to her development in different ways; with the ever-present yet slightly looked-over message of love being one of the only themes that stays consistent throughout the series. Balance, love, power, and justice are all products of life on Earth.

Balance and safety are something that many people crave, and many people take for granted. Essun had spent most of her life lacking both, or having one and not the other. Orogenes are very rarely safe from threats and unprovoked attacks. Additionally, while the Fulcrum did technically offer young Damaya a form of balance, her safety was never guaranteed. In fact, her first introduction to the Fulcrum was Schaffa, the perfect example of what the Fulcrum represents. Polite, direct, and professional outwardly, but cruel, manipulative, and power-hungry inwardly, Schaffa had Damaya wrapped around his finger almost immediately, as he offered what she lacked: a home with others like her. However, to teach her control, Schaffa broke her hand. Love and power go hand in hand, and Schaffa is a character that knew how to play the game. Offer just enough love while instilling just enough fear. Damaya was immediately attached to him, and probably would have been to anyone who treated her halfway humane. 

There is a strong possibility that Essun reverted back to her younger self and the way Damaya loved. Syenite branched out and finally allowed herself to feel passion and even a bit of safety and comfort. Yet it was all ripped away from her just as her new life was truly beginning. Essun was stunted by her childhood, and repeated the behaviors of the Fulcrum with her daughter Nassun, which did not necessarily work out any better than it did for Essun. Essun had a traumatic childhood, but she didn’t change much for her own daughter. Many children who experience abuse don’t realize what it was until much later in their lives, and by the time this happened for Essun, Nassun’s image of her was already scarred. 

The relationship between Syenite and Alabaster was both tumultuous and beautiful. They were lovers by instruction, and with this assignment understandably brought about feelings of resentment. Forced breeding does not emanate a theme of romantic love, and forced collisions create a reaction that cannot be so easily controlled. Syenite and Alabaster were two of the most powerful orogenes, but with two strong personalities comes stubbornness and conflict. Syen and Alabaster always felt strong emotions towards one another, but these emotions started as negative ones, before slowly turning into love. This love was not strictly romantic, and their relationship always had a deep friendship at its core.

Once they began to trust each other and Syenite started to learn more about the true nature of the Fulcrum, she and Alabaster became a nearly unstoppable duo. Syenite did not ask questions before Alabaster, she simply did what she was told and did it well. Alabaster was a disruptive force in her life, but he also saved her from being a manipulated slave of the Fulcrum for the rest of her life.

Syenite’s time with Innon was the closest she came to a truly balanced life. She could still have Alabaster, one of the only people who really knew her and what she went through, but she could also have a passionate romance with Innon. Innon was the first time that Syenite really let go, and he was also part of her son’s life. While the relationship was short-lived and Innon died like most others in her life, he made a lasting impact on both Syenite and Alabaster that only furthered their intense connection.

Essun’s marriage to Jija was very representative of her craving for normalcy and escape from the chaos and loss in her life. With him she created a new family, became a teacher, and tried to move on. Yet, we cannot always outrun our past, and it will follow until it has been put to rest permanently. Essun could not hide her orogeny forever, especially when it manifested in her children and resulted in Uche’s death at the hands of Jija. Jija’s violent side was something that Essun had not seen before, and it shattered the illusion she had fought to create. She reverted back to her roots, and her decision to kill Jija was quick and solid.

Lerna was a steady presence in Essun’s life. He knew what she was, he was the one who found her after Jija murdered her son, and he provided her comfort in some of the most difficult times of her life. He loved her without an arm and without a breast, and did not show her resentment for the fact that she would not be able to give birth to his child. Lerna and Hoa were some of the most balanced, safe characters in Essun’s life, and also the two she seemed to feel the least passionate about. After Lerna’s sudden death, it took her a moment to even realize he was gone, and then she proceeded to say, “I didn’t even think I loved him.”

Hoa was the safe option for Essun. He was steady and reliable and she would not lose him. He was solid, in more ways than one. Hoa cared for Essun in a way that she was not used to. She was his priority, and he would have done anything to keep her safe. It took Essun a long time to realize this, as years of trauma had not allowed her to imagine a future with someone who could not die and leave her all alone.

Essun spent so much of her life being controlled, that her difficulty with being alone is understandable. The amount of loss and abandonment that she experienced was astronomical. She didn’t realize until she was being asked to make decisions with Ykka that she had choice and free-will in her life. After Schaffa and the Fulcrum, Syenite/Essun jumped from one relationship to the next, looking for comfort and understanding. Essun married Jija after she had lost Alabaster, Innon, and Coru. He was supposed to be her new beginning, but instead ended up killing one of her children and triggering trauma that he could never possibly understand.

