payment page
Summary
Part Four: Midmerican Fugitive, Chapters 30-33
Chapter 30: Dialogue with the Dead
Exploiting a loophole, the Thunderhead reaches out to Citra while she is deadish. Though it does not intervene in scythe affairs, it still is concerned about what it sees. It tells Citra that she often seems to play an important role in the algorithms it runs about the future. The Thunderhead cannot interfere, but it can make her aware. The Thunderhead also admits to Citra that it is not all-powerful and could function even more effectively if it was allowed to make mistakes and learn from them as humans do. When Citra presses the Thunderhead about Faraday’s death, it reluctantly gives her a name, Gerald Van der Gans, only because it determines she would learn that on her own anyway.
H.S. Curie journal entry
Curie discusses a widely accepted rule in Scythedom: that scythes cannot glean those who actively want to be gleaned. Due to the emo-nanites used on them, people are no longer capable of the despair that leads them to commit suicide. Only scythes can experience this emotion since they can turn off their nanites. Curie recalls an incident that left her troubled. A widow asked to be gleaned, but Curie refused and instead gave her immunity for a year. Many years later, the woman thanked Curie for saving her.
Chapter 31: A Streak of Unrelenting Foolishness
Citra revives far from home in the Chilargentine Region with Curie at her side. The Thunderhead revived her far away but also had to notify Scythedom as soon as she awoke, and jurisdiction over her passed back to the scythes. Though Citra is not physically ready to leave, Curie urges her to flee before BladeGuards arrive. Curie explains that the journal entry Faraday wrote was about her, not Citra. She had once been Faraday’s apprentice, and she was romantically obsessed with him during the apprenticeship. Years later, they became lovers, and Scythedom punished them with seven deaths each and a sentence of 70 years apart. Curie disguises Citra as a tone cult pilgrim and tells her she must stay hidden until she can clear Citra of the accusations against her. Before parting, she gives Citra an address for Gerald Van Der Gans, telling her she will know what to do when she gets there. Curie stays behind to hold Scythe San Martín and Junior Scythe Bello at bay as Citra flees in a car. With a DNA detector, they confirm Citra has been at the cabin with Curie, but Curie destroys her car and theirs to prevent them from following Citra.
H.S. Curie journal entry
Curie recalls a recurring nightmare in which she gleans with a pitchfork that makes Tonist sounds. She repeatedly tries to glean a woman who does not die.
Chapter 32: Troubled Pilgrimage
Citra expertly evades scythe pursuers as she switches out stolen cars every hour. Her destination is Amazonia, a scythe region well known for its independence. According to Curie, Citra will be safe there. Citra’s Tonist disguise helps her blend in on the final train to Amazonia, though she privately mocks the Tonist pilgrim she travels with. Scythe Possuelo selects her for gleaning, but once she reveals her identity as an apprentice, he realizes who she is and instead offers to help. When the scythes catch up with Citra and Possuelo, the train has already crossed into Amazonia. The Chilargentine scythes are out of their robes and have not registered with the local government, so a porter evicts them from the train. Before she leaves to continue her quest, Possuelo invites her to consider moving to Amazonia once she becomes ordained as a scythe. Citra tracks Van Der Gans down in Playa Pintada. She intends to incapacitate him and force a confession out of him, but her plan falls apart when she realizes, after ambushing and shooting him, that he is Faraday.
H.S. Faraday journal entry
Faraday mourns the innocence and wonder taken from him by his work as a scythe. He wishes he could find a place to reconnect with the boy he was before becoming a scythe.
Chapter 33: Both the Messenger and the Message
Faraday refuses to go to a hospital because it will tip off Scythedom that he is still alive. He admits to Citra that Gerald Van Der Gans is his real name and wonders why she hunted him down. Only Curie knows where he is and that he faked his self-gleaning to free Rowan and Citra from their apprenticeships. Once Citra updates him, he tells her that she will continue her training with him as he heals.
