Strange the Dreamer

One of the core conflicts in the novel is the one between the citizens of Weep and the memory of the Mesarthim gods. The Mesarthim were conquerors and oppressors who abducted, raped, and enslaved the citizens of Weep. The humans hate and fear the Mesarthim gods. Wanting to be free of their influence, Eril-Fane slaughters all of the gods but does not succeed in ending the conflict, for the massacre only instills hate and a need for vengeance in their secret surviving children. Sarai struggles against Minya, who remembers the Carnage and wants vengeance against the humans. Sarai’s ultimate decision to have mercy and empathy for the humans suggests that compassion and mercy are choices that one must make to break the cycles of hate and violence.

Sarai is the primary character through which this theme is expressed. From the beginning, she is uniquely positioned to understand both the humans and the gods, through her gift of manipulating the humans’ dreams. She feels as follows:

[T]he wretched thing—and the thing she never dared talk about—was that in order to exploit the humans’ fears, she’d had to dwell in them. And you couldn’t do that for four thousand nights without coming to understand, in spite of yourself that the humans were survivors too (150).

These glimpses into the humans’ lives give her a new understanding of them as individuals and create conflict within her about how she should treat them. Sarai does not quite feel that vengeance is the right answer, because she sees in the humans’ dreams how they were oppressed at the hands of the gods. However, under Minya’s insistence, Sarai also remembers how the humans slaughtered the Mesarthim and their infant children and knows that the humans hate all godspawn and would kill her people if they could. These conflicting feelings place Sarai in a tug-of-war between what she feels to be loyalty to her family and the newfound mercy she feels for the humans.

Sarai’s ability to enter humans’ dreams allows her to challenge her own notions of hate. In Chapter 26, she makes the important revelation that “[the function of hate] was to stamp out compassion—to close a door in oneself and forget it was ever there” (211). By linking both suffering and hate, Laini Taylor emphasizes the idea that hate and lust for vengeance only lead to further destruction. By likening hate to a shield one puts up, Taylor also suggests that hate is a reaction formed from previous cycles of suffering. Sarai realizes that by seeing her father’s suffering through the power of dreams, she has been witness to his shame and his grief, and that experience has killed any hate she might have had for him (212). Sarai learns that opening herself up to others and learning to see their suffering and have empathy for them contain the key to deconstructing any feelings of hate.

The resolution of Sarai’s character arc is also the resolution of this theme. In Chapter 40, Sarai decides that her mercy “is singular and precious” (345) and she decides to extend it to the humans. She casts off shame and hate, knowing that neither one will help them move forward (434). Sarai embraces empathy and mercy and works with Lazlo to facilitate a truce between humans and Mesarthim. When Lazlo presents this idea to Eril-Fane, his reaction further reinforces the destructiveness of hate. Eril-Fane rejects the idea of killing the surviving godspawn, but “[his response] came out as though he were warding off a nightmare or a blow, as though even the idea was an assault, and he couldn’t bear it” (412), demonstrating how deeply he wishes to be free of the violence and bloodshed.

This thematic question is also resolved through Weep’s reaction to Lazlo’s identity as godspawn. Although Lazlo realizes that they all look at him as though he is a monster (506), the people of Weep also know that they love and respect Lazlo even before he takes action to save their city (505). Eril-Fane thanks Lazlo and gives him his respect and admiration, a radical act considering that the citizens of Weep are conditioned to hate blue-skinned godspawn on sight. The people’s acceptance of Lazlo based on their understanding and appreciation of him as an individual demonstrates the power of choosing acceptance and compassion to eradicate cycles of hate. Through Sarai’s character arc and Lazlo’s transformation into godspawn himself, the novel explores how cycles of hate and vengeance are perpetuated, and how choosing empathy liberates all involved from destructive feelings of shame, anger, and prejudice. Although the situation in Weep is not fully resolved and the fate of Sarai herself is left open-ended, the humans’ reaction to Lazlo resolves Weep’s conflict and reinforces the idea that understanding can break the cycle of mutual destruction.

Trauma is a recurring theme in the narrative. The narrative depicts different characters’ reactions and memories of a singular event: the Carnage. No matter what side they find themselves on, each character involved in the Carnage is thereafter impacted by it in different ways. Through characters like the Mesarthim children and Eril-Fane, Taylor explores the idea that unlike in traditional fairy tales, good and evil are not binary, clearly defined forces, but complex concepts dependent upon perspective.

Part 2 introduces the themes of trauma, violence, and memory from Sarai’s perspective. She and the other Mesarthim children are the survivors of a massacre, and it restricts their daily lives. They must live by “The Rule” (93) of concealment and show no evidence of their existence, lest they be discovered by humans and killed. They are isolated in the citadel, and Sarai struggles with the knowledge that the humans would see her as a monstrosity, and that she and the others can never be free to live a normal life, untainted by the fear of being murdered. Sarai and the other Mesarthim children live with the trauma of the Carnage, and now they live with the trauma of believing that they are on borrowed time, and that their murders are an inevitability. Based on this, the humans are framed as the evil ones, but Taylor challenges this idea by exploring the humans’ actions from other points of view.

To this end, Eril-Fane’s trauma is gradually revealed throughout the novel, and Taylor uses it to challenge the idea that he is unequivocally a good hero or malicious villain. Taylor uses Eril-Fane’s perspective to explore how his heroic actions for which he earned the name “Godslayer” have left him scarred. Eril-Fane’s memories of his enslavement to Isagol’s and his subsequent massacre of the gods and their children have destroyed him utterly, leaving him exposed to nightmares, self-loathing, shame, and fear:

[Sarai’s] father had saved his people and destroyed himself. As strong as he looked, inside he was a ruin, or perhaps a funeral pyre […] It choked him like weeds and rot and colonies of vermin, clogging and staining him, stagnant and fetid, so that nothing so noble as love, or—gods above—forgiveness, could ever claim space in him (351).