Exploitation of both people and the Earth is abundant throughout the trilogy. Nearly everyone has a goal, and for many of the characters this was simply survival. For others, it was domination, power, and control over all. Jemisin states many times throughout the trilogy that the Earth “does not like to be restrained.” Using the Obelisks to fulfill a selfish agenda, and destroying Earth’s people and places in the process is a despicable act that impacted/ended countless lives. Love is arguably the deepest emotion that living beings can experience. Essun had to navigate through surviving life while also finding moments of happiness. She allowed herself to truly let go and love reluctantly, but her moments with Alabaster, Innon, Coru, Ykka, Tonkee, etc. showed her that life did not always have to be completely dark and isolated. Balancing pain and contentment is a difficult act, and the characters of The Broken Earth trilogy passionately represented the struggles of humanity. While a shake in Jemsin’s world results in mass death, the shakes and bumps in everyday life cannot be discounted either. Darkness is different for each individual, but everyone deserves to find a community that will embrace them. As Essun reflects at the end of The Stone Sky, “You keep yours open, though, as the world goes dark and strange. You feel no fear. You are not alone.”

In Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy, continuous geological disasters represent the cyclical violence between orogenes and stills. This violence becomes cyclical when— to create autonomy—the bullied become bullies. In my first essay, I explored how Jemisin uses the orogenes to frame the concept of “scapegoating”. I stand by my initial claim that self-preservation is, as with all survival mechanisms, an intrinsic and hard-wired urge. Jemisin says it herself in The Fifth Season, “frightened people look for scapegoats”. She addresses a universal truth: vulnerable populations always get the brunt of the blame. As a result of the fears of stills, orogenes are societally conditioned to believe that they are evil. Ultimately, this image of the orogenes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ is perfectly encapsulated by Nassun, as she says “It’s like everybody wants me to be bad, so there’s nothing else I can be.” The first book in the trilogy provides a setup for this concept; it discusses the ways that the orogenes are dehumanized and, consequently, sacrificed. After revisiting The Fifth Season with the context of the other two novels, I realize that Essun uses anger as an expression of autonomy. She is not awarded autonomy, so she must pry it out of unwilling hands. By exacting violence, Essun harbors the control she never received as an ostracized child. However, she shows us that violence is a dead-end and nonviable coping skill. 

The Fifth Season provides insight into the nature of revenge. Unless someone breaks the cycle of violence, healing is impossible. For instance, Essun often lets her rage and grief consume her, using orogeny to kill people and destroy towns. She even goes so far as to smother her own child, which seems to be a response to her own traumatic childhood. When she first meets Schaffa, she is told “Don’t think unkindly of your parents, Dama. You’re alive and well and that is no small thing”. This idea—that parents do not owe their children love and affection— creates a deep wound. It is also revealed that she is locked in a barn, “freezing and pooping in a corner”. She suffers abuse through both emotional and physical neglect; this dehumanization follows her well into adulthood. When she discovers her son has been murdered and her daughter is gone, it seems to reopen this wound of abandonment. The cycle continues, and she resorts to murder and destruction as coping mechanisms. Essun never allows herself to sit in anguish, instead, she violently blocks it out. Although her violence can be an outlet for difficult emotions, it also becomes a form of maternal protection. When she makes the decision to kill Coru, she thinks “Better that a child never have lived at all than live as a slave…Survival is not the same thing as living”. In her own way, Essun tries to break the cycle of violence. In her mind, killing Coru is the only way to stop him from experiencing the hurt that she did.

Between the first and second book, Essun realizes the full weight of generational trauma. In the Broken Earth trilogy, Essun and her daughter suffer from the same hatred that is deeply ingrained in their environment. Essun’s abusive childhood makes her prone to coldness and a stranger to mother-daughter affection. She is shunned from parental love the very moment her orogeny is discovered. The feelings of abandonment only persist when Schaffa justifies her parents’ actions, telling her that it was better for them to “keep something rather than lose everything”. This separation from her parents occurs at an incredibly formative age, but the pain of being shunned continues well into adulthood. Later in her life, Alabaster tells Syenite, “That we’re not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don’t have to feel bad about how they treat us”. No matter where she turns, Essun is constantly reminded of the “core belief” she learned as a young kid: Her orogeny makes her unworthy of love. Her ‘inner child’ never truly heals, so she is unable to understand how to love and protect her children. To exacerbate this, after Uche is beaten to death and Essun kills Corundrum, Essun has no room in her heart to properly nurture Nassun. Although she loves her daughter, she can never truly show her. Nassun, then, inherits her mother’s childhood wound. After finishing the trilogy, I realize that Coru’s ‘mercy killing’ is inherently connected to Essun and Nassun’s relationship. Because she failed to protect Nassun, Essun harbors guilt. This guilt, I believe, led her to ‘protect’ Coru by killing him. 

