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Summary
Part Three, Chapters 24-26
H.S. Goddard journal entry
Goddard offers his philosophy about what scythes owe the people they glean. For him, the answer is an iconic, spectacular, memorable death. In his thinking, mass gleanings connect humanity to its mortal past, thereby fulfilling the original purpose of the scythes.
Chapter 24: An Embarrassment to Who and What We Are
As Rowan’s training continues under Goddard, he feels himself becoming numb. He fears he is losing his humanity, and he remembers Faraday’s warning that retaining it is essential to being a good scythe. Goddard expresses frustration with the robotic way Rowan slays practice dummies and insists that Rowan must kill for himself rather than for Goddard. Goddard is often given to making speeches Rowan disagrees with, though he also finds Goddard’s voice supplanting his own thoughts as Goddard tries to convert him to his philosophy. In his training journal, Rowan lies because he knows his thoughts are not private.
Rowan considers Volta the most admirable and likable among Goddard’s elegy of scythes. Though Volta seems aware that Rowan disagrees with Goddard’s philosophies, he still believes that Rowan has promise as a new-order scythe. Volta argues that feeling pain is an essential aspect of training because it frees scythes to fully feel joy in a way that they cannot without having experienced pain, which Rowan grudgingly agrees with. Amid his training, Rowan spends time with Esme, still unsure why Goddard keeps the girl around.
One day in training, Goddard requires Rowan to kill actual people rather than dummies. Goddard argues this is not a gleaning since he ensures the victims are revived afterward, but Rowan still balks. Overcoming his revulsion, Rowan carries on with the training, and to his abject horror, realizes that not only is he good at killing, but he also enjoys it. Goddard requires him to spare one person, which Rowan finds difficult.
Rowan's journal entry
Rowan confidently reflects on how far along he has come in his training and on how well he expects to do on the next Conclave test.
Chapter 25: Proxy of Death
Rowan attends his first mass gleaning, targeting a research facility. In preparation for the gleaning, Rowan watches Scythe Chomsky wield a flamethrower, which Chomsky proudly tells him is permissible by the Scythedom. Rowan calculates how far along the scythes are in their annual quota and realizes that they could easily kill 250 people that day. He understands they will be conducting a massacre, not a gleaning. Rowan is determined to help people as much as he can, especially since he is only attending as an observer rather than an active participant. Rand instructs him to use a hatchet to destroy things while they glean. When Rowan is able, he warns people to flee to safety, but he also watches Goddard and his elegy of scythes ritualistically slaughter many. Though the scythes have used fire, firefighters cannot intervene in a gleaning. In the chaotic aftermath, the survivors stampede forward to receive immunity.
H.S. Prometheus journal entry
The first World Supreme Blade, Prometheus, acknowledges the concerns that the earliest scythes have about the system they created. They fear the unpredictability of human frailties and their impact on scything, but Prometheus hopes that humanity will continue to become more perfect to compensate. He also indicates that the scythes have devised a means of escaping their system if the experiment fails after all.
Chapter 26: Not Like The Others
Goddard and his associates feast to celebrate their work during the mass gleaning. Rowan can barely eat and notices that Volta seems glum. Rand announces they gleaned 263 people, which frustrates Goddard because it puts them over the quota. He finds the quota an unnecessary restriction that prevents him from mass gleaning every day. Volta makes arrangements with the families for immunity, but the other scythes are dismissive and insulting toward the relatives. As an excuse to escape the party, Rowan falsely claims that he promised Esme he would play with her.
While Rowan lets Esme win at a card game, she tells him that the servants used to own the house. Rowan remains curious about why Goddard keeps her around, assuming she has immunity, and she corrects this assumption without further explanation. Rowan recognizes that regardless of the circumstances, she is a pampered prisoner. Afterward, Rowan finds Volta sobbing in his room. Volta angrily assumes Rowan will tell Goddard about his weakness, but when he calms down, he admits that Rowan is right that he does not like gleaning this way. However, he believes this approach is the way of the future. Volta also informs him that Goddard sees Rowan as an enticing training challenge. Rowan points out that Goddard is little better than the serial killers of the mortal age. The only difference is that now nobody recognizes that what Goddard does is wrong.
