Under the Never Sky

“Grief hung thick and heavy, out of place in the colorful room. It pressed in along the edges of his vision like a bleak gray fog. Perry also caught the smoke from the dying fire, the tang of Luster from the clay pitcher on the wooden table. A month had passed since his brother’s wife, Mila, had died. Her scent was faded, almost gone.”

Perry describes the grief and sadness following the recent death of Mila as a bleak gray fog. Up until this point, the only glimpses the narrative has had of Reverie are its bleak gray walls and the smothering smoke from the Ag 6 fire. The relation of these two implies the low quality of life of Dwellers despite what they believe of themselves.

“People said that the Marked had the Aether flowing through their blood. Heating them up and giving them their Sense. It was just a saying, but Perry knew it had to be true. Most of the time he didn’t think he was very different from the Aether at all.”

The Aether is described as being violent and unpredictable. Perry compares himself to the Aether, playing into what Aria believes about “Savages.” Soon, Perry will reveal that Outsiders are different than what Dwellers rumor them to be, but for now, the assumptions hold up.

“She noticed cracks and streaks of rust along the walls. Reverie had stood nearly three hundred years, but she had never seen signs of its age until now. She’d spent her whole life in the Panop, Reverie’s vast and immaculate central dome. […] Aria had never seen a single crack in the Panop, not that she’d bothered to search very hard. The design was purposely repetitive and uninteresting to promote maximum use of the Realms. Everything in the real was kept bland, down to the grays they all wore. Now, as she followed Dr. Ward, she couldn’t help wondering how many other parts of the Pod were deteriorating.”

The Eroding Nature of Perfection is evidenced in Aria’s perception of Reverie after the fire. By using virtual reality to appear perfect to its inhabitants, the Pod ignores all its rust and cracks. This ignorance of its slow deterioration will end in its downfall, just like the other fallen Pods, such as Bliss. The breach of Ag 6 is the first sign of this fate.

“Aria knew she couldn’t survive in this contaminated world. She hadn’t been designed for it. Death was only a matter of time.”

Aria’s concerns about surviving the Death Shop reflect the theme of The Danger in Utopia. Growing up in the Pods has not conditioned her for Outside conditions or the mental and physical pressures of the real. Aria believes her mother genetically designed her, as most people do in the Pods, instead of procreating with another person, but it is the fact that she’s been naturally conceived with an Outsider that gives her an advantage in surviving the Outside.

“Aria sang to her. She became Juliet or Isolde or Joan of Arc, singing about doomed love and grand purpose and resilience in the face of death. […] She did it, though she hated opera. She hated everything about it. The overblown sense of drama. The violence and lewdness. No one had ever died of heartbreak in Reverie. Betrayal never led to murder. Those things didn’t happen anymore. They had the Realms now. They could experience anything without taking risks. Now, life was Better than Real.”

Aria doesn’t understand music until she has no choice but to live in the real. The drama, violence, heartbreak, and murder that don’t exist in the Pods are very real in the Outside. Though life Outside is tougher than life inside the Pods, Aria manages to gain experience that allows her to finally understand the lyrics of the songs she sings.

“Aria pushed her hair behind her ears, panic coiling in her gut. She looked around the tiny room, at the neat drawers built into the walls and the mirror above her sink. She knew her voice. She knew its power. Her voice would shake the walls in such a confined space. It might carry beyond the small living room outside and make it out to the Panop.”

Aria’s worry that her voice is stronger than the Pod can handle foreshadows the reveal that she is part Outsider. Her voice doesn’t belong in Reverie because it belongs Outside, in the open, where it can properly project like it does when she calls to the wolves on her way to Bliss.

“He surprised himself by using her name. He decided it suited her. There was a curious sound about it. Like her very name was a question.”

Names have meaning in the novel, often explaining something about the characters they stand for. Aria’s name foremost relates to her singing talent and Audile ability, but Perry notes a curious sound to it. His perception of her name hints at Aria’s curious nature. She is constantly asking him questions and searching for answers, the quality Lumina loves best about her.

“She didn’t see any. Some of the trees were leafless and bare. She wondered why some thrived and others died. Was it the soil? Or was it the Aether choosing certain ones to incinerate? She saw no reason in it. No pattern. Nothing made sense out here.”

