Names…”Names have power” (239). A name gives us an identity, a category, something to belong to, an overall understanding of what something is. In The Stone Sky, Nassun and Schaffa enter the mantle of the Earth, and as they enter, Nassun recognizes the layer they have entered as the asthenosphere. By naming it, her fear is eased. But as I came across this passage, I resonated with it in a different kind of sense. Yes, giving a name to something does familiarize it, somehow. However, societally, names and labels act as borders and a sign of exclusivity almost, in my opinion.
Solarpunk Syl Anagist
I found the idea of Solarpunk to be fascinating when we talked about it in class. It’s a huge contrast to the dystopian and pessimistic themes we often see in popular literature or film. But, that said, I’ve also found a lot of posts and articles that are quick to point out the line that still exists between Solarpunk and utopia, with perfect balance and equality. According to Wikipedia (excuse my choice of source, please), however, a utopia “is inherently contradictory, because societies are not homogeneous, and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied.” Tumblr user @brazenbotany explains the distinction below:
Kinetic Sand!
I don’t know about everyone else, but I vividly remember those commercials on TV when I was younger advertising what is known as kinetic sand; that colorful, half sand, half playdough stuff that looked and felt like wet sand, but it wasn’t! I can remember sitting down at the kitchen table with my two younger sisters and breaking out the sand, squishing it, rolling it and stacking it, all before my mom entered the room panicking that we were playing with this sand without any sort of box or newspaper underneath it to keep the table clean (needless to say, my mom started supervising our use of kinetic sand after that incident).
Why is kinetic sand relevant to anything I might have to say, you ask? Well, after scrolling through and re-reading the notes I had taken throughout our reading of The Broken Earth Trilogy, I became unusually fixed on the word “grit” , and kept trying to wrack my brain of where I had heard this word before. I had this feeling that it was relevant, and wasn’t just the name of a boiled corn breakfast meal. Finally after a long period of the word just bouncing around in the back of my head, I realized why I was finding this word to be significant. Continue reading “Kinetic Sand!”
The Type of Love that Writes A Trilogy
In the Acknowledgements of The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin leaves readers with insight on the journey that she has endured in writing this trilogy. Of all the moving things she said I was most impacted by the assertion she makes on page 416:
“Where there is pain in this book, it is real pain; where there is anger, it is real anger; where there is love, it is real love.”
Without realizing it, I began creating a mental checklist on these emotions and how they revealed themselves throughout the trilogy. It was easy to pinpoint instances that enticed rage or pain, but I seemed to stumble when I considered love. Then finally (finally) it hit me.
Writing History that Bleeds
Throughout the Jemisin books that I’ve read so far, The Fifth Season most demonstrates the underlying themes of social injustice, and systematic oppression. It was not until after class on Friday that I came to realize that Jemisin is portraying even larger themes than discrimination in her other world fiction. By contextualizing these themes into real world examples, I can see that Jemisin had a greater overall idea in her writing. By using descriptive language and being concise, Jemisin leads readers to the bigger picture of systematic oppression, while still acknowledging the painful details, that some would call a “bleeding story.” Continue reading “Writing History that Bleeds”
Character Development by Jemisin
Analyze one character (ex Nassun) actions she takes/words she speaks in different points in the novels
Attempt to see how Jemisin changes that character and to what end
One of the most difficult things for a writer to do is to create and develop a character that is believable. Jemisin is very effective at writing characters and developing them in a way that feels real in their context and is constructive to her story and its themes. I am interested in how she develops a character, so I went back to Obelisk Gate in order to sess how exactly Nassun goes from wayward child to savior of humanity. (How would an orogene sess a book? Bury it? Stand on it? Would they be able to read a book a lot more quickly if it was underground? Food for thought)
Nassun’s introduction to The Broken Earth series is late for a main character, only getting any direct attention after the start of the second novel. It only goes to show Jemisin’s talent as a writer that she is able to develop Nassun as she does with so much less time and dedication. When we are introduced to Nassun she is fixated on her father in a worryingly obsessive manner. She seems to direct a great deal of negativity back onto her mother and herself, hating that Essun made her keep secrets from Jija about being an orogene. Essun’s development bleeds over into Nassun’s a bit as she lists a litany of reasons why she distrusts her mother and prefers her father over her, even after Jija murders Uche. Nassun seems confused, lost and desperate for something to cling to in the wake of her family’s destruction, which she blames on herself, her mother and her orogeny. What is important here is that she has been able to be what her father can love up until this point, but now he expects her to be something she can’t, which is not an orogene. They both are only able to continue on with the promise that Nassun will be able to undo her nature at Found Moon.
