66 pages • 2 hours read
Christopher PaoliniTo Sleep in a Sea of Stars
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
Plants
Plants and nature are a motif threaded throughout the novel, representing Kira’s growth as she comes to accept and cooperate with the xeno. Kira, as a xenobiologist, has a professional interest in alien species, but her personal life has also been shaped by nature, as her father worked in the greenhouses on Weyland. Kira’s childhood comes to her in dreams, which the Seed often uses to communicate with her: “Kira had long, deeply strange dreams of the greenhouses of her childhood and of plants sprouting and twining and leafing and spreading life, good and healthy” (515). These dreams are an amalgam of Kira’s deep connection to plants and the Seed’s desire to create.
In addition, once Kira and the xeno are more fully connected, their creations manifest as plants, with the same shapes, symmetry, and growth. When they cooperate to heal Falconi’s destroyed bonsai, Paolini uses an actual tree to reinforce the motif again. Kira’s relationship with the xeno has grown into a new understanding of their purpose and the possibilities of their collaboration.
In the end, reinforcing this motif even more strongly, Kira discovers that the actual name of the xeno is Seed. When they remake the Maw together, Kira’s personal room and her representation of herself as a physical body reflect plant life as well. When they build Unity, she allows the Seed to create “a whole ecosystem of flora and fauna drawn from the Seed’s vast experience, and which it and Kira believed would work in a harmonious whole” (791). Kira works with the Seed to incorporate plants and nature into the new environment they are creating, reinforcing the motif as Kira and the xeno take the final steps to fully realize their capabilities.
Nutshell
Throughout the novel, Kira and Gregorovich reference a famous quote from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet: “O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams” (2.2.52-54). Gregorovich brings this quote up first in reference to his own situation as a ship’s mind, with immense intelligence, in a corporeal body that constrains his freedom. However, the quote also becomes a way for Kira to understand her experience with the xeno, which in many ways parallels that of Gregorovich as the ship’s mind.
When Gregorovich makes this reference, it resonates with Kira. She is amused, but also sees the truth in his words and thinks of them often. As her relationship with the xeno develops, Kira continues to understand this motif better, but does not fully grasp the truth of it until, while healing Gregorovich, she enters his mind. She experiences his memories of being shipwrecked and alone, which was “worse than death: isolation. Loneliness, utter and absolute. Queen of infinite space, bound within a nutshell, and plagued by such dreams as to make her scream and scream and scream” (678). After this experience, Kira understands the despair Gregorovich felt at being trapped in his ship.
At the end, Kira is fully integrated with the xeno and the Maw and sees the motif from a different perspective. When Gregorovich asks her how she likes her nutshell, she responds, “I have transcended the nutshell, ship mind” (804). The motif of the nutshell, throughout the novel, offers Kira a tangible way to think about the challenges of her relationship with the xeno. She comes to a new understanding of her situation, in which she is not so different from Gregorovich.
Eat the Path
Early in the novel, when Kira first arrives on the Wallfish, she has a cryptic conversation with another passenger, Inarë, in which the woman tells her, “eat the path, or the path will eat you” (276). At the time, it makes little sense to Kira, but it becomes a motif that runs through her narrative. She ponders the woman’s words until the time comes, much later in her journey, when Kira begins to understand her meaning.
Kira has largely forgotten her strange encounter with Inarë until Nielsen comments, “‘You’ve set us on a strange path, Navárez’” (338). Then she begins to make the connection that the words symbolize making difficult choices and then following through with perseverance and absolute commitment. When Kira is struggling to understand the best way to collaborate with the xeno, she thinks of Inarë’s words again: “‘Eat the path,’ Kira murmured, remembering Inarë’s words” (470). The idea imbues her with the confidence and faith necessary to trust the xeno with her life.
However, not until Kira is faced with the certain defeat of humans and Jellies alike does she fully understand Inarë’s words: “She could allow events to continue unchecked, or she could wrench them out of joint and force them into a new pattern. It was no choice at all. Eat the path” (764). Kira commits absolutely to her plan, which she believes will result in her own death. After she survives the detonation of the bomb, Kira uses the path again as a way to think about both her situation and her options: “The path had grown tangled as a thicket, but she knew that the Seed’s guiding principle would help guide her, for it was her own principle as well: life was sacred” (789). Those words spoken by a stranger gave Kira a foundation from which to make difficult decisions by committing fully and unhesitatingly to the right course of action.
Related Titles
By Christopher Paolini