The Danger in Utopia is evidenced in Aria’s questions about the trees in the forest. Outsiders thrive because they’re planted in the right places under the right conditions. Dwellers do not for the opposite reasons. Aria struggles to see the pattern in why some trees thrive and others look like they’re dying. In the Pods, all the Realms follow a pattern that makes sense, but this is not the case in the real.

“For long moments, she stood on the stage, feeling the vastness of the hall, the emptiness of it, as a feeling built in her as if she might explode. She didn’t know when she started screaming. And then she didn’t know how to stop. The sound coming out of her grew louder and louder, like it would never end.”

For the first time, Aria recognizes the loneliness of the Realms. Anyone can leave at any time, and when she leaves them, she’s always alone in the Real. They’re a facade, pretending at a sense of community and intimacy when those things can only be truly found in reality.

“She’d seen a glimpse of Perry’s smile earlier when he’d heard Roar, but now she saw it in full, directed completely at her. It was lopsided and punctuated by canines that couldn’t be ignored, but it was this fierce quality that made it so disarming. Like seeing a lion smile.”

As Aria learns more about Perry, her initial view of him as “savage” slowly morphs. Though she still sees hints of sharp teeth and a lion’s grin, she begins to see a softness in Perry that is less frightening and more charming, which hints at her slowly diminishing prejudices.

“The lyrics flowed out of her, springing straight from her heart. Words full of drama and wild abandon that had always embarrassed her before, because who flung themselves at raw emotion like that? She did it now.”

The way Aria thinks about music in this passage is mocking in tone. It’s obvious how uncomfortable she is with expressing real emotions, indicating her lack of experience with intimacy. As her view on these things begins to change, so does her outlook on music.

“They reached for each other then like some force had pulled their hands together. Aria looked at their fingers as they laced together, bringing her the sensation of his touch. Of warmth and calluses. Soft and hard together.”

When Paisley grabs Aria’s hand in the opening chapters, it feels constricting and moist. Aria is very uncomfortable with the gesture, and it shows. When Perry grabs her hand, she feels warmth, which is a much more comforting feeling than the connotation behind the word “moist.” The gesture is the same, but Aria’s perception of it is much different now.

“It degenerates. This has catastrophic consequences when we do need to rely on instinct. Pleasure and pain become confused. Fear can become thrilling. Rather than avoid stress, we seek it and even revel in it. The will to give life becomes the need to take it. The result is a collapse of reason and cognition. Put simply, it results in a psychotic break.”

The Realms are created as a utopia so that Dwellers don’t take much notice of how they’re contained to tiny Pods their entire lives, but because there are no consequences in the Realms, Dwellers don’t need informed decision-making or intuition. They chase the excitement of new experiences because the possibility of fear or pain doesn’t exist. Every other emotion becomes muddled into the one. Therefore, the dangers of this become evident when confronted with real experiences that incite any of these emotions. Dwellers have no way to discern between them, resulting in violence and death.

“He spent the rest of the night staring at the Aether, thinking of Talon and Cinder and Roar and Liv. How everything was about searching and missing. How none of it was coming together the way it should.”

Perry’s introspection in this passage illustrates The Significance of Intimacy. He wonders why the conflict between Dwellers and Outsiders is prioritized, leading to disconnect and hatred, rather than the two societies focusing on connection and unity.

“She had no illusions of becoming a master knife fighter. This wasn’t the Realms, where a thought delivered a result. But she also knew she’d given herself a better chance. And in life, at least in her new life, chances were the best she could hope for. They were like her rocks. Imperfect and surprising and maybe better in the long run than certainties. Chances, she thought, were life.”

Aria begins her time in the Outside, wishing to escape into the ease of the Realms using her Smarteye. By the time she reaches Marron’s, Aria comes to appreciate the satisfaction of working hard to obtain results. She now sees certainties as a dull way to live. Chances are more worrisome but also more exciting, making life more worth living.

“They came upon a pair of Croven huddled together in the shadow of a tree. At the sight of Cinder, they scurried away. Perry swallowed against the rawness in his throat. Had the boy ever known anything beyond fear and pity?”

