Gathering Blue

The question of power goes hand in hand with the question of mercy. Only those in positions of power can have mercy. The very idea of mercy suggests that a power imbalance exists. Luckily, life provides plenty of opportunities for displays of mercy, as power imbalances are everywhere. We see these imbalances expressed in the descriptions of families in Kira’s village—husbands yell at wives, wives then hit children, illustrating the hierarchy of power and the violence it engenders.

Another aspect of this book’s exploration of power, however, is its consideration of different kinds of power. The power of violence is the most obvious kind of power at work in this society, where physical abuse is routine and the inhabitants live in fear of being fed to the beasts. There is also the violence done to the Council’s victims—the artists chosen to sustain the Ruin Song and its attendant ceremony.

However, Kira identifies another kind of power—creative power. In this context, she is referring to her own power as an artist to imagine and create a better world for her community. In a society that operates under the principle of fear, the power of violence seems like the only real power there is but the village of healing suggests otherwise.  Nurture and care also fall under the umbrella of creative power, as Kira’s desire to protect Jo suggests, and in this way the novel points to the fact that caring for others is not a form of weakness, but a source of strength.

The novel is also concerned with questions of difference and diversity in society. The village’s custom of pushing out those born with a disability or who are disabled due to illness or accident is one form of eliminating difference. Another is the strict regulation of the inhabitants’ daily lives by the “bells” of the Council. Though there are no references to clocks anywhere in the novel, it’s clear that the bells, which ring at various points throughout the day, keep everyone in the village on a rigid clock time that governs when the wake up, when they go to work, when they return home from work, and, possibly, when they go to sleep at night. Such uniformity is another way of eliminating difference.

Another way the novel explores questions of difference and diversity is through its consideration of color. Though there is no indication that the village inhabitants are of different races, so the discussion of diversity does not touch on racial diversity per se, color in general seems to represent difference and diversity, since the Singer’s robe is the only thing allowed to be colorful. Contrast is what makes color visible—we understand colors through their difference from one another, and looked at in this way, the inherent danger of color, as representative of difference, becomes apparent. This is the symbolic reason why it is so carefully controlled by the Council.

The only real social difference evident in village society, with the exception of the significant gap between the twelve members of the Council of Guardians and everyone else, is the difference between the villagers in Kira’s old neighborhood and the people of the Fen. It is clear that the people of the Fen are considered to be of a lower class than the other villagers, and they are marked by their distinctive way of speaking. Three of the novel’s major characters are from the Fen—Matt, Annabella, and Jo—and two of these three characters are able to see certain truths more clearly than other people. They’re also the two people most closely connected to the color blue—Annabella because she knows that people have it, that it exists somewhere “yonder”; and Matt because he recognizes its importance to Kira and is able to find it.