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Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl Who Drank the Moon, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Love
Storytelling, Censorship, and Control
Memory, Forgetting, and the Future
Sorrow vs. Hope
Summary
Analysis
Xan follows the rock path up to the volcano’s crater. There used to be a big Tower, but the Tower is gone and the castle is rubble. The circle of stones from the courtyard is gone except for one, and it takes Xan hours to find it. When she does, she finds a message that Zosimos carved: “Don’t forget. I mean it.” It’s disappointing, and Xan doesn’t know what she’s supposed to remember. As she puts her forehead against the stone and apologizes to Zosimos, a surge of magic hits her and the stone opens to reveal steps. Suddenly, Xan remembers Zosimos warning her that sorrow was dangerous because “she” was still around, so Xan swallowed her sorrow and her memories.
Xan’s memory of Zosimos’s warning makes it clear that there is someone else who has it out for Xan, and gains power by cultivating sorrow. This offers some explanation for why Xan has pushed her sorrow down—doing so means that she can more easily avoid this enemy. Again, this shows that there are a number of good reasons to forget and to self-censor, but it also makes the case that one can’t completely forget if one wants to be able to use the past to influence the future.
Themes
Xan remembers how everyone in the castle ran into the forest when the volcano exploded. She put protective spells on them as Zosimos hid the castle within the stones and told her to not forget. She assured him that she wouldn’t, but he insisted that she would. Zosimos told her that he was going to save people and hoped that Xan would go on to make sure they’re thankful, though he knew she wouldn’t. Then, he and Fyrian’s mother, a Simply Enormous Dragon, leapt into the volcano and stopped the eruption. Xan realizes now that she did nothing to keep Zosimos’s memory alive. She forgot him within a year and never found it strange. She wonders why her memories disappeared and why Zosimos hid the castle.
This passage recalls the parent’s story of the dragon being thrown into the volcano. Since Xan is a protagonist in the story, and a kind person, it’s likely that her version of events is more accurate (though memories are fallible, Xan also has nothing to gain by twisting the truth at this point). This again shows that the stories the parent shares shouldn’t be taken at face value, as they’ve been altered to control the Protectorate and keep people from questioning. Instead, people should ask questions, as Xan does here.
Themes
