Strange the Dreamer

“The venom sang in him, and he was something more than human. He was a god.”

Lazlo’s imaginative play as a child in Chapter 1 serves several functions. It demonstrates the power of Lazlo’s imagination and offers a glimpse of how powerfully his dreams transform him, and it also serves the more pragmatic purpose of foreshadowing the revelation of Lazlo’s true identity and heritage, for in the world of Weep, he truly is a god.

“And as for fairy tales, [Lazlo] understood that they were reflections of the people who had spun them, and were flecked with little truths—intrusions of reality into fantasy, like…toast crumbs on a wizard’s beard.”

This quote frames the importance of fairy tales to the narrative. It supports the theme of the Power of Fairy Tales by pointing to the latent truth that such stories possess and preserve through the ages. The quote also establishes the role they play in Lazlo’s character arc, as fairy tales are frequently source of higher truths that he turns to in order to resolve the main conflicts in the novel.

“The truth was—and nothing would have persuaded Nero to believe it—that it had never occurred to Lazlo to seek his own advantage. In the tombwalk that day, it had been very clear to him: Here was a story of greedy queens and wicked fathers and war on the horizon, and…it wasn’t his story. It was Thyon’s. To take it for himself…it would have been stealing. It was as simple as that. ‘I am someone,’ he said. He gestured to the crate. ‘That’s who I am.’”

This moment characterizes Lazlo and reinforces his role in the novel’s recurring theme of Identity and Choice. It also establishes the important facets of Lazlo’s identity as both a dreamer and librarian and reinforces the power of stories to inform one’s personal identity. His reflection that this isn’t ‘his’ story foreshadows the conclusion of Lazlo’s character arc, in which he finally learns that he is the son of Skathis and feels centered in his role.

“It was [Eril-Fane’s] manner—the warmth of him, like steam rising from tea. One looked at him and thought, Here is a great man, and also a good one, though few men are ever both.”

Eril-Fane’s initial characterization from Lazlo’s perspective establishes him as virtuous, moral, and caring, via the simile of steam rising from tea, a comparison that reinforces the positive feelings associated with Eril-Fane. This characterization frames Eril-Fane as both a strong warrior and a moral man, establishing him as a hero. It is primarily through Eril-Fane that the narrative explores the complexity of good and evil as influenced by trauma and memory; establishing the foundation of his character as a good man and conventional hero allows Laini Taylor to deconstruct the archetype later while communicating the idea that Eril-Fane is still a good man despite the horrific deeds he has committed.

“Blue as opals, pale blue. Blue as cornflowers, or dragonfly wings, or a spring—not summer—sky. Just like the rest of them. Blue as five murders waiting to happen.”

The similes from the prologue are repeated here to prompt the reader to connect the godspawn to the blue girl in the prologue. Doing so offers context around the girl in the prologue and evokes the air of divinity established then. However, the repetition here introduces a new simile that inserts a sinister and acrimonious tone, communicating the idea that divinity is not a positive, sublime force in Weep, for either the humans or the godspawn.

“[Sarai] knew the people of Weep better than anyone, including their leaders, including their priestesses. They were her dark work. They were her nights. Sooner or later they would all die and find themselves at Minya’s mercy, but while they lived, it was Sarai’s mercy that mattered.”

This moment establishes the direction of Sarai’s character arc: choosing mercy over hatred and desire for vengeance. By situating Sarai’s mercy as equal but opposite to Minya’s, this quote also foreshadows the tension between them and the agency Sarai develops to overturn the cycles that Minya wants to perpetuate.

“Sarai wasn’t even sure what she meant. If it wasn’t vengeance? If it wasn’t deserved? Or, still more primary: What if it wasn’t even hate she felt for humans, not anymore? What if everything had changed, so slowly that she hadn’t even felt it was happening?”

This is the first instance in which Sarai questions Minya’s insistence on vengeance. Here, she allows herself to consider the idea that she has (unthinkably) developed empathy for the humans. This moment establishes the Cycles of Hate and Vengeance theme and the importance of choosing empathy to deconstruct them.

“There was always, among them, such a stew of envy and longing. [The godspawn] hated the humans, but they also wanted to be them. They wanted to punish them, and they wanted to be embraced by them. To be accepted, honored, loved, like someone’s child. And since they couldn’t have any of it, it all took the form of spite. Anyone who has ever been excluded can understand what they felt and no one has ever been quite so excluded as they […] So they layered cynicism atop their longing, and it was something like laying laughter over the darkness—self-preservation of an uglier stripe. And thus did they harden themselves, by choosing to meet hate with hate.”

