Previous Next

“We are the weapons, and [Basgiath] is the stone they use to sharpen us.”

Violet delivers this quote to Rhiannon during their augment in Chapter 19. Rhiannon does not think that the Gauntlet, a deadly obstacle course that Basgiath War College uses to train its riders, is worth the lives it costs. Violet, freshly traumatized from watching Liam die at the end of Fourth Wing, disagrees and says that watching her classmates die has trained her to be a better rider. Rhiannon is horrified, but Violet says that the constant death at Basgiath prepares them for watching their friends and fellow soldiers die in battle. Here, Violet claims that Basgiath’s teaching methods are intentionally brutal because the Navarre leaders are trying to create the most lethal soldiers possible. She compares the students to weapons and Basgiath to a whetstone, a fine-grained stone used for sharpening blades, to argue that Basgiath is designed to harden students until they are numb to and undeterred by death and loss. Their conversation anticipates the moment in the second half in the book when Violet and her fellow riders are stunned to learn that the Cliffsbane Flight Academy, the school for gryphon fliers, is not designed to kill off students. Their discovery forces the riders to question whether Basgiath’s methods are effective or simply inhumane. Yarros deliberately does not provide the reader with an answer, forcing them to draw their own conclusions as the series progresses.

Previous section Famous Quotes Explained Page 1 Next section Famous Quotes Explained Page 3

Take a Study Break