Siege and Storm

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-19

Chapters 20-22

Chapter 23-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Alina’s Dreams on Sturmhond’s Ship

As she recovers from her nichevo’ya bite, Alina slips in and out of dreams. She sees herself in childhood, riding in a cart that passes a “woman [who] trudges along, head bent, a block of salt strapped to her back” (25), symbolizing the heavy burden of Alina’s powers.

Each time the dream shifts, its symbolic message alters. In one variant, the woman “struggling against the weight of the salt block has [Alina’s] face” (26), while Baghra, the Darkling’s mother, cryptically tells Alina that while the “ox feels the yoke,” she should be grateful a bird doesn’t feel the weight of its own wings (26). This dream is about the Darkling, Morozova’s collar, and how Alina should use her new strength: Will she be weighed down by her power or use it to fly?

In the last incarnation of the dream, the “salt slips from [her] shoulders” (27), and, to her surprise, Alina becomes “the black shape of a girl, borne high by her own unfurling wings” (28)—a premonition of her eventual harnessing the darker side of magic. These shifting dreams show that Alina must stop looking at her power as something abhorrent but rather as a tool for Ravka’s freedom.

Alina’s Visions of the Darkling

The Darkling astral projects himself into visions that symbolize Alina’s struggle with her power. These visions occur when Alina feels most doubtful of herself; in them, she often feels at one with the Darkling: “my own sadness, my own longing, reflected back to me in his bleak, gray eyes” (55). The Darkling and Alina are two of the most powerful Grisha, which makes him her dark mirror—the kind of selfish being she could become if she gives in to her obsession with magic.

Because Alina’s desire is split between power hunger and sexual longing, the Darkling generally appears right after or during key moments with Mal. For example, after Mal observes that,“[e]ver since you put on that second amplifier you’ve been different” (327) and moves to kiss her to reconnect, the Darkling appears behind him and she flinches. Mal is appealing, but so is ultimate control over summoning. Similarly, in a later scene, after Alina tells Mal that she would never “carve this power out of [her]” (367), Alina awakes to the Darkling in her bed—a sexual metaphor that shows that she has chosen power over love. As her body shakes with “terror and the memory of desire” (370)—a suggestive image that hints at orgasm—Alina is repulsed by and attracted to what the Darkling represents.

Amplifiers in Cages

The motif of the amplifiers being trapped by the Darkling runs through the narrative. Alina’s empathy with these captured and enslaved objects shows how much shame she feels at her own imprisonment at the Darkling’s hands. The stag’s collar that encircles her throat, embedded in her flesh at her collarbone, embodies the cage the Darkling has locked her in. When Alina sees the sea whip, she silently prays for it to survive because “Once he has you, he’ll never let you go” (62), showing how deeply she despises her own possession by the Darkling. Finally, she fears the Darkling has already found the firebird, and wonders if he “held [it] captive in a spun gold cage” (341). Alina worries that the Darkling has made her a monster like these beasts.

Alina’s power is both literally and symbolically a fetter—heightening its reach means permanently adding shackles to her body. Her confinement only ends in the climactic battle with the Darkling, when Alina realizes that the very thing she thinks is caging her—her connection to him—can free her. If she can sacrifice herself like the amplifiers did, she can amplify the Darkling’s darkness and destroy him.