56 pages • 1 hour read
Victoria AveyardGlass Sword
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The List of Names/Newbloods
Toward the end of Red Queen, Julian Jacos gave Mare Barrow a list of Reds with blood-type anomalies that signify they have Silver-type powers. This list and the newbloods themselves play a critical role in Glass Sword. The list of names motivates Mare’s search because she wants to give the newbloods a chance to live and build an army capable of stopping Maven. Mare’s searches for the newbloods end in one of three ways: She rescues the newblood; she finds the newblood dead; she learns the newblood has gone missing. The first helps her achieve her goals. The second means Maven has bested her, and the third symbolizes how Maven intends to use newbloods and foreshadows the prison break at the end of the book.
The newbloods themselves have a vast array of powers. While each newblood is as individual as their ability, few play big enough of a role in the story to warrant their own separate analysis. Rather, the newbloods, both as individuals and as a group, symbolize what people can become when their full potential is revealed. Mare, Cal, and the other more experienced ones train the recruits, who hone their abilities into weapons. In Chapter 24, Mare tells Cal that Silvers don’t know how to plan for newblood abilities, which sets Cal on the path to developing a better plan for storming Maven’s prison. In this scene, the newbloods represent change and how the ability to adjust to new information lets people learn faster and more effectively.
Maven’s Notes and Brand
In Chapter 16, Maven tests the machine he later uses to silence Mare’s ability, and in the process, he carves a letter M into Mare’s skin. This brand foreshadows Mare’s capture at the end of the book and hints at what Maven may have in store for her in the sequel. It also suggests Maven has an unhealthy obsession with Mare. The queen may have twisted Maven’s mind so much that he views this obsession as some kind of love, and he brands Mare to prove to her and himself that she belongs to him. The brand is located on Mare’s collarbone, a location that could be covered but also could be revealed easily. In this way, Maven displays his obsession and covers it up, which mirrors how he secretly might yearn for Mare while giving the public the appearance that he wants her captured or killed.
Maven’s notes also exact psychological torture on Mare. Maven leaves the notes alongside the corpses of newbloods he and his Silvers have killed. Literally, the notes are messages to Mare telling her the deaths will stop when she surrenders herself. Figuratively, they are a game that may mean different things to Mare and Maven. Mare wants to get rid of the notes and throw away the image of Maven as he was in Book 1. She cannot do so, partly because she has hope and partly because the girl she used to be fell in love with the boy Maven pretended to be. For Maven, the notes may be his version of courting, equally as twisted as his view of the brand. Toward the end of the book, Cal reveals he knew about Maven’s notes, which become a bone of contention between him and Mare. To Cal, they are a betrayal because he shared his bed—a safe place—with Mare, only to have her pining over a version of Maven that doesn’t exist.
Prisons
Prisons, both physical and psychological, play an important role throughout Glass Sword. For most of the early part of the book, Mare traps herself in prisons of her own making, which is ironic because she continuously insists she is finally free and will never be a prisoner again. Her mental prisons symbolize how people can trap themselves without even realizing it and how they can be unable to break free of the prisons they make. Mare’s feelings for Maven, her complicated relationship with Cal, and her struggle to define herself tangle her thoughts and keep her from finding answers to any of these dilemmas by the end of the book.
Physical prisons represent the untrue notion that imprisoning a threat is a foolproof way to deal with it. In Chapter 7, Kilorn shoves Mare into the Barracks 1 prison cell with Cal, and the following chapter shows Mare at ease while Cal paces like a caged animal. Mare does not truly feel threatened by this prison until the Colonel announces his intention to trade Cal for raising the conscription age. Then, Mare prepares to fight, symbolizing how she is more willing to battle for those she cares about than herself. The Silver prison in the later chapters represents the limitations of Silver and newblood abilities. When surrounded by Silent Stone, both groups are rendered powerless. In addition to blocking abilities, the stone also causes the prisoners to wither and become weak, suggesting a link between powers and life force. The walkways and staircases between cells are made of metal and folded away by Silvers when not in use, showing how abilities make a prison even more absolute. Shade is killed during the prison break, which symbolizes the new emotional prison Mare puts herself in after his death—where she tries and fails to reconcile what happened and find a way she could have stopped it.
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By Victoria Aveyard