The parallels between Essun and Nassun’s childhoods are clear: both are shunned early on for their societally-imposed identities. Nassun experiences healing because she is the one who allows herself to truly love. Essun, on the other hand, is imprisoned by her hurt and bitterness. As The Obelisk Gate explores the perspective of Nassun, we learn that she is initially Jija’s “favorite” and his “little girl”. However, his image of her becomes tarnished when he learns of her orogeny. Although Jija and Nassun’s journey is a way for Jija to protect her, he ultimately wants to change the core of her being. Essun was raised with this mentality as well; her parents completely defined her by her orogeny. Once found out, she was no longer a child; she became a monster. Although Jija is trying to get Nassun help, he upholds the idea that her ‘evil’ must be eliminated. Both Essun and Nassun have trauma stemming from identity suppression. This societally-imposed ‘pollution’ of self is communicated by Nassun: “The way of the world isn’t the strong devouring the weak, but the weak deceiving and poisoning and whispering in the ears of the strong until they become weak, too”. After Nassun is constantly conditioned to believe she is evil, she says to Jija,“I wish you could love me anyway, even though I’m bad”. So, she knows that Jija does not truly love her. He cannot get overcome his societal conditioning. However, Schaffa “loves [Nassun] no matter what, as a father should”. The difference between Essun and Nassun, then, is that Schaffa tries to break the cycle of abuse with the latter. Although his very nature is exploitative towards Nassun, he tries his best to protect her. This contributes to Essun’s bitterness, as she never had a father figure like Nessun did. Both Essun and Nassun are traumatized by ‘scapegoating’, but Schaffa’s love for Nassun is what saves her. The dynamic between Schaffa, Essun, and Nassun is a perfect example of cyclic trauma. Schaffa’s trauma causes him to abuse Essun, who in turn traumatizes Nassun. 

Towards the end of The Stone Sky, it is a big question whether Essun can overcome her childhood trauma and reach out to her daughter. After all, she was not equipped with any lessons on how to heal relationships—or how to heal in general. Ultimately, it is Essun’s ability to confront her own trauma that saves the world and ends the Seasons. She mends her relationship with Nassun by showing her that love and forgiveness is the only path to healing. Nassun is imparted with her mother’s wisdom: “Open the Gate, pour the Rifting’s power through it, catch the Moon. End the Seasons. Fix the world. This, Nassun sess-feels-knows, was your last wish”. Their relationship transformation is represented through this particular quote, as Essun and Nassun develop an intuitive connection. Both mother and daughter fight through their hurt, anger, and resentment to heal the world. Essun finally assumes her motherly duty: to instill in her daughter kindness and love. 

The transformation of Essun really moved me, and the final page of The Stone Sky solidified a lesson I will always carry with me. Even after experiencing an entire existence of rejection, Essun decides to heal the world that burned her. Although, simplifying her transformation through so few words seems like an injustice. Even to someone with all the empathy in the world, the amount of suffering Essun went through is unfathomable. Not only does she forgive the world for being so cruel, but she also sacrifices herself to preserve it. It is no coincidence that when Essun and Nassun make the decision to heal, geological disasters are quelled. When they make a decision to stand against violence, the Earth calms itself as well. Although geological destruction will never cease entirely, the ending of the Seasons marks an interruption of cyclical violence. When Essun sacrifices herself, Nassun finally realizes that her mother loved her all along, and a mother’s love is the ultimate survival tool. Hoa perfectly captures this at the end of the book: “That is how one survives eternity…or even a few years. Friends. Family. Moving with them. Moving forward”.

It is always strange to have to reflect on yourself, to go back in (meta) time and evaluate your ability to notice things, and see what it is that made you think about those things. Looking back to my ThinkING Essay, I feel very nuanced about my execution and my thought processes that I used to craft the essay. While I do remember working with real geologic events like “The Earth is Breathing”, “Buried in Volcanic Ash”, and others, I didn’t make any writing moves to work them into my essay. Even though I did discuss and analyze brief ideas of power and justice in The Fifth Season, I disregarded the part that asked about real world geologic sources—which I had realized through instructor feedback and some personal reflection at the time. My process in this essay will be to reflect on where I was and what I was thinkING about, application of my changed thinkING, and then why my thinkING has changed throughout The Broken Earth Trilogy. 

When I was thinking about the course concepts of Justice and Love, I began to try to bring my own collection of experience with these concepts in other areas of my life, as a frameworks perspective to have with me. A lot of my engagement with ideas of justice and power have been through the consumption of media, including TV shows, movies, and anime. I noted in the first “Care for my Growth” check-in that “I watch a lot of TV shows and anime where justice, truth, and peace are central themes and ideas…relating to this class… I find myself thinking about it a lot.” Given how much interest in those I’ve had it is fairly clear to see that one of my synthesis moves was to incorporate those into my thinkING process this semester. While I think that at some level this was helpful—and I recognize that this partially aligns with Geneseo’s GLOBE outcomes of “Integrative Inquiry” and “Application and Transfer”—I believe that this contributed to my oversight of the geological concepts/sources, and how they interact with The Broken Earth Trilogy. 