Later, after Nassun connects to the Sapphire and kills Eitz in the process she is heaping the blame for his death onto herself and lamenting that she is a monster. To this Shaffa says; “Perhaps, but you are my monster” (198). The narrator asserts that because of how awful Nassun feels that this actually makes her feel better. This is telling of her development and a reminder that not all change is for the better. In Shaffa she has a parental figure that gives her the love and affection that she craved from a father that was too weak and afraid to give it to her and a mother who was too broken and afraid to give it to her in a way that reached her. At this point Nassun is falling into a trap that many young orogenes fall into where their world has dissolved around them and they’ve no-one to turn to and Guardians show up to fill that void for them. Shaffa is a unique case and has managed to fight the influence of Evil Earth and genuinely cares for Nassun, yet still capitalizes on Nassun’s emotionally vulnerable state to engender feelings of trust and dependency. With Shaffa, Nassun is able to be herself without compromising or altering herself for his satisfaction. The most significant way that Shaffa is able to connect to Nassun is that he loves her for who she is, rather than for what she was or might be. This is different from Jija, who Nassun is forced to kill because he can not reconcile with the fact that his daughter is an orogene. This is significant in that Nassun refuses to bend to someone else’s expectations of her.
As a sort of side note, it is interesting to see how Essun alienated herself from Nassun by teaching her orogeny in the same way she was taught despite knowing that this method embittered her to the Fulcrum and eventually drove her away. It reminds me of how children with abusive parents are likely to also be abusive because they have no other model for parenting than violence to keep control. This lack of trust exists until the end of the series until Essun says that she wants to help Nassun with the Obelisk Gate.
In Stone Sky Nassun’s slavish devotion to Shaffa has only deepened to the point where she compromises her own objective in reaching the Obelisk Gate by bringing Shaffa with her despite Evil Earth’s ability to control him. While Shaffa is incapacitated, Nassun is alone and spends a great deal of time in the ruins of Syl Anagist hoping for Shaffa’s recovery before moving on. After Shaffa’s corestone is removed and she realizes how little time he has left to live she comes up with the plan to use the obelisks to turn everyone in the world into stone eaters in order to preserve Shaffa is some form or another. This plan I think is representative of Nassun inability to let go, she wants to keep Shaffa despite the fact that after living for so long as a slave to Evil Earth, being made into a stone eater that was tied to the same being. That is understandable given the value that being given unconditional validation has for anyone, but especially Nassun. Her actions in these later chapters illustrate that she has realized that orogenes are treated badly not because of their own failings, but because of the ignorance and mindless hate. Nassun no longer blames herself for how she is treated, but still relies on Shaffa’s validation of her and will preserve him however she can in order to continue being validated. Before she reaches the Obelisk Gate, the stone eater that has attached himself to her, Steel, stops Nassun and through a series of questions essentially points out that Nassun is lying to herself about turning Shaffa into a stone eater for his sake. She is really doing it for her own benefit and that living forever is not really that great. She is convinced through his argument that turning Shaffa into a stone eater is not the best thing for him. This does not mean she alters in her course though, and she prepares herself to go forward anyway.
What ultimately stops this is Essun’s presence at the climax and her real concern for her daughter. The Obelisk Gate speaks to Nassun and questions whether Shaffa is really the only person that cares for her as she believed up until this point having written off her mother as being “wrong” due to the Fulcrum’s influence. When Essun offers to unconditionally help Nassun, that is proof enough that her mother really does care for her and doesn’t really want Nassun to change herself for her sake.
Rethinking Heroism
In The Broken Earth trilogy Jemisin tackles the idea of heroism in a very interesting way. For most of the trilogy I did not believe that there was a hero in this story. It seemed like The Stillness was too bleak for such ideas. Then in The Stone Sky, in a conversation between Danel and Essun, one of my favorite exchanges in the series occurred.
“‘I know when I see stories being written though.’
‘I… I don’t know anything about that.’
‘She shrugs. The hero of the story never does’” (Jemison, The Stone Sky, 222).
Palimpsest: CLICK HERE to learn more about this weird disease (just kidding, it’s just a word I didn’t know but, hey, since you’re here, read this post)
I often say that my main activity as an English major is looking up the meaning of words that I don’t know the meaning of — the other day, in doing writing for another class, I came across such a word:
Any takers on the meaning of that one? Yeah, I didn’t know it, maybe all of you do (literary theorist Paul Gilroy certainly does, let’s all give a warm round of applause to Mr. Gilroy for his contributions).
1. Palimpsest can first refer to writing material (such as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased. Continue reading “Palimpsest: CLICK HERE to learn more about this weird disease (just kidding, it’s just a word I didn’t know but, hey, since you’re here, read this post)”
Home
The other day I read about an Icelandic fishing village named Vestmannaeyjar and their fateful fight with their local volcano 1973. Immediately I thought of parallels with this event and the Broken Earth Trilogy. In both situations, homes are destroyed but with different outcomes.
The Aeta and Cultural Disaster
In the collaborative blog post I previously worked on about the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, I had the chance to look into older stories I have been told within my own family and cultural upbringing. While I would classify myself as culturally American, many parts of my own family come from the Philippines, specifically from a region very close to Mt. Pinatubo. I have grown up hearing stories about the eruption, however, my own research into the events of the eruption so many years later has revealed some interesting results. In many ways, the Pinatubo and Aeta situation contain strong reflections to Jemisin’s works. This blog post will likely take on a personal tone, as I speak about my own passed down cultural knowledge of the area, and expand upon the cultural disaster of Pinatubo on the Aeta people.