Perry has been a subject of fear and pity due to his propensity for picking fights, the number of loved ones he’s lost, and the belief among the tribes that offspring between two Marked ones of different abilities are cursed. Perry feels sympathy for Cinder because of this and feels connected to the child in a way he doesn’t to others.

“He was different with her. He spoke to her quietly as they walked. He answered every one of her questions, even things she didn’t ask, knowing she’d want to know them. He told her about the plants they passed. Which ones were edible or had medicinal uses. He showed her the animal tracks they came across and explained how to navigate by the shape of the hills.”

Perry and Aria’s second journey together is much different from their first. Where Perry had been silent on the way to Marron’s, he’s now opening up to Aria more than ever. The intimacy of sharing all the aspects of his world with her strengthens their growing relationship before their split, heightening its emotional impact.

“She liked what she was discovering about herself. Aria, who knew that birds should be plucked while they were still warm so the feathers came out more easily. Aria, who could start a fire with a knife and a piece of quartz. Aria, who sang wrapped in the arms of a blond-haired boy. She didn’t know where this side of her would fit with what lay five days ahead. […] As to her biggest question—what would happen when she reached Bliss—she did something new. She withheld her questions and fears and trusted that she’d know what to do when the time came.”

Rossi has mentioned that Aria’s need in the story is for a home of her own—not necessarily a physical home but the feeling that comes with it. The most important quality of a home is a feeling of comfort and self-belonging. Aria finds this in the Outside by getting to know herself. In the Realms, she never does anything real and, therefore, is never given the opportunity to discover new things about herself. Through gaining these experiences in the real, Aria finds home in herself first.

“His thumb ran back and forth across her chin. It was distracting, and she knew that was what he wanted. Maybe all he’d ever done was move forward. Try to save the people he could. Try to make up for something he’d never done.”

Perry believes himself to be weak and is ashamed of his recklessness, which often brings him and his loved ones misfortune. The motivation for many of his actions is his desire to make up for things he can’t control yet blames himself for regardless. Aria, however, recognizes all the positive qualities he can’t see when he focuses on his self-perceived shortcomings.

“How did she do that? How did she make him feel weak and strong? Thrilled and terrified? He couldn’t find a way to return what she’d given him. He didn’t have the gift she did with words.”

Lumina describes the effects of DLS as the inability to discern between thrill and terror or pleasure and pain. This inability causes psychotic “breaks” in Dwellers. The fact that Perry also attributes these conflicting emotions to love indicates how intimacy is missing inside Pods. If true intimacy exists in the Pods, then Dwellers would be able to properly cope with the real without being as impacted by DLS. 

“Every breath she took, she smelled the odor of death. […] The marks of brutality were everywhere. Mottled yellow bruising. Scratches and ripped flesh. Bite marks. She couldn’t help imagining what had happened. So many people, turning on each other like rabid animals. Like Soren in Ag 6.”

When Perry first enters Ag 6, all the Dwellers smell like death. Aria is never aware of this and doesn’t have the Scire ability that would allow her to scent this. However, when she enters Bliss, the scent of death is potent even without an enhanced ability to smell. The mass death that occurs among Dwellers at Bliss illustrates what Perry’s scented all along—The Erosion of Perfection that has predisposed the Pods to DLS.

“She knew how to put one foot in front of the other even when every step hurt. And she knew there was pain in the journey, but there was also great beauty. She’d seen it standing on rooftops and in green eyes and in the smallest, ugliest rock. She would find the answer.”

In the opening chapters, a knock on Aria’s shoulder brings her immense pain. She struggles to cope with the sensation, especially when it lasts a few minutes, which feels like an eternity to someone who’s never felt pain. After her journey, Aria appreciates the beauty in pain and imperfections, unlike she had before.

“She knew who she’d see on the other side when it did, but she wasn’t afraid. She’d survived the outside. She’d survived the Aether and cannibals and wolves. She knew how to love now, and how to let go. Whatever came next, she would survive it, too.”

This outlook mirrors the hopelessness Aria has in her survival when she’s first dropped in the Death Shop. She not only has discovered The Significance of Intimacy on the Outside but also in having confidence in herself.