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67 pages 2 hours read

Pierce Brown

Morning Star

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016

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Symbols & Motifs

Color and Sigils

Morning Star is set in a future in which human beings have changed form. The color and sigil of people designates their appearance, status, and societal role. The divisions based on color act as a visual mark of the systematic oppression enacted by Gold, and they show how unnatural these divisions are. The Gold support their rule by promoting these divisions and focusing hatred on colors other than themselves. The tactic succeeds with the Gray legionnaires at the beginning of the novel who are described as possessing “a marrow-deep racism” (22) against the lowColors.

Through the motif of colors and sigils, Brown warns about the ability of oppressive regimes to thrive when they can exploit the divisions of others. Notably, the Jackal (the novel’s main antagonist) seeks to deepen these divisions by defining colors into separate species, while Darrow (the protagonist) has his sigils removed, thereby rejecting this paradigm. Darrow continues to reject false divisions, which Brown stresses in his pre-battle speech at Ilium in which Darrow denies that people are any color but they are instead “humanity” (348).

Eo’s Dream

Eo’s dream is a recurring motif in Morning Star. Her wish for Darrow to live for more than the life Gold has given him motivates Darrow throughout the series. It continues to inspire and guide Darrow in Morning Star, though by now it has spread beyond him. The Sons of Ares spread her forbidden song, which calls people to resist tyranny. Moreover, Darrow shares her dream with people around him, notably Ragnar. Ragnar internalizes this to a large degree, choosing in the end to “[l]ive for more” than the life as a warrior and instead hold his sister (237).

Brown uses Eo’s dream as more than a personal aspiration but a powerful symbol of resistance against tyranny. It embodies the collective longing for freedom and equality among the oppressed, transcending individual desires to become a unifying ideology for the rebellion. This shows the important power of hope and unity to an oppressed group. While the lowColors struggle to match the Gold in terms of military power, their spiritual strength gives them power.

Hands

Darrow’s hands are incredibly important to him. His role as a helldiver relied on his fast finger movements and strong grip. Since then, his internal monologue has repeatedly mentioned the strength in his hands and his pride about this. In Morning Star, among the first things he notes is after his restraints are unlocked is that “these hands are mine again” (25), linking his freedom to the ability to use his hands.

Darrow’s hands symbolically differentiate him from other Golds, especially the Jackal. On his hands, the sigils that once marked them and denoted his color are removed, making him the first human without these for hundreds of years. This shows the new ground that the Rising is treading. Darrow and the Jackal are specifically differentiated by their hands. Darrow forced the Jackal to cut off one of his hands in the Institute, but he does not mind this much, given that his hands are not his weapon. The Jackal chooses not to get his hand reattached despite having the capability, and he instead uses his mind and tongue as weapons. The Jackal, however, knows how much Darrow values his hand, so he has it chopped off while Darrow is captive. The difference in the two is framed explicitly in their final confrontation: Darrow thinks that he “took the wrong weapon” in the Institute and so takes out the Jackal’s tongue with his “helldiver hand” (500). Ultimately, Brown uses Darrow’s hands as a symbol of his unique identity as a helldiver.

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