44 pages • 1 hour read
Becky ChambersA Prayer for the Crown-Shy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Riverlands”
Mosscap has been reading about the origins of human consciousness and cannot contain its excitement. It waits as long as it can before rousing Dex, who is groggy from sleep. Mosscap’s hyperactivity is growing—the more it learns, the more it wants to learn. It begins considering how sensory input shapes human perceptions.
Dex, on the other hand, is uncomfortable at this point in their travels as the temperature and humidity have both risen. In addition, they pull the heavy wagon with a bicycle, requiring considerable energy from Dex’s body. Their experience of the Riverlands is significantly different from Mosscap’s. Mosscap runs excitedly from one tree to the next until it loses its sense of balance.
After Dex identifies a broken piece in Mosscap’s body, the robot is ready to lie down on the road and wait for the end of its life. Dex, however, insists they go to Kat’s Landing, a town where there is a printer who can replicate the needed piece to fix Mosscap’s body. They are surprised that Mosscap sees such an operation as ethically murky. However, Dex is committed to letting Mosscap choose for itself once they get to Kat’s Landing.
When they arrive, villagers greet them and anticipate meeting the robot. Dex and Mosscap visit the printer Leroy, who believes he can address Mosscap’s problem with his 3-D printer. Mosscap hesitates when it realizes that the material Leroy will use to manufacture the piece is biologic, not synthetic. It eventually asks Leroy to melt down the broken piece and reprint it so that Mosscap remains entirely synthetic.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Coastlands”
After leaving the Riverlands, Dex and Mosscap travel to the Coastlands, “a contemplative place, its silvery waters punctuated with boulders carved by the strange hands of the tides” (85). While beautiful, it is also wild and potentially dangerous, due to its geology and the people who live there. There are only scattered villages in the Coastlands, and Dex is hesitant to enter any of them.
Mosscap, on the other hand, has been eager to see beaches. Dex must give it some difficult information, as they will not be able to access many beach areas for two reasons. First, the Coastlands is “rewilded” territory, meaning that the land has been set off for natural flora and fauna, and human incursion is prohibited. Second, the scattered villages are populated by people who do not want any technology in their lives. After the Transition, they rejected all forms of technology, arguing that allowing any automation is a slippery slope to the return of the Factory Age. Therefore, Dex reveals, Mosscap would probably not be welcome in the villages.
Dex feels terrible they have forced Mosscap to consider that there might be something wrong with its very being, since some humans would not want it to be around. Mosscap, for its part, takes the information stoically and declares that it still needs to meet these people. It tells Dex that it is probably fear of difference that makes people act this way.
The pair are soon confronted by a stranger named Mx. Avery, who dares to leave their house and come and speak to Mosscap and Dex. They invite Dex and Mosscap to go fishing, and they accept. Mosscap is taken aback when it realizes that Mx. Avery farms worms specifically to use as bait.
When Dex pulls in a fish, Mx. Avery confirms that the fish is a female that has already laid eggs, so that it is fine to keep it. Mosscap wants to know how they kill the fish, and Mx. Avery says that the air will do that. The three watch the fish die. Mosscap comforts the fish as it dies.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
Chambers uses these chapters to introduce several important philosophical questions related to the use of transplantation in medical settings, the connection between mind and body, and the use and overuse of technology and automation in human society. While the characters themselves raise and unpack ethical and moral issues for themselves in the context of the communities in which they find themselves, Chambers presents these questions in a way that allows readers to consider their own experiences in contemporary society.
In Chapter 3, when Mosscap has injured itself and must be healed in the Riverlands, Dex decides they must visit Kat’s Landing because a printer can manufacture a new part to replace Mosscap’s broken one. When Mosscap realizes that Leroy, the printer, will use biologic material to print the new part, it faces a dilemma: Should it allow biologic material into its synthetic body, or would this make it less of a robot? Mosscap finally decides that Leroy should melt down the broken piece and have the printer use that as its material for the replacement part.
Mosscap’s hesitation mirrors the beliefs of some religious groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses who do not allow blood transfusions. Although this group will accept a donated organ, it must first be drained of all blood. Akin to the ethical arguments over transfusion and transplantation, people in contemporary society debate the ethics of the creation and use of transgenic animals. A transgenic animal is one whose genome has been artificially modified by humans in order for the animal to grow organs that can be transplanted into humans. Some people object to transgenic transplants based on the morality of altering animal genomes for the sole purpose of killing the animal for its organs. Others argue that the insertion of animal DNA into humans is dangerous for the human, while some believe that inserting animal or artificial organs into a human somehow changes the humanity of that person.
Closely related to this discussion in the real world is Mosscap’s question about whether the mind is completely separate and distinct from the body. Through dialogue, Chambers allows her characters to examine this issue, although it remains unresolved. The question of what constitutes the “self” is one that has troubled philosophers and scientists since ancient times, and Chambers recognizes that this a fundamental existential question that all sentient beings must address.
Finally, Dex and Mosscap confront issues of nature and technology in their visit to the Coastlands in two separate discussions. First, Mosscap expresses the desire to see beaches, but many beaches have been returned to the wilderness after the end of the Factory Age, and humans are not allowed to wander in these areas. The rewilded areas are preserved for the natural flora and fauna to grow and develop without human interaction or control. Consequently, Dex cannot take Mosscap into these areas, although somewhat surprisingly, they say that Mosscap could walk through on its own. This debate mirrors one going on in contemporary society about how much land should be set aside to return to its wild state and whether humans have the right to exploit natural resources regardless of the cost to the natural environment. This debate is also one of class and wealth. Many developed nations have reached a stage where they want to preserve natural areas, as these nations have adequate resources to support their populations. On the other hand, less developed and poorer nations feel that it is necessary to exploit natural resources to the full extent in order to provide food for their growing populations. The world of A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is one where people have learned to live within their means and are able to set aside large swaths of land to return to a natural state.
A second way that Dex and Mosscap face the tension between nature and technology is their encounter with the villages of the Coastlands. These people have radically transformed the way people live in the post-Factory Age. They reject all forms of technology and automation, believing that even a little use of technology can lead to total dependence on it. This is what happened in the Factory Age, and once the robots left in the Transition, people suffered terribly, all due to their dependence on the robots. The population of the Coastlands values self-determination, independence, and self-support. Mx. Avery provides a well-considered position of this, mentioning how after travel, they are so happy to be back in their village. Although they must work harder since they are self-sufficient and are not dependent on any technology, they also claim to enjoy life more. Dex, on the other hand, believes that moderate use of technology to provide ease and comfort for humans is acceptable.
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