In The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemison tells the story of life in the Stillness, a continent in the distant future that experiences frequent and devastating disasters that leave the world struggling to survive. Throughout the centuries and despite the apocalyptic disasters, a nation known as the Sanzed Empire has ruled and maintained control over the Stillness. In order to maintain control, the empire oppresses a group of people known as oregenes who possess the ability to manipulate the earth itself. The empire dehumanizes and portrays oregenes as monsters in order to maintain its oppression.
Individuals portrayed as monsters are marginalized by others. Damaya’s oregene abilities force her to leave her family as a child because remaining at home endangers her life. Jemison describes the dangers Damaya faces if she were to remain with her family. “People from Palela want to kill Damaya. But that’s wrong, isn’t it? They can’t really, can they? She thinks of all the people she knows. The teachers from the creche. The other children. The old ladies at the roadhouse” (Jemison, 40). As she prepares to leave her childhood life behind, Damaya realizes how dangerous it would be for her to remain at home. While describing Damaya’s thoughts, Jemison catalogues the different people in Damaya’s hometown. The catalogue includes ordinary individuals such as “teachers,” “children,” and “old ladies,” individuals usually associated with innocence instead of violence. The portrayal of oregenes as monsters makes it impossible for Damaya to survive among the people she grew up alongside, impossible even to survive living with her own family. Despite the fact that Damaya was born an oregene and had no choice in the matter, despite the fact that her family and her town have known her since birth, the town will still murder her. Damaya only becomes a perceived threat to her town once they learn of her oregene abilities. Before that realization, she was just a harmless child. It’s the mere perception of her as a monster that threatens her life and safety. The ultimate tool used to oppress oregenes is their portrayal as monsters because it forces oregenes to leave their families, towns, and lives behind.
I think this post makes important observations that draw connections between the fictional continent of Stillness and the oppression of minority groups for which Jemisin intended her novel to act as a metaphor. In the novel, Damaya struggles to believe that the loving, innocent people she grew up with could hurt her. Yet, years later her own husband will kill his own son. The novel touches on the confusing phenomena of seemingly loving neighbors and even family members turning violent against a person simply because of an identity the victim cannot control. Damaya is haunted by "nightmares that have consumed her life" (104) of her family and community turning against her upon recognizing her talent, or as they see it her curse. Similarly, we can see a parallel in our own world; Jemison uses this as a depiction of society turning against young, innocent minorities such as African Americans. Our society treats this group as less than human despite the fact that they have likely done nothing wrong other than be born with the wrong identity. In the same way, Damaya would have been treated just like all the other children in her class had she simply not shown a different identity. This blog post draws to mind many of the interesting connections between this novel and phenomena in our own society.
ReplyDeleteThe original post makes a good point that power comes from changes in perception, and that it can be the difference between safety and danger. Self-perception also serves an important function in the oppression of orogenes in N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season. Not only does society’s rhetoric mobilize the public to police “monstrous” orogenes, it limits the perspectives of the orogenes themselves. By convincing the orogenes that they are monsters, unable to work together, and unable to control themselves, orogene’s power to change their reality becomes severely reduced.
ReplyDeleteThe story Schaffa tells Damaya about Shemshena and Misalem perfectly illustrates the way orogenes get portrayed to themselves (93-99). Stories such as these form a negative self-perception that makes it harder for orogenes to believe they deserve better treatment. By casting orogenes as the monsters in their own stories, it keeps them from rebelling.
Syenite’s character provides some of the best of the examples of this imposed ignorance, the limiting of her perspective by the Fulcrum. Alabaster has a much greater understanding of the extent of both his power and his oppression than Syenite does (124,141,168). His comments enlighten Syenite, and help illustrate that the Fulcrum has taught her to believe specific (potentially false) things about herself. More importantly, these beliefs can prevent her, and other orogenes, from reaching their full potential.