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Summary
Part Four, Chapters 34-36
H.S. Curie’s journal entry
Curie argues that immortality limits life and that days are even shorter when there is no natural end to them. She thinks immortality makes people overly complacent compared to their mortal-age forebears, which leads to her decision to target people who seem to have stagnated in life.
Chapter 34: The Second Most Painful Thing You'll Ever Have to Do
Under Goddard’s tutelage, Rowan has become a lethal killer who enjoys the act of killing. He has lost count of the over 2,000 people he has slain during training, and he actively despises himself. Volta hopes that he and Rowan can become scythes together, free of Goddard’s control, and tells Rowan that Citra has no future in Scythedom after her mysterious disappearance. Rowan knows little of Citra’s current circumstances other than that she returned after Curie cleared her of the accusation of murdering Faraday. He assumes Goddard framed her. Goddard continually rails against the gleaning limits placed on scythes, and Rowan increasingly believes the only way to free himself and Volta from Goddard is to win the competition.
Citra returns to train with Curie in the final month of the year, keeping Faraday’s survival a secret. Curie tells Citra she must win the apprenticeship since the Conclave has been increasingly drawn into Goddard’s arguments in favor of removing the gleaning quota. Citra still clings to the hope that Rowan has remained a good scythe despite training under Goddard, but Curie rejects the idea, again reminding Citra she cannot trust Rowan anymore.
H.S. Goddard journal entry
Goddard complains about what he perceives to be outdated mortal rules that guide gleaning. If he had his way, he would immediately remove the quota. To his mind, without any free choice in how many people he gleans, he does not truly have the freedom to work that scythes pride themselves on. He argues that removing the quota will allow scythes like himself to help less violent scythes by gleaning on their behalf.
Chapter 35: Obliteration is Our Hallmark
Though Goddard’s elegy of scythes has already met its quota for the year, he announces that it will still glean on the final day of the year. He reasons that elsewhere in the world, it is technically the next year, freeing them to do as they wish. Rowan copes with the trauma of the mass gleanings he attends with Goddard by compartmentalizing his thoughts. Goddard informs his scythes that they will be eradicating rabble, which turns out to be a Tonist monastery. He also tells a horrified Rowan that he must glean someone under Goddard’s proxy. When Volta objects to the inherent bias in gleaning an entire Tonist monastery, Goddard argues they have brought it upon themselves by mocking historic religions.
In the early stages of the massacre, Rowan remains at the gates under the auspices of discouraging anyone from escaping. He quickly realizes that though he hopes to save people, his appearance frightens them and prevents them from running, so he plunges into the monastery. He quickly finds himself lost in the confusing corridors, but eventually, Rowan stumbles across a distraught Volta, who explains that he has just gleaned a classroom full of children. He is especially horrified that he killed a boy who truly believed they would receive immunity. Volta and Rowan briefly discuss how Goddard is a killer, not a scythe, before Rowan realizes Volta has slit his own wrists and is dying. With his last breaths, Volta tells Rowan his real name, Shawn Dobson, and asks him to promise to be a better scythe than he was.
H.S. Faraday journal entry
Faraday admits he prays daily, though he has nobody to pray to. Nonetheless, he always asks for courage and compassion and to never become numb to the reality of death.
Chapter 36: The Thirteenth Kill
Rowan finds Goddard in the monastery sanctuary with the last survivor, a Tonist curate. Goddard gleefully informs Rowan that the curate is his to glean. To Goddard’s shock, Rowan refuses and tells him of Volta’s suicide. Goddard says that Volta was weak and offers Rowan the chance to take Volta’s place, an offer that Rowan again refuses. They continue arguing until Rowan stabs Goddard. Rowan tells him that he is what Goddard made him and he will enjoy killing him before beheading him. Rowan then kills Scythes Rand and Chomsky. The curate offers Rowan a chance to flee to safety with him, but he refuses and starts lighting the area on fire with a flamethrower. Later posing as a scythe in Goddard’s robes, Rowan forcefully stops firefighters from putting out the fire in one part of the compound. He does not want Goddard and his acolytes revived, so he ensures the fire destroys their remains.