The narrator depicts the complex relationship that the godspawn have with humans and illuminates the source of their hatred: their pain and loneliness. This reinforces theme of Trauma and Memory. The narrator’s voice shifting to include the audience (“anyone who has ever been excluded”) reinforces the idea that the reader is meant to connect with the godspawn’s struggles while still understanding that their hate is not justified, the same perspective that Sarai comes to have of the humans.

“Lazlo thought he saw a trace of grief in the Godslayer’s eyes, and he couldn’t make sense of it. The Mesarthim could only be the ‘gods’ whose deaths had earned him his name. But if he had killed them, why should he grieve?”

This moment introduces the idea that Eril-Fane is not actually a conventional hero. Instead, he is cursed to live with the memories of his choices, even if those choices made him a hero and saved his people. The dramatic irony of this moment (as the reader knows that Godslayer was Isagol’s lover and carries the trauma from this experience, while Lazlo does not know this) develops the complexity of the Godslayer’s/Eril-Fane’s character, as well as rendering him a character worthy of compassion. Thus, Taylor displays the character’s grief from a more neutral perspective, instead of from the perspective of the godspawn, who present him as a ruthless murderer.

“Staring at herself in the mirror, [Sarai] found that she’d lost the ability to see herself through her own eyes. She saw only what humans would see. Not a girl or a woman or someone in between. They wouldn’t see her loneliness or fear or courage, let alone her humanity. They would see only obscenity. Calamity. Godspawn.”

This moment characterizes Sarai’s internal conflicts: her shame and self-hatred as fueled by her knowledge of how the humans perceive her. This reinforces the novel’s thematic statement on the destructiveness of hate by demonstrating how the humans’ hatred, although they are not even aware of Sarai’s existence at this point, has come to direct how she views herself.

“It had never crossed [Lazlo’s] mind that Eril-Fane might have vulnerabilities. He realized that all this time he’d been looking to the Godslayer as a hero, not a man, but that heroes, whatever else they are, are also men—and women—and prey to human troubles just like anybody else.”

Lazlo’s realization of Eril-Fane’s vulnerabilities deconstructs him as a conventional hero. Through this subversion of the conventional hero trope, Taylor discourses on the consequences of a hero’s actions and the possibility of trauma and horror existing even within those characters who are presented as forces of good against oppressive regimes.

“The function of hate, as Sarai saw it, was to stamp out compassion—to close a door in one’s self and forget it was ever there. If you had hate, then you could see suffering—and cause it—and feel nothing except perhaps a sordid vindication. But at some point…here in this room, Sarai thought…she had lost that capacity. Hate had failed her, and it was like losing a shield in battle.”

Seeing how her father is tortured by shame helps Sarai to feel compassion for him, despite the resentment she still harbors toward him for his actions during the Carnage. Taylor uses personification, simile, and metaphor to personify hate both as an internal and external force, reinforcing hate as being fundamentally destructive. This moment is an important thematic statement on hate’s diametrical opposition to empathy, foreshadowing the conclusion that choosing empathy and acknowledging suffering is the gateway to overcoming hate in the narrative at large.

“But now…[survival] began to feel like an expedient with no object. Survive for what?”

This moment demonstrates Sarai’s developing perspective as she begins to push back against Minya’s influence. Here, the reader glimpses the internal shift in Sarai from survival and fear to having hope for a future that is more than a search for vengeance. This develops the direction of Sarai’s character arc toward releasing hate and choosing empathy.

“[Minya’s] lips were still moving, whispering the same words over and over: ‘They were all I could carry. They were all I could carry.’ There was no echo, no reverberation. If anything, the room ate sound. It swallowed her voice, her words, and her eternal, inadequate apology. But not her memories. She would never be rid of those.”

As she relives the memory of the Carnage, Minya sinks into guilt and grief. The personification of the room “swallowing” Minya’s voice reinforces the helplessness she feels in the face of the Carnage, and the force of the trauma and turmoil she endures in its wake. This moment develops the reader’s empathy for Minya and connects her experience to the similar feelings that Eril-Fane struggles with, reinforcing the idea that good and evil are complex labels rather than binary forces.

“We are all children in the dark, here in Weep.”

Eril-Fane’s statement to Lazlo that the citizens of Weep are like children in the dark, afraid of the citadel and its ghosts of the past, emphasizes the fear and trauma that remain despite the time that has passed. By comparing himself and the others to children, Eril-Fane imparts the sense of powerlessness they feel against the force of their trauma, reinforcing the novel’s theme of Trauma and Memory.

“[Sarai] felt the warmth of [Lazlo’s] skin on hers. A blaze of connection—or collision, as though they had long been wandering in the same labyrinth and had finally rounded the corner that would bring them face-to-face. It was a feeling of being lost and alone and then suddenly neither.”

