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Leigh BardugoA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Bardugo extensively uses animals to symbolize the personality of the character with whom the animal is associated. This is a common device in art and literature, where different animals represent specific vices or virtues (for example, a serpent often represents deceptiveness). In Bardugo’s cosmos, however, the virtues are emphasized. Nikolai’s double eagle signifies the king’s wisdom and providence, while Zoya’s white tiger signifies her willpower and swiftness. The dragon ties to both Zoya and Juris, indicating transformation and hidden knowledge. Grigori the healer is associated with bears, which, in many traditions, symbolize healing.
While the animals’ symbolic traits are generally positive, an exception lies with Elizaveta, who first appears as a swarm of bees. While bees represent queenship, they also sting despite their promise of sweetness; Elizaveta likewise “stings” Nikolai, betraying him after feigning kindness and promising to help him.
Bones symbolize the supernatural, but their meaning is two-fold: death and power.
First, the bones connote death, as with the women’s bodies buried around the factory. When Nina calls, “up through the earth, clawing through the soil, they came, a mass of rotting limbs and broken bones” (457). Throughout Nina’s journey, these Grisha corpses have called to her demanding justice. In a supernatural act, they rise from their graves to administer their justice. Second, the bones represent the unfathomable power of the Grisha, as with the miraculous bone bridge and the Unsea palace. Zoya describes the bridge: “[I]ts white girders and transoms were bone and tendon, its abutments and piers bound together with ropy bundles of gristle” (20). Later she compares the Unsea palace directly to the bridge, noting “there was something in its construction, in its sweeping scale, that reminded her of the bridge at Ivets” (252). Both the bridge and palace are creations of Elizaveta, a famous Grisha. Bones are used heavily within the Fold—where Grisha power is the strongest—as statues and idols. From bony corpses rising from their graves, to bone used as building material, bones suggest the supernatural—especially where Grisha are concerned.
Addiction is a recurring motif in King of Scars. Two distinct instances of addiction drive the plot: drugs and power. First, Nina’s narrative frequently references her former addiction to the parem drug and later centers around the rescue and rehabilitation of others facing drug addiction. Having formerly dealt with addiction herself, Nina easily spots others in the throes of it:
[S]he knew the need that turned everything you’d ever cared for—friends, food, love—to ash, until all you could remember of yourself was the desire for the drug. The wasted body, the dark hollows beneath her eyes—this girl was addicted to parem (290).
Nina relied on the support of her friends to recover, but the imprisoned women don’t have the same social resources, and they will have to find support in one another.
Second, the Nikolai and Zoya storyline comments on power’s addictive potential. The prime example is the Darkling as discussed by Elizaveta and Zoya: “The Darkling prized power above every other trait. […] ‘If he had known the extent of your gifts, he would have pursued you until he could use them for himself’” (384). Power is the ultimate motivation and often leads to disaster.
By Leigh Bardugo
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