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.
Symbols & Motifs
The Underworld
The Underworld in A Touch of Ruin serves as a motif that helps develop the central premise of the book, a modern-day retelling of the ancient Greek myth, by offering a reimagined setting for the underworld to which Persephone is kidnapped by Hades. St. Clair keeps some of the same characteristics that prevail in the early myths but adds updates that afford her characters exploration and growth. Working against perceptions of the underworld as harsh or forbidding, St. Clair’s Underworld is also beautiful, creative, and fruitful, a place where souls live out a contented afterlife filled with friendship and festivals.
Much of the geography of St. Clair’s Underworld draws on ancient sources, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, the epic poems attributed to Homer. The River Styx continues to be the border by which souls pass from the mortal realm to the Underworld; Charon is traditionally the boatman who ferries souls across and requires a fee for safe passage. Tartarus is a deep abyss of punishment in which, in most versions, Zeus imprisoned the Titans, but it can also function as a place where mortals who offended the gods are tortured; one surmises that this is Pirithous’ fate in the novel.
The Elysian Fields, in Greek myth, are traditionally separate from the realm of Hades and are a place where souls can enjoy a happy afterlife. St. Clair makes Elysium a peaceful refuge and part of Hades’ realm to show that his power can be creative or healing as well as destructive. The River Lethe appears in its traditional role as the river of forgetfulness; drinking from it makes one forget their mortal life. The Forest of Despair is St. Clair’s addition to this Underworld and adds a new dimension to human suffering, as Persephone finds when it manifests her greatest fear—that Hades will want someone other than her.
St. Clair also adds welcoming natural settings to her Underworld, including gardens, meadows, and streams with soothing waterfalls, to suggest that Persephone could make a home there. This Underworld provides a complement or alternative to the Upperworld. Persephone is persecuted and manipulated or sees her friends in danger in the Upperworld, but the Underworld is a welcoming refuge. It is also the place where Persephone can study and train in using her magic, again suggesting that this is the more appropriate realm for her. The extent of Hades’ palace, with its elaborate rooms and many wings, indicates the extent of his power and wealth, thus adding to his desirability as a partner.
Vines and Thorns
Persephone, as the Goddess of Spring, is associated with vegetation and presumably has the power to spur plant growth, so the vines and thorns that she manifests with her magic, including those that sprout from her body, symbolize her divine power or, metaphorically, the talent that makes her special and sets her apart from other mortals. In the Underworld, flowers grow beneath her feet when she walks across a field. This magic signifies that the Underworld welcomes her and is the realm where she can truly be herself. In the Underworld, at least in early scenes, Persephone assumes her divine form, which she does not wear in the Upperworld, further suggesting that this realm is where she feels comfortable expressing her authentic self.
The vines and thorns also serve as metaphors for Persephone’s emotions, which, in her early stages of maturity, she has difficulty controlling. Vines sprout from her when she is agitated, and thorns grow when she is angry. These painful and unwanted episodes demonstrate that she does not have full control over herself or, in terms of the novel, her particular power. Hecate associates the unruly vines with Persephone’s struggle to maintain a life that mimics a mortal’s when she is really a goddess. In moments of extreme disturbance, Persephone creates thorns as weapons to protect herself or others, as when she fights Apollo or Pirithous. St. Clair foreshadows that, at some future point, Persephone will be able to alter the landscape or grow things in the Underworld, thus establishing her place as Hades’ consort and showing the extent to which she belongs in the Underworld, sharing its governance with him.
The Advocate
In contrast to the New Athens News (the newspaper Persephone begins working for out of college and which ends up being a career dead end), The Advocate is the news outlet and media community that Persephone establishes for herself, symbolizing the maturation of her identity and her ability to exercise control over her life. Instead of allowing her to exercise her investigative journalism skills, finding and uncovering the truth, the News becomes a stagnant realm focused mostly on Persephone’s celebrity. It functions more as a tabloid as the topics of interest become Hades’ bargains (an important element of the first book, referenced in this one), Apollo’s doomed lovers, and Persephone’s love affair. The attacks from Apollo’s defenders show that the News is not where Persephone wants to exercise her voice. The kidnapping by Pirithous further underscores that the News, with its attention on celebrity, has become a dangerous place for her. In contrast, The Advocate, staffed by her acquaintances, is a medium that Persephone controls where she can tell stories on her own terms. The Advocate gives a platform to her new authority as an emerging goddess in her own right and allows her to pursue justice, especially for the disadvantaged or exploited. That Persephone wishes to champion mortals proves to be a way to temper the acts of Hades and introduces more justice and compassion into the Underworld.
Related Titles
By Scarlett St. Clair
