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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Power of Choice
The power given toscythes to decide who lives and who dies illustrates the great power of choice, and the novel insists that this power must be used responsibly rather than abused. In the novel, scythes exercise a relatively high level of freedom in their work—indeed, it is a point of pride for them. In a world where the Thunderhead quietly regulates most of life for optimal human comfort, scythes are one of the only unpredictable elements remaining. Because of this, a scythe’s freedom to choose is a form of control over their circumstances not available to most other people. Scythes usually have the freedom to choose whomever they wish for gleaning and can also decide how they will go about doing so. A hallmark of the final test for becoming a scythe is that the apprentice must freely choose to go through with killing a relative. The good scythes featured in the book, such as Faraday, demonstrate their respect for those they glean by allowing them some element of choice in their deaths. For instance, though Faraday chooses death by pill for one of his victims, he still allows her to determine for herself exactly when she bites down on it and dies.
Despite the tremendous freedom scythes usually enjoy, Goddard bitterly resents the profession’s existing rules, arguing that limits on how many people to glean annually restrict his freedom. In reality, what Goddard objects to is that society still exerts some control over his bloodlust. Much of his plotting involves undermining Scythedom so that he can kill without restraint. Goddard’s attitude contrasts sharply with Faraday’s, who recognizes that unrestricted power without any sense of responsibility is dangerous and open to abuse. Indeed, Faraday even chooses to impose additional restrictions on his own work unrequired by Scythedom, strictly adhering to mortal-age statistics to guide his selections. Ultimately, Citra and Rowan both freely choose Faraday’s approach in their own way, with Citra bucking scythe tradition in her choice of a professional name and by sparing Rowan, while Rowan chooses to slay Goddard and become a vigilante. Rowan’s decision to kill corrupt scythes is terrifying to Scythedom precisely because he subjects them to the same lack of choice they generally inflict upon others.
The Cost of Fame
Characters in the book grapple with the intoxicating allure and potentially dangerous consequences of fame, which is ultimately not worth its steep cost. Scythes occupy a unique place in society. People fear them because they bring death, but they also revere them because of the perceived air of mystery and danger surrounding them. As a result, individual scythes emerge as celebrities. Indeed, the lack of cultural achievement in this new world, which doesn’t seem to value cultural pursuits generally, suggests scything might be one of the only remaining ways to become famous. Famous scythes attract crowds of adoring admirers, curious bystanders, and self-interested sycophants. Curie detests the fame she has gained as the Grand Dame of Death, while Goddard exults in the notoriety that follows his shocking mass gleanings.
Curie frequently cautions Citra about the downside of fame. She warns that the attention frequently becomes addictive, a caution vividly demonstrated in Goddard’s story. He enjoys the attention he receives as a fearsome but charismatic scythe and panders to it, leading him to plot even more spectacularly violent massacres to maintain his reputation. Still, via Rowan’s experience of living in Goddard’s home, the novel also depicts precisely why fame is so alluring. Rowan had often been ignored at home and finds himself enjoying the attention and affirmation that comes with being Goddard’s apprentice. Despite the appeal of fame, Goddard’s pursuit of it is highly destructive. By the end of the novel, Goddard himself is dead, unable to enjoy any of the benefits of his celebrity, and he has left an untold amount of suffering and misery in his wake. Beyond the people he has slaughtered, his victims include Volta and Rowan, whose moral integrity he corrupts in his quest to become famous.
The Danger of Stagnation
The novel’s worldbuilding depicts the problem of stagnation and complacency in human society. In this world, natural death does not exist, but neither does space exploration, religion, and many types of art. Advanced technology has largely halted further development. Though idealists like Curie had hoped for a positive change in the world when the Thunderhead took over from corrupt humans, the brave new world they envisioned has devolved into a vapidsociety in which people focus their attention on staying young forever and can no longer appreciate great art or literature. In eradicating danger and despair, this world has also removed any real incentive to aspire for more, rendering people overly complacent.
Curie in particular rails against stagnation, which she observes in the dull existence most people live, and she even selects those she gleans based on who appears especially stagnant. Though her criticisms of her world are valid, her solution is troubling in its own right. She objects to how stultified life is while not providing any solutions, and she condemns people to death based only on her own assumptions about their character, with no actual confirmation that what she suspects about them is true. Ultimately, the novel critiques both this apparent utopia for its complacency and Curie for her own problematic approach to the issue. What humanity needs is not the sheltering protection that life under the Thunderhead provides, nor the strategic gleaning of stagnated people. Instead, it needs the very danger, unpredictability, and despair that no longer exist for most people in this world. Its characters, essentially, need the threat of death in order to really live.
