{"id":5268,"date":"2020-09-09T05:00:27","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=5268"},"modified":"2020-08-31T09:36:27","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T16:36:27","slug":"mark-reads-the-obelisk-gate-chapter-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2020\/09\/mark-reads-the-obelisk-gate-chapter-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Obelisk Gate’: Chapter 17"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the seventeenth chapter of The Obelisk Gate<\/i>, Nassun tries to help Schaffa and reunites with her father. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Broken Earth<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For child abuse, consent, homophobia<\/b><\/p>\n

It is an astounding (and at times unnerving) thing to watch Nassun change before our eyes. I love that we have a point of view in this novel from a kid, despite that this is absolutely not a children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s novel by any means. There are things Jemisin is able to explore within Nassun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story that would be a lot harder to pull off this way in, say, a middle grade or young adult novel. On top of that, since this story is told by Hoa, it allows for there to be distance and omniscience in the narrator that leaves room for a different kind of story.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a story about love, when that love is mixed up with duty and oppression and violence and obligation and the actual end of the world.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the first half of this chapter, Jemisin examines the love between Schaffa and Nassun, and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll later examine the love between Nassun and her father. Here, there is tenderness, though the reader can easily add so much more depth and nuance to everything because we<\/i> have a history with Schaffa that Nassun does not. So, that extra layer complicates Schaffa further, even though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m now very confident about the distinction between Schaffa as a person and the Schaffa controlled by the corepoint. (It has a name!) On a purely meta level, it amused me that I finally did<\/i> feel sure about it in the same chapter in which Nassun is tempted to remove it, even without Nassun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s consent.<\/p>\n

And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the point where this works better as a child POV in an adult novel. We have an additional context here: The cycle of abuse and violence, one which I see manifesting here as Nassun thinks about love and pain. The two are always going to be intertwined in her mind because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how Essun showed her love: by hurting her. By insulting her. By verbally abusing her. From Essun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s point of view, she was trying to teach her child survival. But look at what it did to Nassun, who preferred her father because he loved her how she needed<\/i> to be loved. Look at what happened as she came into Schaffa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life. The very man who abused her own mother slowly became the man who she now trusts more than literally any other person on Earth.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Is that what love is supposed to be?\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the recurring motif here. Nassun has a specific conception of what love is and what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re supposed to do with love, but this world isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t making it easy for her to know if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doing it right. I mean, look at the opening scenes: After training herself on ants and then a captured raider, Nassun teaches herself how to heal. (That whole sequence alone started off being very cool and fascinating, and then it just kept getting more and more disturbing, particularly the ways in which Nassun views other bodies as means to an end or as vessels, which concerns me. But she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also very<\/i> young, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to assume to much about who she will become because of that.) She then immediately runs off to Schaffa, all so she can attempt to heal him<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so obvious to her, too. She can heal, so she must try to make Schaffa feel better!<\/p>\n

But with this comes the outright confirmation that the corepoint, the implant that makes Guardians who they are, cannot be removed without a Guardian aging rapidly and dying. I still want to know about the origin of the corepoint, since it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly tied to Evil Earth somehow. Or maybe it can be infected by Evil Earth? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know quite yet. But this whole situation brings up Nassun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s complicated feelings of love and how they reflect what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been through:<\/p>\n

She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wanted to do something good with orogeny, when she has used it to do so many terrible things already\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand she wanted to do it for him. He is the only person in the world who understands her, lovers her for what she is, protects her despite what she is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fascinating how she frames all this, too, as there is an implicit acceptance within her words. Schaffa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s love is something that must accept her for what she is, or despite<\/i> what she is, as if she is a terrible thing that others cannot love. So she wants to love him<\/i>, and that means healing his body and taking away his pain. Yet how can she do that if removing the corepoint kills him?<\/p>\n

If she hurts him because she loves him, is that still hurt? If she hurts him a lot now so that he will hurt less later, does that make her a terrible person?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard not to see a parallel to Essun, who hurt her daughter with the hope that it would hurt her less later. Did that make Essun<\/i> a terrible person? Maybe, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that chilling line where Nassun resolves to blame her mother because Essun can bear it<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Is that how she sees love? Is that what the love of a mother (or FOR a mother) means to her?<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at this point that Jemisin flips the script, and we move from a father figure (Schaffa) to a father (Jija). Look, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I had hope for maybe two pages. IF THAT. I thought that Jija missed his daughter enough that he would treat her better. But holy shit, the degradation of their rapport is so swift<\/i>, all of it tanking at the near mention of Essun. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obvious to see why that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the breaking point. They wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be where they are if it were not for Essun, though each character has their own context for why this is the case. Still, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re grounded in Nassun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s point of view, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that she realizes she has to shed any delusion that her father doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hate who she really is. As she notes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153…love always comes bound in terrible things.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In Jija are many terrible things. His hatred of orogenes. His murder of Uche. His abuse of Nassun as they traveled to Fresh Moon and<\/i> his abuse of her when she finally tells him that she likes<\/i> being an orogene, that it gives her satisfaction. Wrapped up in this is trauma, too, as Jija\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s justification for his hatred of orogenes comes in that story about the young child he saw iced. But I have to wonder what the world would look like if young orogene children were taught about themselves at a young age. If people knew how to recognize the presentation of their abilities and could foster them in a healthy, loving environment, not one where fear took precedence. I am sure that Jija couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even imagine that reality. Instead, he sees orogenes as things to be feared and disgusted; they harm everyone and everything around them; and they deserved to be hated.<\/p>\n

Oh, except Nassun, right? He might compartmentalize her in order to accept her presence, but he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do too well, does he? He still strikes her when she confesses to liking her life as an orogene. He still sees her as someone who isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i>worthy of actual love and respect. I think this moment will deepen her attachment to Schaffa, too, since at the very least, he respects her for who she is.<\/p>\n

The whole thing is just heartbreaking, though, and from a personal standpoint, I can see a parallel. Because I know what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like to have a parent who hates who you are, who sometimes compartmentalizes in order to accept you into their life. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s never full acceptance and it never will be, right? A person like that\u00e2\u20ac\u201dlike Jija\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhas to have a full reckoning with themself before acceptance can be real, genuine, and meaningful.<\/p>\n

I saw Nassun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actions as being a rejection, sure; she has chosen her father figure. But what she does was also a warning<\/i>. If need be, she can protect herself from Jija without lifting a finger. And now he knows that.<\/p>\n

NOTES<\/b><\/p>\n