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An apology isn’t necessary. It’s refreshing to be challenged. You have no idea how tedious it gets—the pandering, the obsequious flattery, the endless parade of sycophants. A slap in the face is bracing. It reminds me that I’m human.
In Chapter 1, Faraday says this to Citra’s parents after they try to apologize for her rude outburst. Though Faraday himself is not a famous scythe like Goddard or Curie, he enjoys some of the perks of celebrity. Faraday identifies the fawning attention that comes with some level of recognition as innately unnatural. The condition of being famous is just as unnatural in its own way as this society’s defeat of death, as both render a person numb and complacent. Just as the pain of death, which this world has removed as part of its idealistic utopia, serves a purpose in the human experience, so too does bluntly honest discourse play its own role in tempering the bubble that celebrity can create for the famous. By empowering scythes with so much control over people’s fates and then elevating them to celebrity status, the world of Scythedom shields them from a very necessary part of the human experience: being contradicted and challenged.
We are now a force greater than nature.
For this reason, scythes must be as loved as a glorious mountain vista, as revered as a redwood forest, and as respected as an approaching storm.
In this excerpt from Goddard’s gleaning journal, placed just before Chapter 20, Goddard engages in twisted logic to justify wholeheartedly revering scythes. According to Goddard, since scythes have triumphed over natural death, they are every bit as worthy of the celebration he believes mortals once bestowed uncritically upon nature itself. Though Goddard evokes nature as a justification for his power and even the fame that comes with it, the celebrity he enjoys as a notorious scythe is just as unnatural and inherently artificial as his profession as a scythe. Goddard cares no more about nature than he does anything else. He simply wants to justify his actions and revel in the attention he enjoys for being a scythe. In keeping with his actual contempt for nature, in comparing himself to an approaching storm, he also arrogantly evokes the idea that he is as formidable as a storm. No matter how much Goddard flatters himself, though, he will never have the awe-inspiring destructive power of a natural storm. His view of himself and his role in the world is as shortsighted and self-involved as his exuberant embrace of fame is.
I never took life for sport. You see, there are some who seek celebrity to change the world, and others who seek it to ensnare the world. Goddard is of the second kind.
In this conversation between Curie and Citra in Chapter 27, Curie recognizes that not all aspects of fame and celebrity are negative. At its best, people—and scythes—can channel celebrity into good deeds that positively change the world. At its worst, celebrity can provide the pathway by which darker impulses determine outcomes. Here, Curie identifies Goddard with the worst excesses of fame, but the underlying message is not that seeking fame itself always has negative consequences. Instead, Curie points out that how humans choose to use fame and respond to it can be complicated. With fame comes the responsibility to use one’s power wisely and ethically, but fame also introduces the powerful temptation to bask in the fawning attention uncritically. Curie’s lowkey approach to celebrity, which she expresses here, alongside her decision to enter the Conclave quietly rather than publicly stirring up adoring crowds, suggests she has a healthier way to cope with being famous than Goddard does.