This challenges the idea that Eril-Fane is either the unquestionable “good guy,” from the humans’ perspective, or the irredeemable murderer from the godspawn’s perspective. The ways in which these acts of violence and trauma now impact him suggest that he cannot be a simplistic manifestation either good or evil, for the underlying morality (or immorality) of his past remains ambiguous and thus defies the clear-cut conventions usually displayed in a typical fantasy story.

Minya’s trauma is juxtaposed to both Sarai’s and Eril-Fane’s to deepen the narrative’s discourse on the complex nature of good and evil. In Chapter 31, Taylor uses Minya’s perspective to offer a different angle on her motivation to exact vengeance. Before this point, the reader has experienced Minya’s cruelty from Sarai’s perspective, who is lacking the internal insight that the narrator provides from the third-person omniscient perspective in Chapter 31. There, Minya is depicted in a moment of vulnerability, as she relives her memories of the Carnage and drowns in guilt for not being able to save more than what she could carry. By the end of the novel, Minya is exactly what she appears to be: a traumatized six-year-old with a burden she should not have had to carry (527). Witnessing Minya’s reaction to trauma conveys that her hard exterior springs from a deep place of damage and vulnerability; its source is the same as Sarai’s and Eril-Fane’s wounds, although Minya reacts differently to it than they do.

The guilt that both Minya and Eril-Fane share foils them against one another, but there is another undercurrent to trauma and memory that Sarai, Eril-Fane, and Minya all share: shame. Each character feels shame for what they did or did not do: Sarai feels shame for her mother’s and the gods’ actions, and she feels shame for what she is; Eril-Fane feels shame for the slaughter he had to enact upon the Mesarthim in order to free Weep; and Minya feels shame for not being able to save more babies. Sarai’s shame runs in her veins like blood (434), while Eril-Fane’s defines his entire being after his experience with Isagol and the Carnage (352). Minya will never be rid of her memories as she repeats the phrase, “They were all I could carry” (266) while feeling that she cannot absolve herself of her imagined failure (266). The shame from the past emphasizes the impact trauma has had on all these characters, weaving a sad common thread between them. Although they are on opposing sides, that they have this miserable thing in common suggests that labels like good and evil do not and cannot apply here. They have all been wounded by the same event, and thus they all live with similar consequences and guilt.

By exploring the different impacts that trauma has on the characters in the novel, Taylor depicts the violent event of the Carnage and the conflict between humans and gods not as a binary fight between the forces of good and evil, but as a complex situation in which atrocities are committed by both sides. Sarai cannot condone the actions of the gods, who raped and pillaged the city of Weep, nor can she entirely excuse her father’s actions of slaughtering babies, although she knows why he did it. Exploring the shame, grief, and trauma of these characters allows Taylor to construct a complex understanding of good and evil, and to suggest that these labels are ultimately subjective.

As characters cope with the trauma from their violent pasts, they find healing and courage through the love and acceptance of others. This theme is primarily developed through Lazlo and Sarai’s relationship, but other characters like Eril-Fane and Azareen exemplify it as well.

When Sarai is first introduced in Part 2, she struggles with a deep sense of shame and self-disgust because of the power she has to torture humans. Although her empathy for the humans makes it clear to the audience that she is not malicious, the mere fact of knowing that the humans perceive her to be is enough for Sarai to form a negative self-image. It is only after she develops a relationship with Lazlo that her perspective of herself transforms for the better. Once she and Lazlo begin to fall in love with each other, Lazlo’s gaze becomes “a witchlight” (354) whose very glance changes Sarai, as she is so used to being looked at with disgust (354). As she finds greater acceptance in Lazlo, Sarai develops confidence to stand up to Minya and to choose the empathy and mercy she has been struggling toward. As her relationship with Lazlo pushes her to greater personal agency, Sarai demonstrates the power of love and acceptance to catalyze self-transformation.

Eril-Fane and Azareen’s relationship is another core vehicle for this theme. Their arc in the novel demonstrates love’s capacity to heal, and their history together demonstrates its ability to revolutionize one’s sense of self. Azareen and Eril-Fane were newlyweds when Eril-Fane was abducted and sexually abused by Isagol; Azareen’s subsequent abduction by Skathis motivates Eril-Fane to rise up against Isagol. His love for Azareen helps him overcome Isagol’s emotional manipulation, and he leans into his hate for the goddess to break free from the enchantment. Eril-Fane’s love for Azareen finally helps him overcome the goddess’s strong grip, and this dynamic speaks to the power of love to liberate one from even the darkest of circumstances—even if that liberation results in destructive acts.

After destroying Isagol and the rest of the Mesarthim, Eril-Fane’s shame overcomes him; again, the love between him and Azareen liberates him. Taylor uses other perspectives like Sarai’s to showcase the deep pain between the two characters, and to suggest how their suffering could be resolved if they would turn toward each other. At the end of the novel, in Chapter 66, Eril-Fane and Azareen finally reach their resolution when they embrace each other and Eril-Fane weeps for the very first time, a sign of healing. This moment resolves the conflict set up by Sarai’s observations of the suffering between the two characters and suggests that healing can only come through allowing oneself to embrace love.

In a novel that discourses on the aftereffects of trauma and on the importance of choosing empathy to overcome cycles of hate and vengeance, this theme on the power of love complements the idea that care and connection with others can liberate a person from a traumatic past. Through the vehicle of Sarai’s self-acceptance after Lazlo’s love and the healing Eril-Fane and Azareen find by allowing themselves to love again after traumatic loss, the novel states that love is a potent medium for transformation and healing.