N.K Jemisin writes of a world where
the most powerful humans, which are capable of manipulating the earth and
sustaining life, are belittled and made to feel weak. The Fifth Season
chronicles the life of one orogene in particular, and each major milestone in
her life is identified by a different name. In the beginning, she identifies with
the name Damaya, which is the name given to her by her parents when she is little,
and she identifies with them strongly at this age even though they reject her. When
Damaya’s new guardian, Schaffa, scolds her mother for keeping Damaya in such
terrible living quarters, her mother says, “[o]rdinary people can’t take care of…of
children like her” (32). It isn’t that her parents hate her (30), as she has
never done anything wrong to them. It’s that Damaya’s parents are afraid of her
(33) because she contains power that no still, or regular human, can
understand. Damaya believes that she is an evil, uncontrollable thing because
her family does. Upon recalling a memory at school with Schaffa in which she
nearly kills someone, she thinks, “she hates herself for being born as she is
and disappointing them all. And now Schaffa knows just how weak and terrible
she is” (76). She chooses to trust Schaffa because he says he can help her
become less of a monster, and when they leave Damaya’s home, Jemisin writes, “’[d]on’t
look back’, Schaffa advises. ‘It’s easier that way’. So she doesn’t. Later, she
will realize he was right about this, too. Much later, though, she will wish
she had done it anyway” (41). Damaya knows her parents can’t take care of her,
but later on she realizes that neither can Schaffa. Under the name Syenite, she
has a better sense of self and control. She focuses on pleasing the Guardians because
she believes that they will help her overcome and control her orogeny, which
she considers a curse. Syenite accepts that orogenes are treated differently
(153), however, her travel mate Alabaster does not, and tells Syenite, “’[b]ut
each of us is just another weapon to them. Just a useful monster, just a bit of
new blood to add to the breeding lines. Just another fucking rogga’” (143). Alabaster’s hatred for
the Fulcrum ultimately rubs off on Syenite and inspires her to go into hiding
(443). Under the name Essun, she travels to Tirimo and leads a new life separate
from the Fulcrum. She hides who she is to avoid persecution from stills, who do
not understand her power and fear it. Stills, like those in the Fulcrum,
suppress the power of orogeny so that the Fulcrum can remain in power. The
Guardians justify the suppression and discrimination of orogenes by
dehumanizing them, and Essun resents this. While the Guardians train orogenes
to control their powers in exchange for rings and respect, this is an illusion:
“’[t]ell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among
us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them there is a standard for acceptance;
that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at these contradictions,
and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt.
Then they’ll break themselves trying for what they’ll never achieve’” (76). No
matter what Essun did or ever will do for the Stills, she will never be treated
as one of them and will never be respected. Striving for acceptance has only ever
broken her, and so Essun resorts to hiding, and eventually exile, when her comm
figures out what she really is. While the Fifth Season doesn’t resolve the
power struggle between stills and orogenes, it is clear that the stills are
scared of how much more power orogenes have, and they will do anything to make orogenes
feel like their power is a burden.
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ReplyDeleteI agree that it is terrible that the Fulcrum and the Guardians automatically assume the power to define the orogenes and decide their fates. The Stillness is not a democracy – it is a society based on oppression and fear. This fear of the “other” breeds “the ultimate proof of the world’s hatred,” a culture that decides whether an individual lives or dies based on how useful they are and what skills they have to offer (Jemisin 143). Orogenes are both weapons of mass destruction as well as creators of natural life, which is why they are deemed so dangerous. The Fulcrum claims their unpredictability makes them evil and reckless. Through lifelong training and careful, selective breeding, the Guardians aim to control the overall population and maintain their power. The term orogene is often replaced with the slur rogga, “a dehumanizing word for someone who has been made into a thing” (Jemisin 140). Like you previously stated, the Fulcrum justifies this oppression and discrimination, strips orogenes of their identities, and conditions them into weapons for their own malicious use. The Guardians are just afraid of what they cannot understand, so they make the orogenes–the ones with the true power–feel weak. “‘They are the gods in chains…The tamers of the wild earth, themselves to be bridled and muzzled’” (Jemisin 167). This skewed power dynamic both literally and figuratively binds the orogenes in chains, which must be broken if they are to make a better world for both stills and orogenes.
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ReplyDeleteAdding to that, not only do stills make orogenes feel inferior, but orogenes themselves make others of their kind feel inferior. This creates a parallel in the relationship between stills and orogenes and the relationship between Fulcrum-bred orogenes and ferals. When Syenite meets Alabaster for the first time, he immediately knows she wasn’t born in the Fulcrum and is a feral. Turning a bit cold towards her, he describes ferals as “a wild mutt to [his] domesticated purebred. An accident, to my plan” (72). In society, being an orogene makes Syenite inferior to stills, but as a feral she is inferior in orogene society. That’s why, even though Syenite was climbing fast in rank, the Fulrcrum-bred orogenes still looked at her differently. She believes it’s because “if the problem is that ferals are not predictable. . .well, orogenes have to prove themselves reliable” (72). In this way, even though stills are superior to orogenes, they fear the power orogenes have, and use that fear to degrade orogenes. Similarly, Fulcrum-bred orogenes are seen as superior to ferals. However, Fulcrum-bred orogenes fear the unpredicitability of ferals as it makes them less reliable in still society, making the stills fear them more and causing more inferiority.
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