Analysis
This section grapples with what constitutes euthanasia, or a good death, a common philosophical quandary for people throughout history, and suggests that gleaning itself is fundamentally incompatible with the concept. Goddard insists he owes people an epic, distinctive death, but it seems unlikely his terrified victims would agree with him. Goddard’s insistence on orchestrating massacres seems more designed to stroke his own ego than to fulfill a debt to the people he gleans. Nonetheless, though the novel depicts other scythes who seem to have a more palatable and respectful approach to their work, nothing Goddard does is explicitly wrong according to Scythe Commandments. Rowan is especially troubled by the fact that Goddard’s actions would have constituted a crime in the mortal age, but now there is now law that prevents them. What was once directly called murder is now just business as usual. However, Rowan’s discomfort and disgust with Goddard’s mass gleanings calls into question the very foundations of Scythedom. Technically, by mortal-age standards, all the scythes commit hundreds of murders every year. Goddard’s method of gleaning is far more sadistic than what Curie and Faraday practice and has disturbing commonalities with the cruel serial killers Rowan names, but all scythes willfully take other peoples’ lives as a profession. Though his focus is on Goddard’s particularly perverse approach, Rowan unwittingly identifies a serious moral flaw in the scything system. It sanctions murder, even if nobody in the post-mortal world recognizes it as such.
Rowan’s journal entry shows how he uses his journal as a means of manipulating Goddard and protecting himself rather than for its intended purpose of recording his honest thoughts on scything. Rowan despises Goddard and what he stands for, but he also finds some of the cruel scythe’s teachings alluring. His journal entry, however, features none of the criticisms or complex feelings about Goddard that Rowan speaks or thinks in the narrative chapters. By contrast, the journals from both Curie and Goddard are very open and honest in expressing their own very different philosophies about their work. Rowan knows that Goddard reads his supposedly private journal, depriving him of a safe place to record his journey as an apprentice. Rowan’s journal entry represents the difficult circumstance in which he finds himself, lying to bide time for the final showdown between himself and Citra, while also indicating that the journal entries written by other scythes may be equally as untruthful. The rules may require scythes to record their thoughts and feelings honestly, but that does not account for situations like Rowan’s where honesty is not possible.
Despite Goddard’s murderous ways, he and his acolytes paradoxically express some of Curie’s same critiques of post-mortal society. Volta explains Goddard’s emphasis on pain in training to Rowan, arguing that one cannot truly feel joy without having felt pain. This philosophy darkly mirrors Curie’s own frustration with post-mortal existence. Just as she complains about how post-mortal people are too sheltered from life to truly experience it, Goddard and his elegy of scythes also tap into a shared discontent over the vaguely pleasant life the Thunderhead offers them, one that lacks the elevated highs and painful lows of an unregulated natural life. In his journal entry, Goddard even claims his mass gleanings are an homage to mortality and the past world. Despite his contempt for mortal-age history and thought and for people in general, Goddard still recognizes that something inherent in humans is lacking in the post-mortal world. The difference is that Curie frames her criticisms in terms of hope for humanity’s improvement, whereas Goddard simply uses them as justification for murder.
Rowan increasingly finds himself operating as a double agent, pretending to accept Goddard’s teachings while privately subverting his mentor. Rowan recognizes that openly defying Goddard is not possible, but he has too much integrity, compassion for others, and personal strength to fully succumb to Goddard’s teachings. As such, Rowan quietly commits to an outward show of compliance while he secretly maintains several forms of rebellion, including saving people’s lives during the chaotic mass gleaning he attends. He also demonstrates more quiet forms of dissent, such as excusing himself to avoid participating in his associates’ horrifying celebration of their massacre. Though Rowan learns that Volta shares his concerns, Volta is only able to confirm that he is not alone in his thoughts. Volta is too demoralized to offer any other form of resistance to Goddard or support to Rowan. Rowan’s commitment to defying Goddard whenever possible demonstrates that his real allegiance still lies with Faraday and with his own sense of self, even as he feels his personal identity disintegrating under the influence of Goddard’s dehumanizing training tactics.