Analysis
Goddard’s training methods reach their terrifying apex with Rowan and simultaneously succeed and fail, causing Rowan to snap and gleefully kill his mentor. Goddard’s training methods are morally repugnant to Rowan, but there is a method to his mentor’s madness, for his approach does successfully groom people into killers, including Rowan himself. Goddard’s manipulative approach—lavishing praise on Rowan while also breaking down his personality and forcing him to dehumanize himself and his victims—effectively mold Rowan into a killer. In a sense, Goddard succeeds with Rowan because his apprentice has become a skilled killer who enjoys the act of taking life, something Rowan demonstrates to its ultimate limit when he turns on Goddard himself. Still, Goddard does not fully break Rowan’s spirit or destroy his conscience, because Rowan always maintains his view that what his mentor is doing is wrong. Goddard’s training methods fail because they rely on Rowan truly buying into his teachings, or at least not actively resisting them. Goddard is so arrogant that he never anticipates Rowan applying these lessons against him.
Rowan’s disorienting journey through the monastery, where he becomes lost in the maze of buildings and hallways, reflects his own emotional and moral turmoil. Even as he walks, Rowan actively thinks about how he cannot disappear into himself—his usual mode of coping during gleanings—because he is aware he will finally have to glean someone. The confusing setting symbolizes Rowan’s own conflicting emotions. Under Goddard’s instruction, Rowan has become a skilled killer, a fact he hates. Rowan knows what awaits him is the pinnacle of his training, and his internal discontent as he wanders through the complex also foreshadows his decision to turn on his mentor. Rowan walks aimlessly through the monastery, unsure of where to go or what to do, until he encounters a dying Volta. After talking to his remorseful friend, Rowan has no better idea where he is going physically, but he has a much better sense of what he must do morally. Rather than standing by passively, joining in Goddard’s massacre, or descending into private despair, he boldly opposes his teacher. Ironically, during his experience of being lost in the monastery, Rowan finds himself and his purpose.
In stark contrast to Citra’s and Tyger’s earlier suicides, which neither intends as a permanent end to life, Volta’s grim and very final death spurs Rowan to finally revolt against Goddard. Throughout the book, three of Rowan’s closest friends end their own lives, but all do so for different reasons. Tyger’s thrill-seeking splats symbolize the vapidity of Scythedom society as even death becomes meaningless. By contrast, Citra and Volta both commit suicide for deeper reasons, though their motives differ. Citra jumps in order to escape being forced to wrongly confess to Faraday’s murder, an indication of her stubbornness. Her act of temporary self-destruction ultimately allows her to communicate with the Thunderhead, learn what really happened to Faraday, and clear herself of the false charges against her. Volta, on the other hand, commits suicide when he reaches the end of his ability to compartmentalize and play along with Goddard’s murderous games. Unlike Citra and Tyger, he has no desire for revival. Volta’s death is a permanent one and, as such, reminds Rowan of the actual finality and seriousness of death, despite how much his society has become inured to it, and drives Rowan to finally defy Goddard by killing his mentor.
Curie’s justification for targeting stagnated people raises troubling comparisons between her methods and Goddard’s. Curie is a thoughtful, conscientious scythe, reflective enough to recognize her own mistakes and brave enough to help Citra fight the false charges. Still, her reasoning for whom she gleans complicates this depiction of her conscientiousness. Though she has clearly put much thought into her methods, she makes judgments that she cannot truly justify. She does not allow for the fact that she cannot actually know whether someone is stagnant based on briefly observing them on the street, nor does she recognize that being stagnated and bored with life should not be punishable by death. Though her frustration with her superficial society has merit, her reasoning has echoes ofGoddard’s own disturbing, twisted logic to justify his indiscriminate massacres. The darker elements of Curie’s position, though she is an otherwise respectable and kind person, suggest inherent flaws in the ethical foundation of Scythedom. No matter how much Scythedom may want to prevent bias, Curie demonstrates a bias of her own, suggesting that no person, no matter how much integrity they possess, should have the power to decide who deserves death.
