52 pages • 1 hour read
Scarlett St. ClairA Touch of Ruin
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Allegory
While many of the ancient Greek myths operate on the device of personification, some function as an allegory containing a message or philosophy informing the listener about the nature of the world. In the original myth, Persephone’s abduction by Hades, for example, is an allegory that offers a rationale for the turn of seasons as a compromise, or negotiation, between the forces of life and the forces of stasis or decay. All growing things—as embodied by the young goddess or maiden—are subject to a cycle of maturity, harvest, withering, and, often, rebirth.
St. Clair’s novel touches on this allegory from a different angle, suggesting that the realms of light and dark are not separate but rather easily traversed or blended. Just as the Upperworld of growth, accomplishment, and the pursuit of pleasure is not without its danger or pains, the Underworld is not entirely a place of doom, decline, or agony. Through pairing her young goddess with the lord of the underworld, St. Clair’s allegory suggests that to be fully self-realized and mature, a person must acknowledge both the positive aspects of their character—the impulses toward growth, care, ambition, and connection—as well as the darkness, the impulses toward harm, solitude, or activities that cause pain. The story is, like many coming-of-age tales, a lesson about accepting both the pleasurable and painful aspects of life, including death.
In making her gods powerful entertainers or businesspeople, St. Clair also offers a thinly veiled comment on modern cultures that run on capitalism and consumerism, which can channel an extraordinary amount of social and financial capital to a small number of individuals, giving them an outsized influence on culture, politics, and world events. Apollo’s lack of public or legal accountability when he punishes Sybil for rejecting him reflects modern responses when wealthy public figures are accused of criminal conduct; the accusers often are attacked, the harm is downplayed, or the figure’s behavior is later justified by their private pains and losses. In this way, St. Clair attributes Apollo’s behavior to his private grief.
Personification
The Greek myths, as do many ancient stories, operate on a principle of personification, giving what resembles human form and intelligence to an inanimate object, force, or principle. Persephone is not only the Goddess of Spring in the novel; she also personifies youthfulness, attractiveness, and growth, particularly when small green vines sprout from her shoulders as her power gets out of control. Thanatos, as the God of the Dead, personifies the end of human life; Aphrodite personifies human longings for sexual love, pleasure, and beauty. St. Clair uses this principle in characterizing the Furies, living entities who, like their role in the ancient myths, embody the forces of vengeance and justice in A Touch of Ruin. They are depicted as having black, leathery wings; pale white skin; “and black snakes twined around their bodies. Their hair [i]s inky and seem[s] to float around them as if they [a]re underwater. Each w[ears] a crown of thick spires, resembling black blades” (279). The crowns further indicate their supernatural or divine aspect. They appear to punish those who break divine law, and their method of capture involves snakes with paralyzing venom, suggesting that a being cannot escape divine justice. While they personify consequences for wrongdoing, the Furies also give shape to Persephone’s fear that she has erred in bargaining for Lexa’s life and, unintentionally, spurred a harmful consequence in trying to redeem her friend from death.
Setting
The settings of events are where the conflicts and implications of St. Clair’s updated retelling most come into focus. Her New Athens is a fantasy setting in which the Upperworld approximates the real world, a modern cosmopolitan city, though the extent of the city’s geographical or political reach is unknown. Its ethnic diversity seems narrow; very few characters are identified as being an ethnicity other than white. St. Clair updates the Underworld to incorporate a variety of natural settings, some very pleasant, and the souls overall seem content. These images suggest that, aside from Hades’ palace, the Underworld is largely a pastoral or rural setting where life is less technologically advanced than the Upperworld and more observant of agricultural and seasonal rhythms. In this contrast, St. Clair borrows from an ancient literary trope that casts rural lifestyles as simpler and more fulfilling than life in urban areas. The Underworld is presented as a more natural setting: Persephone can practice her magic there, and its landscapes are built by the magic of Hades. The Upperworld, by contrast, has buildings and busy streets, and gardens, like Lexa’s memorial garden, are human made.
In the Upperworld, the businesses the various gods run reflect St. Clair’s updating of their domains, and Persephone acquires the wisdom she needs from each. Aphrodite’s fashionable boutique reflects her domains of sensual pleasure and beauty; Apollo’s club, the Lyre, captures his focus on musical arts and entertainment. Hades has the broadest realm of all, not only ruling the Underworld but also reaching into human interactions through Nevernight and Iniquity, a locus for criminal activity. The extent of his domain and his control over several settings reflect his reach and influence; he is, in essence, the most powerful god in this story.
Allusion
St. Clair’s many allusions or references to other Greek myths confirm connections between the world of the ancient myths and her modern fantasy realm. The episode between Marsyas and Apollo, for instance, recasts a well-known story from antiquity, often used as a warning about displaying hubris or excessive pride. An allusion to Pandora and her box refers to the story of Pandora opening the box in which all unpleasant things were imprisoned, thus loosing evil on the world. The conversation is a brief one to show Persephone being educated about the family history of the gods, but it also establishes the off-stage presence of Zeus, father of the Olympians. The movie that Persephone and Lexa watch, Pyramus and Thisbe, references a story recorded in Ovid’s Metamorphosis about young lovers whose affair ends in tragedy, a sort of foreshadowing of what will happen to Lexa and Jaison.
The reference to Leuce being in limbo, a liminal state between life and death, alludes to medieval Christian theology and its conceptions of a realm suspended between the happy afterlife of heaven and the torments of the Christian hell, a place where fate can yet be decided. The ancient Greek mythos didn’t conceive of limbo as such, but the reference suggests that New Athens borrows some cultural elements from modern Europe, retaining influences of the Catholicism that prevailed in Europe during the medieval period.
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By Scarlett St. Clair