A major aspect of my essay was how Jemisin used the geologic concept of orogeny (the process of mountain formation especially by folding of the earth’s crust) and how that ability was given to Orogenes as a marker for oppression and control in the Stillness. The stripping of autonomy within this series is abundantly clear, and I still do believe that it is a key concept N.K Jemisin crafts into it. The Orogenes are shown to be a group controlled by the Fulcrum, they are feared and hated by the Stills, and the forced conception(s) I mentioned in my essay show that. Where I fell short in my ThinkING essay was a true comparison to geologic events, and this is when I knew I had to change the way I was working and thinking about The Broken Earth Trilogy.

Once we started working through the rest of The Broken Earth Trilogy, there was a noticeable shift in how I saw Jemisin use geological events/concepts to portray power and justice. When I started to actually look at these concepts and how they are literally put into the novels. Using the article “Buried in Volcanic Ash ” now to look at Jemisin’s use of geologic events, I could compare this aftermath to that of the Rifting, set in place by Alabaster. The ash in that article came as a result of a volcanic eruption in the Spanish island of La Palma, and tragically blanketed the landscape and homes of the people living there. Then looking at the Rifting and its impacts, you can notice the destruction and the ashfall that followed caused the displacement of peoples from their homes (Comms). Continuing from The Fifth Season, the impacts of the Rifting are still present and noticeable in The Obelisk Gate. One passage that shows the human impact is when Essun, Ykka, and others from Castrima-under go to the surface to gauge the damage: “Up here there’s nothing…Ykka’s just reacting to the starkness of the comm around her. So many silent houses, dead gardens, and ash-occluded pathways where people once walked…Yet it was also a real comm once, alive and bright and anything but still,” (The Obelisk Gate 30-31). The damage caused from the eruption is eerily similar to what happened to La Palma in November of 2021. I think by looking at real world events and seeing how events like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and other geologic events harm and change civilizations, that is what started to help me understand the connection to The Broken Earth Trilogy.

During the collaboration essay I saw even more concretely how comparing The Broken Earth Trilogy to the real world 2010 earthquake in Haiti brought up ideas of power and justice. When the group first started thinking about why we might want to look at Haiti and their experience, we almost immediately started drawing up any connections that we saw from just a first glance. There were so many ideas being brought into the discussion like how the earthquake had exacerbated issues that were already existing including political instability and food/water insecurity. During the research phase of the collaboration, a peer brought to our attention an article that claimed officials in Haiti had ignored warning signs of the fault-line being ready to rupture. This brought out the Jemisin phrase seen often throughout her trilogy “Oh. Oh.” as it aided us more in constructing the rest of our work. 

Through working out the “Human Impact” section of the collaborative essay, this felt like one of the bigger tests of my understanding of geologic concepts and justice. We had elected to split up within the group and each group of three would focus specifically on the section everybody felt they were most able to synthesize. In my subgroup, the three of us began by discussing how we thought we could best craft this section to portray the impact on Haiti, while also weaving in N.K Jemisin’s work. Upon discussing and narrowing down specific topics, we chose to compare the vulnerability of lives in Haiti, along with the lack of food/water resources, to the parts in The Broken Earth Trilogy where we noticed similarities. The number of casualties that were reported, as well as a tragic first hand account of a parent losing their child in the destruction, were directly connected to the vulnerability of people within the Stillness. This was a specific section that I found–while extremely saddening–gripping. It is a direct example of the tragedy and injustice that comes along with geologic movements and the destruction they can bring.

Another reason my thinkING changed over time was because I started to “Slow Down”, as Dr. McCoy often advises. By this I mean to say that I stopped rushing to try and interpret the series as a whole based on just one moment, and I also began to sideline my own outside  knowledge and experience with topics of justice and power. I stopped trying to make the course concepts fit into all situations. By doing so, I noticed my interpretations were more concrete and grounded in both the real-world and the text.

By being able to see where geologic concepts are used within the text, and through understanding the human impact these events have I do think there is a better understanding of how justice and power plays into this series. Consistently in this series groups of people are put in unjust situations, and are consequently put at the mercy of those in positions of power above them. What exacerbates these power dynamics are the geologic concepts that Jemisin weaves in, and this became most clear, as I’ve stated, during the collaboration effort in which our group compared and contrasted the 2010 Haiti earthquake with The Broken Earth Trilogy. The parallels between these fictional and real-world events and how justice and power implicates itself within them is something that I’ve gained through a process of slowing down, grounding myself in analyzing the texts, and opening myself to peer contributions/analyses.