60 pages • 2 hours read
Hafsah FaizalA Tempest of Tea
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Redefining Family through Loss and Trauma
Few, if any, of the main characters in A Tempest of Tea have a stable family life; Jin endured the deaths of his own parents, while Arthie and Penn both suffered personal trauma that led them to sever or change their familial bonds. The very definition of family within the novel is broad and flexible, and while traditional nuclear families like Jin’s do exist, many of the familial relationships in the novel are adoptive or “found” rather than biological. Even so, these chosen relationships still contain the complex effects of interpersonal issues, particularly loss and trauma. Ultimately, each character’s experience of family is shaped—for better or worse—by their trauma, which causes them to break, change, or cling to different relationships in order to meet needs that they may not even realize are going unmet.
The primary familial relationship in the novel is Jin and Arthie’s bond. They explicitly view each other as siblings, sharing a chosen last name and protecting each other fiercely. However, their relationship also serves as an attempt to replace what they both have lost. Arthie adopts Jin as her brother because he needs her, but she grows dependent upon him to quell her need for blood through coconut water, even though she avoids trusting him with the secrets of her half-vampiric status and her identity. Jin, in turn, needs Arthie to support him after the death of his family, but he never stops mourning his family or trying to recover from the trauma, and he trusts in Arthie to support his weaknesses. Thus, due to their separate traumas, the two characters enable one another. Jin’s reliance on Arthie means that he never tries to question her about herself, while Arthie’s reliance on Jin means that she forever keeps him at a distance, even though she pretends not to. This dynamic causes them both to seek other relationships that will actually meet their interpersonal needs. Arthie and Jin’s relationship is so damaged by trauma and loss that they have no actual intimacy aside from being accustomed to one another, and when certain secrets are revealed, these revelations damage and forever change their sibling bond.
This pattern holds true in other relationships of Arthie’s as well, including her resistance to accepting Penn as a father figure and her mistrust of Laith’s affection. However, Laith’s own issues enable Arthie to perceive her need to grow beyond her trauma and allow herself to heal. Laith’s inability to heal from the loss of his sister—a block that is caused in part by his own selfishness about their relationship—mirrors Arthie’s unspoken issues. Accordingly, her move to kill Laith marks a symbolic choice to kill the traumatized part of herself that prevents her from developing healthy relationships. While Arthie’s responses to trauma have damaged her relationships irreparably, the novel ends with the suggestion that Arthie now faces a choice—to grow beyond the limitations of her past, or to sink into decay if she, like Laith, chooses to let her loss and trauma rob her of familial connections.
The Tension between Secrecy and Trust
Each character in the series has secrets, and each must choose to either keep their secrets or confide in others, knowing that great risks lie in either choice. Throughout the novel, secrets become a currency, and Arthie and Matteo in particular use secrets as leverage to extort and control others. Matteo, for example, blackmails Arthie with the knowledge that her teahouse being a bloodhouse, while she does the same to him through her knowledge that he is a vampire. Additionally, each character’s interaction with their own secrets dictates how others respond to them when those secrets are revealed. Characters like Jin, who are more honest and open, build healthier relationships, while those who refuse to be honest, like Laith, suffer from the consequences of their distrust.
Within this context, Laith and Flick act as foils, for although they both serve as potential love interests to the protagonists and lie about their motivations for entering the Athereum, they undergo opposite journeys as they struggle under the weight of their secrets, and Flick ultimately gains a much more favorable outcome due to her turn toward greater honesty. Initially, Laith wants to get close to Arthie to get Calibore, while Flick wants to betray Arthie to win back her mother’s favor. However, the two characters make markedly different choices, weighing the cost of secrets and benefits of trust when they select their ultimate course of action. Flick realizes that her mother never truly loved her, and when she chooses instead to trust Jin and Arthie, she becomes a more honest person and learns to accept herself. Laith, on the other hand, finds himself burdened by Arthie’s betrayal. Hampered by his own grief, he refuses to stop lying to Arthie, and his stubbornness leads to their disastrous final meeting at the end of the novel. Thus, Laith’s refusal to grow contrasts with Flick’s eager acceptance of growth.
The counterbalance to these dynamics of trust and betrayal is Matteo, who sees his companions for who they are and tries to encourage them to be their best selves—despite his many masks and occasional lies. Significantly, Matteo knows Arthie’s secrets but refrains from using them to manipulate her; instead, despite his teasing, he is kind to her and encourages her to adhere to her own principles. In line with his multifaceted approach, his storyline as the most ambiguous ending, for he neither suffers nor benefits from the novel’s events, and the author leaves many of his secrets unexplained for the time being. Ultimately, however, most of the characters learn that secrets always have a broad ripple effect, and almost always a negative one.
The Impact of Colonialism on Personal Development
The main characters in the novel all experience some form of marginalization, primarily as victims or witnesses to the colonial power of Ettenia, as well as the loss of life, culture, and power that result from such an exploitative system. Even characters like Matteo, who are not characters of color, suffer due to their status as vampires, as this group is threatened with exploitation under a government that is determined to use them as living weapons. While the novel often refers to colonialism in a generic sense—sometimes with a hyperaware, global perspective—each character also must face the pain and weight of colonialism on a deeply personal level, and their collective experiences create in turn a collective need for revenge against the system itself. Most notably, Arthie’s response to colonialism and exploitation highlights the capabilities of an individual to resist a global ideology, and her struggles also illustrate the limits and possibilities for revenge within a system designed to uphold a ruinous hegemony and destroy the marginalized “Other.”
Even before the timeline of the novel proper, Arthie’s vengeful actions highlight her resolute response to the suffering that Ettenian colonialism has caused her. For example, she raids the museum that contains stolen artifacts and reclaims the building for her own purposes, engaging in a wry miniature act of colonization in return. Her act of supporting the lower-class vampires who suffer under Ettenia’s government and under the control of the Athereum also indicates the drift of her own internal philosophy. While Arthie’s decision vary, her “vengeance” is almost always focused on helping those who have been hurt rather than harming those who have hurt her. Other characters, however, have much less noble motivations. For example, Laith—who is not yet colonized in name but is trying to avoid it—allies with the government and betrays Arthie by trying to kill her, all to serve his own purposes. Ironically, Laith tries to avoid oppression by betraying other oppressed people, and he ultimately becomes an oppressor himself. His approach counteracts Arthie’s allyship with others who have suffered colonization and exploitation, for she, unlike Laith, understands that supporting the oppressed is always more important than achieving violent vengeance, and Spindrift embodies the strength of her rationale.
When Spindrift is lost, however, Arthie’s motivations and center of morality also begin to burn away. The novel ends on the ominous note that Arthie and the Wolf will burn “her”—presumably the Ram, or perhaps Ettenia itself—to the ground, and this moment indicates that Arthie’s vengeance has become more personal and more violent in the wake of Spindrift’s loss, Penn’s death, and Jin’s vampirism. Colonialism has always been personal to Arthie, for although her mother’s love made her a half-vampire, colonialism drove her to feed on humans. When the hand of the Ram takes everything away from her, however, her revenge becomes more destructive, matching the actions of the Ram with deserved but much more violent fury.