Analysis
The shadowy Thunderhead reveals itself to Citra, demonstrating it is significantly more complex and humanlike than most believe. The supposedly perfect, all-powerful system that humans have deemed fit to run virtually all aspects of their lives admits it is neither perfect nor all-powerful. Ironically, though erratic human nature can render people more inefficient and corruptible than a sentient computer system like the Thunderhead, the system still recognizes that its seeming perfection and inability to make mistakes are actually flaws that prevent it from truly learning. The novel’s depiction of the Thunderhead significantly deviates from the approach of much dystopian science fiction, which often portrays advanced artificial intelligence as a dangerous threat to humans. The Thunderhead itself presents no such threat and seems to even possess a benevolent interest in humanity, despite the limits on its actions. In a sense, contrary to the characters’ common understanding of this computer overlord as superior to humans, the Thunderhead reveals itself as all-too-human in its own way—capable of great things but also forever limited in what it can actually accomplish.
Citra’s actions during her journey demonstrate her great strengths and significant flaws as a protagonist. While being pursued by numerous professional scythes, Citra proves herself a resourceful, talented adversary. Between the adeptness she shows in this difficult situation and the compassionate ethics she has demonstrated throughout the novel, she clearly has promise as a scythe. Nonetheless, some of the actions she takes during her journey also show that Citra is not perfect. Her focus on hunting down Faraday’s killer has become so single-minded that she never considers that the situation is more complicated than it appears, leading her to inadvertently injure the very man she wishes to avenge. For all Citra’s reflections on how scythes should not exhibit prejudice in their work, and her curiosity about Tonist thought when she visited one of their monasteries, she is flippant and disdainful with the Tonist pilgrims she travels with. Citra may not wish them any actual harm, but she clearly sees herself as superior to them. Essentially, Citra’s time on the run confirms why both Faraday and Curie saw great promise in her while also proving that she still has much to learn before she is ready to be a scythe.
Citra’s journey, and the information she learns during it, emphasize how complicated laws and rules are in Scythedom and reveals that they are not always inherently moral or right. The text consistently presents both Faraday and Curie as model scythes who work with compassion and empathy as a counterpoint to the vile, bloodthirsty Goddard. Still, even Faraday and Curie violated one of the key tenets of Scythedom by becoming lovers. The region of Amazonia itself also freely breaks rules. Rather than working with other scythe regions, it fiercely protects its own independence and openly refuses to cooperate with Xenocrates, an open defiance that makes it a safe place for both Faraday and Citra to hide. As these examples reveal, breaking the rules does not inherently make someone a bad scythe any more than not breaking them makes Goddard a good scythe. This depiction of ethical rule-breaking also contrasts with what Citra learns of the Thunderhead. Unlike scythes and humans in general, the Thunderhead cannot break rules. This characteristic prevents it from making the messy mistakes that Citra does in her one-sided quest for vengeance, but it also prevents the Thunderhead from exercising its independence in an act of conscience in the same way that Citra, Curie, and the Amazonian scythes exercise it to oppose Xenocrates.
Faraday’s journal entry underscores how alienating and morale-eroding scything can be, even for ethical scythes. The best scythes operate under a strong moral code that guides their life and work, but as Faraday admits in his journal, there is a terrible personal cost that comes with this profession. Essentially, being a good scythe requires a sacrifice of self. That Faraday adheres to the most idealistic, old-school tenets of Scythedom means he cannot openly pursue a relationship with Curie and must sacrifice his own innocence. Faraday’s journal entry explains why he tried to fake his own self-gleaning—the path Citra and Rowan are on is not a happy one and never can be. Though one of them may win the apprenticeship and go on to become a professional scythe, even perhaps a famous and acclaimed one, the long life they live will be limited and isolating. It is immortality without any of the perks of life, with scything itself becoming its own life sentence. Essentially, there is no real reward to scything, which is why the profession is so suspectable to Goddard’s outlook that the grim work of gleaning ought to be a perk in and of itself.