The physical and emotional connection that Sarai feels when she touches Lazlo’s hand reinforces the Power of Love to Heal and Transform. Taylor uses the analogy of being lost in a labyrinth to evoke the dynamics of a myth, where the characters are pursued by monsters, wandering in dangerous places before finally finding refuge and companionship in each other. This idea draws parallels to Sarai and Lazlo’s situations in Part 3 as both characters seek a place of belonging, and ultimately find it in each other.

“[Sarai] also knew that in all of the city and in the monstrous metal angel that had stolen the sky, she was the only one who knew the suffering of humans and godspawn both, and it came to her that her mercy was singular and precious.”

After spending the novel struggling with the secret empathy she feels for the humans and fighting against Minya’s agenda for vengeance, Sarai ultimately chooses empathy for the humans over the hate Minya advocates. Sarai’s unique positioning as a mediator between both worlds grants her special insight and helps her develop special compassion for the humans, reinforcing the novel’s theme on Breaking Cycles of Hate and Vengeance Through Empathy.

“There it was, the witchlight in [Lazlo’s] eyes, sparkling like sun on water. It does something to a person to be looked at like that—especially someone so accustomed to disgust.”

This moment reinforces Love’s Capacity to Heal and Transform. The infatuation with which Lazlo regards Sarai is a transformative force for her after spending so long having her negative self-image reinforced by the hatred the humans have for godspawn. The presentation of Lazlo’s gaze as a ‘witchlight’ connotates the enchantment he feels with Sarai, and the power with which their connection is imbued.

“Sarai stopped walking. ‘You think good people can’t hate?’ she asked. ‘You think good people can’t kill? […] Good people do all the things bad people do, Lazlo. It’s just that when they do them, they call it justice.”

Sarai’s statement here perfectly encapsulates the novel’s theme on The Complexity of Good and Evil. Her statement references the Godslayer’s action of killing the godspawn babies and points back to the idea that oftentimes, the perceiver is the one who determines the ways in which stories are framed and remembered.

“I’m through with shame, Minya, [Sarai] said. ‘And I’m through with lull, and I’m through with nightmares, and I’m through with vengeance. Weep has suffered enough and so have we. We have to find another way.’”

This is a major turning point in Sarai’s character arc. She casts off the shame that keeps her trapped in a negative self-view, which in turn reinforces her need to hide behind a shield of hatred for the humans. By standing up for the power of empathy, she transforms cycles of suffering rather than perpetuating cycles of violence and hate. The use of polysyndeton in Sarai’s response (“I’m through with lull, and I’m through with nightmares, and I’m through with vengeance”) slows the pace of the line down and compels additional focus on each item in the list, emphasizing the long-lasting burden that has trapped Sarai in these cycles for so long.

“Strange the dreamer was an artist too, and he was the antidote to vile.”

This moment, wherein Lazlo remakes Skathis’s giant metal beast Rasalas in an image of beauty instead of one of terror, foreshadows how the power of Lazlo’s dreams motivates him to transform suffering—as well as his power to shape mesarthium. That Lazlo is “the antidote to vile” foreshadows Lazlo’s ultimate role in the narrative, and the power of his dreams to give him the capacity for creating a more hopeful and harmonious world.

“Lazlo had finished. The elegance of energies was restored. City and citadel were safe, and all was right. He was suffused with well-being. This was who he was. This was who he was. He might not know his true name, but the place at his center wasn’t empty anymore.”

This moment is the resolution of the Identity and Choice theme. The idealism and hope that Lazlo represents are reinforced by the descriptions of the city’s and the citadel’s energies being rebalanced and feeling “right.” Lazlo embraces both his identity as a god and his identity as a dreamer; both play important parts in informing the significance of his character. This quote also positions Lazlo for the final stages of his character development, where he takes up agency as the of his own story (legend).

“[Lazlo] knew the humans hadn’t killed [Sarai], and he knew they would have, given the chance. And he knew that Weep, the city of his dreams, which he had just saved from devastation, was open to him no longer. He might have filled the place at the center of himself with the answer to who he was, but he had lost so much more. Weep and Sarai. The chance of home and the chance of love. Gone.”

This is an important moment for Lazlo, as it reveals that even he—the character who represents hope, optimism, and faith—is prey to hate and prejudice in the face of loss, reinforcing the theme of Complex Morality in the Face of Trauma and Memory. Lazlo, so committed to peace and understanding, now understands hate, because he feels it in himself in the face of his helplessness against Sarai’s death. The tragedy of this moment is twofold: Sarai’s tragic death means the death of her dream to be loved and be a normal girl, and with her die Lazlo’s dreams and idealism.