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Summary
Part Two, Chapters 8-11
Chapter 8: A Matter of Choice
One day, Faraday leaves his two apprentices with separate assignments. He tasks Citra with cleaning the weapons and asks Rowan to research the next person he will glean. Rowan finds his task particularly difficult and unpleasant. With Faraday’s oddly specific criteria, Rowan uses the Thunderhead to narrow his selection down to four people. The more he learns as a means of determining who to pick, the more he regrets doing so, because the information only reinforces these victims’ humanity. In the end, Rowan just picks the person with the worst hair. Faraday reassures him that selecting someone to die should always be hard and awful. During the subsequent gleaning, Faraday allows Rowan to take a more active role. His deftness in handling the task impresses Citra.
H.S. Curie journal entry
Curie recites a favorite scythe poem and worries about how human nature makes it possible for them to corrupt anything, including the work of a scythe. Specifically, Curie worries about those scythes who relish their work.
Chapter 9: Esme
The ostentatiously dressed scythes who conducted the mass gleaning on the airplane now glean an entire food court. A child, Esme, witnesses the massacre, and the lead scythe decides to spare her and takes her with them.
H.S. Curie journal entry
Curie thinks that the post-mortal world is far too boring. She suspects that a lack of fear has caused people to become less ambitious. Though Curie does not want a return of violent crime, she still wishes there was something beyond fear of scythes to spur people to action.
Chapter 10: Forbidden Responses
On a rare day off, Rowan spends time playing basketball with his friend Tyger. Tyger enjoys greater popularity at school now because he manipulates his classmates’ fear that Rowan is become a scythe to take revenge on them. Rowan observes that other kids at the park also no longer wish to play with him out of fear. Rowan invites Tyger to Faraday’s house to see the weapons but hopes they do not run into Citra because he does not want her to fall in love with his friend. Tyger is uncooperative and difficult, touching the weapons and suggesting he steal one. Rowan has to subdue Tyger with a Bokator martial arts move and then smuggle him out of the house once Citra returns from a jog. Rowan is attracted to Citra but tries to disguise it, knowing that the rules forbid romance between them. Meanwhile, Citra finds herself increasingly interested in becoming a scythe. The lofty values that Faraday teaches inspire her idealism, and she is pleasantly surprised by her prowess at Bokator. During a sparring match, Citra finds herself enjoying her physical proximity to Rowan, which angers and frustrates her.
H.S. Curie journal entry
Curie believes that humans are nowhere near as adept as they had been in the mortal-age world. She complains that people can no longer appreciate mortal-age literature because they are so cut off from the powerful experiences and emotions these works express. Even love stories seem too intense and passionate for them. Curie wonders what they are now if they are no longer truly human.
Chapter 11: Indiscretions
During a gleaning, the man targeted for death fights back fiercely against Faraday and Citra. According to the Scythe Commandments, the man has doomed his family, but Faraday decides to spare them. Faraday’s mercy impresses Citra, but he warns her to say nothing to anyone and not to write about it in her journal. Later, Citra carries out her nightly duty of bringing cookies and milk to Faraday. She thinks he is asleep and picks up his scythe ring. When he catches her, he tells her to put the ring on. The ring freezes her badly, causing serious damage to her hand that will heal with post-mortal technology. Faraday then tells her that Rowan will bring him the cookies and milk from now on. Citra assumes this is a punishment for her misbehavior, but he explains that Rowan needs to be tempted by the ring just as she was.
H.S. Curie journal entry
Curie bemoans the absence of faith and religion in this perfect world. Now that humanity has liberated itself from death, there is no need for belief in a higher power. Curie thinks religion has mixed benefits for people and finds it disappointing that tone cults are all that is left of spirituality. Tone cults worship sound, and Curie finds their rituals and beliefs a ridiculous substitute for religion.
Analysis
Rowan's coming-of-age can be measured by the way his opinion of Tyger changes. His realization that his long-time childhood friend is immature and that they have largely outgrown each other’s company demonstrates Rowan’s greater maturity. Only months earlier, Rowan may have found Tyger’s daring impulsiveness, which motivates him to try to steal a scythe’s weapon, entertainingly silly. However, Rowan now recognizes and calls out Tyger’s actions as dangerously foolish. In a world that justifiably fears scythes, Tyger may be too oblivious to realize that stealing a scythe’s weapons could have grave consequences. But Rowan knows better, and he is willing to hurt Tyger physically, if need be, in order to protect him from a terrible punishment. Furthermore, though jealousy undoubtedly motivates some of Rowan’s apprehension about introducing Tyger to Citra, he also recognizes Tyger’s selfish motives in wanting to meet her. For Citra to potentially fall for the charming but irresponsible Tyger would be as ill-advised as Rowan’s friendship with him proves to be. Rowan’s decision to prioritize Citra by sneaking Tyger out of the house protects his own standing with Faraday, but it also demonstrates that Rowan’s current allegiance is to Faraday, Citra, and scything, not to Tyger or his previous life as an ordinary teenager.
Despite his position as a scythe, Faraday’s intentional defiance of a Commandment demonstrates that rule-breaking is not always morally wrong. The mercy Faraday shows to the family of the man who resisted him is a direct violation of a clear scythe Commandment. Still, Citra recognizes the great humanity and compassion that informs Faraday’s decision to break the rules. Faraday illustrates that rule-breaking is not always unethical and that following the rules is not always a more inherently moral decision. This section even posits that an act of rebellion, such as the one that the man demonstrated in trying to resist his gleaning, is an innate aspect of human nature, one that Curie fears has largely been stamped out of people. Though Curie’s identity remains unknown at this stage in the narrative, Faraday appears to agree. His acceptance of the man’s attack foreshadows his surprisingly level-headed reaction to Citra’s disobedience with the ring. No matter how much this post-mortal world discourages rebellion, a desire to rebel and break the rules seems to persist in a variety of forms.
Though the post-mortal world largely denies it, suffering and fear are essential elements of the human experience. Curie expands on the many grievances she has with the modern post-mortal age, almost all of which revolve around how dull and artificial life has become. At the heart of each of these complaints is the observation that a life lived without fear of death may be relatively pleasant, but it offers no real challenge and makes people dull and complacent as a result. A world without danger is safer, but it is also a world where people cannot appreciate great literature, and they become unmotivated to aspire for more. The post-mortal world believes it can pick and choose elements of the human experience in order to create the most optimal and pain-free version of life, but Curie strongly denounces this logic. Life must include the full scope of human experience, including terror and pain, to be truly worth living. Curie worries that a lack of these experiences has rendered people somehow not human. Faraday seems to concur in his own way. He wants Rowan to really confront the humanity of the person whose life he selects for gleaning, telling him that the pain of choosing someone for gleaning should never go away.
Though the post-mortal age rejects mortal-age thought and life as flawed and inferior, removing these supposed flaws from the human experience does not inherently change human nature for the better. This society has succeeded in eliminating disease, poverty, and natural death, but it has also stymied creativity and critical thought. Nevertheless, even with such dulled human impulses, the most vapid of individuals can still shrewdly take advantage of others, as Tyger illustrates when he boasts about how he uses Rowan’s position as a scythe to manipulate his naïve classmates. The terrifying elegy of scythes who conduct massacres under the guise of gleaning represents an even darker manifestation of this principle. Though Curie claims that violent crime is no longer a feature of this world, the mall food court massacre proves her wrong. In this world that has largely eroded appreciation for art and culture, there is still no safety from human acts of violence. Essentially, post-mortal society has removed the best of the human experience while preserving its worst qualities and remains in denial about having done so.
