57 pages • 1 hour read
Rebecca RossDivine Rivals
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Enva’s Music
Enva’s music is symbolic of the role that journalists play in delivering the truth to the ignorant and inspiring bravery in the enlightened. By filling “their hearts with the knowledge of the war” (176) with her song, Enva inspires thousands of east Cambria citizens, including Forest, to enlist. Just as journalists like Attie and Iris attempt to show the citizens the truth of the war, Enva’s music does the same on a much larger scale. When acknowledging her own dreams, Iris concludes that she wishes not only to be a journalist but to be able to report on things that matter, especially the truth that the chancellor is so adamant about hiding from the citizens of east Cambria. The chancellor’s determination to publish one limited view of the war—his— and to shut down any other narratives ultimately leaves his citizens dangerously uninformed about the war. The effects reach catastrophic proportions, as “the people in the west were being trampled by Dacre’s wrath […] [w]ithout soldiers coming from Oath, without [the east] joining in this fight…it would already be over and Dacre would reign” (176).
With music outlawed because of the fear that Enva’s own music inspires in the ignorant people of the east, Attie asks Iris: “[W]ith music being treated like a sin in Oath, how will people learn the truth?” (176). In response, Iris declares that they’ll have to use their powers as journalists and write the truth for all to see. Just as Enva’s “music influenced all who could hear” (139), the articles that Iris and Attie write for the Inkridden Tribune about the warfront gather local interest in Oath. As Roman walks to work, he notes crowds of citizens gathered around newsstands reading truths from influential war correspondents like Iris, and he is ultimately inspired to join them.
Likewise, in the myths depicted by Roman’s grandfather, Enva’s music is powerful enough to inspire true sadness and joy in Dacre, the notoriously bitter and angry Underling god. While her intention to protect human life is honorable, Enva’s deception of Dacre also symbolically illustrates how unethical journalists can abuse their positions of power to mislead and brainwash others to believe a false narrative. The lesson from that myth is that “it is never wise to offend a musician” (140)—or, by extension, anyone who has the power to wield words and influence ideas. It remains to be seen whether Dacre’s newfound control over Roman in the sequel will allow him to use Roman’s position of power in the media to influence public opinion among mortals in much less honorable fashion than Enva herself employed.
Enchanted Typewriters
The enchanted Alouette typewriters are symbolic of the connection that Iris and Roman forge through their writing. While Iris’s writing for the Gazette has always inspired emotion in Roman, her letters draw even deeper, more personal emotions from him as their correspondence continues to develop their relationship over the course of the novel. The Alouettes were magically created by a father for his daughter and her friends, in order to allow them all to communicate despite the illness that kept his daughter isolated from the world. The typewriters are enchanted to deliver letters among their owners. The letters provide Alouette with a much-needed support system as she battles and ultimately succumbs to tuberculosis. Similarly, Iris’s and Roman’s letters find one another in their times of need. Roman’s correspondence supports Iris in times of grief and anger at the uncertain fate of her brother, Forest. In return, Iris’s correspondence supports Roman in his panic following his engagement to Elinor and helps him heal from the grief of his sister’s death, ultimately allowing him to break free of his father’s control.
Once Iris goes to the war front, placing 600 kilometers between them, their correspondence continues “binding them together” (148), prompting Roman to drop his existing obligations and follow her to the front lines in the west. Their connection continues to grow across great distances, enforcing the strength of their emotional bond that was originally created through the exchange of written words. In the end, although they both lose their Alouette typewriters, Iris continues to write letters to Roman in her thoughts, believing that somehow, her words might still reach him through “[a]n old trace of magic in the wind” (342). Iris’s continued attempts to reach Roman with her words emphasizes that the magic she believes in can be found in the writing itself rather than just in the typewriters.
Aster’s Golden Locket
Aster’s golden locket serves as a motif for the theme of The Intensity of Wartime Relationships. Aster begins wearing the locket, which contains small portraits of Iris and Forest, soon after Forest leaves to join the war. Wearing the locket represents Aster’s attempt to hold on to her family even with the possibility that her son might never return home. When Aster dies and Iris begins wearing the locket, she “pray[s] it w[ill] guide her to” Forest (100). In these moments, with her mother gone, Iris still believes in the possibility of reuniting with Forest, her only remaining family member.
The locket is therefore symbolic of the hope for a reunion between the members of Iris’s family, even with death and war separating them. Iris continues to wear the locket until she loses it in the communication trenches at the front lines. In the aftermath of the grenade, Iris “could see it in her mind’s eye—the locket now trampled into the mud of the trench. A small glimmer, a faint trace of gold among shrapnel and blood” (241). Seeing the tragic reality of the front lines, where Forest has been fighting for months, alters Iris’s perception about his fate and the survival of her family. Upon losing both her locket and her optimism when faced with the death of the entire Sycamore Platoon, Iris finally sees the devastating impact that the war has had on her family. Just as the locket is trampled and covered in mud, Iris’s family has also been torn apart, stained by violence, and diminished. In this moment, Iris truly starts to believe that Forest is dead.
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By Rebecca Ross
