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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Fifth Season, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hierarchy, Oppression, and Prejudice
Disaster, Violence, and Survival
Freedom
Power and Control
History, Storytelling, and Knowledge
Identity and Naming
Summary
Analysis
This chapter, narrated in the second-person, describes a brief time of happiness for the “you” who’s being addressed. The narrator offers it as a reminder that not everything has been painful, but there has been peace as well. At the same time, the narrator says, while “you” and “she” rested, other factions—including the Guardians, the Seasons, the stone eaters, and Father Earth himself—have gathered for war.
This brief section about Syenite’s pregnancy and early years of motherhood on Meov essentially confirms that Syenite will later become Essun, as the “you” of Essun and the “she” of Syenite are conflated here. After so much grief and trauma, Syenite does at least get a brief period of peace and freedom on Meov, but the world at large continues to move, and the facts of Essun’s life make clear that the time on Meov is going to come to an end in some way.
Themes
