Divine Rivals

“Iris thought about all the headlines Zeb had published about the war. They screamed things like THE DANGERS OF ENVA’S MUSIC: THE SKYWARD GODDESS HAS RETURNED AND SINGS OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS TO WAR or RESIST THE SIREN’S CALL TO WAR: ENVA IS OUR MOST DANGEROUS THREAT. ALL STRINGED INSTRUMENTS ARE OUTLAWED IN OATH.”

The headlines presented in this passage highlight The Dangers of Censorship and the pivotal role that the media plays in building the narratives that reach local citizens. The unethical journalism at play in Oath is harmful and destructive, for it only endorses the ignorance and apathy of its citizens and encourages people to disregard the plight of those fighting for their lives in the west.

“She knew how to tamp down the anxious feelings that were boiling within her. It was currently hiding beneath her bed—the typewriter her Nan had once created poetry with. The typewriter Iris had inherited and had since been using to write to This isn’t Forest.”

Iris’s relationship with her typewriter as a method of expunging her suppressed and anxious emotions foreshadows the relationship that she will develop with Roman. Just like the act of writing itself, Roman also serves as a valuable emotional outlet for her thoughts, fears, and desires, for he is the first person since the loss of her mother and brother that she finds safe enough to confide in.

“Iris took a step away from him, pride burning in her bones. She couldn’t bear for Roman to see her like this. She couldn’t bear for him to see how messy things were in her life. For him to see her on her worst day.”

Iris naturally wears a mask around others, to protect her emotions from being seen or acknowledged. She does so with her boss, Zeb Autry, refusing to notify him of her struggles with Aster’s death when he questions her devotion to journalism. Though she does the same with Roman, she cares more about his opinion of her than anyone else, a fact that foreshadows her eventual realization of her underlying feelings for him.

“I know what it feels like to lose someone you love. To feel as if you’re left behind, or like your life is in shambles and there’s no guidebook to tell you how to stitch it back together. But time will slowly heal you, as it is doing for me. There are good days and there are difficult days. Your grief will never fully fade; it will always be with you—a shadow you carry in your soul—but it will become fainter as your life becomes brighter. You will learn to live outside of it again, as impossible as that may sound. Others who share your pain will also help you heal. Because you are not alone. Not in your fear or your grief or your hopes or your dreams.”

Through writing, Roman can connect with Iris in a way that isn’t possible in a face-to-face encounter, given the sometimes hostile relationship that the two still have at this point. This connection through their enchanted typewriters therefore demonstrates the theme of The Emotional Impact of Written Words. Their correspondence becomes a source of emotional purging for one another, but it also helps Iris to feel like she’s not alone, even when her entire family has left her.

“‘The one for your mother? And then none of us would know you were hurting,’ he replied. ‘What would you do if you could take back the words you gave her? Continue to pretend that your life was fine while you were with us by day, even as you grieved by night? Would you even know yourself after a week had passed, a month, a year?’”

This passage demonstrates The Dangers of Censorship, as the situation can be applied to the articles written (or not written) about the war. Roman only learns of the death of Iris’s mother through the Gazette obituaries and says that no one would know Iris was hurting if it hadn’t been reported. This observation relates to the soldiers’ suffering and the families who are torn apart by the war. If these stories are not reported, then no one in Oath will be able to realize the widespread hurt and devastation that the conflict is causing every day.

“As soon as she thought of him, her chest ached. The feeling surprised her because it was sharp and undeniable. I miss him. She missed irritating him by rearranging his desk. She missed stealing glances at his horribly handsome face, the rare sight of his smile and the fleeting sound of his laughter. She missed striking up banter with him, even if it was most often to see who could outsnark whom.”

Iris’s love life is complicated by her decision to leave Oath. Not only is she developing feelings for her pen pal, Carver, but her distance from her daily work rival, Roman, causes repressed feelings to arise. Iris can no longer avoid them but must acknowledge them, as they’ll only come between her and Carver if she wishes to pursue a relationship with him.

“Iris looked at Attie. Attie was already gazing at her with an inscrutable expression. She wondered how long it would take before the war felt real to them. Before they felt how close it was, like a tremor in the ground beneath them.”

Oath is 600 kilometers from the war front, making it very easy for the citizens to sit back and pretend as though it is a small, distant issue that will never threaten them or directly affect them. As Iris and Attie grow closer, however, the war begins to feel more and more real to them. The shock and trauma they undergo after only a week at the front lines and in the trenches is what helps them to finally register the reality of the war in a way that the censored newspapers of Oath never could.

“He would soon be married to a girl who had no interest in knowing him. Her heart belonged elsewhere, and he’d never know what it would feel like to be loved by her. It’s what I deserve, he thought again as he drank the rest of the champagne.”

Initially, Roman agrees so readily to his father’s unilateral decrees for his life. He pursues journalism instead of literature and becomes engaged to Elinor, a woman who doesn’t love him. He does these things because he feels he owes it to his parents; he falsely believes that his sister’s death was his fault, and he is forever trying to make up for that internalized guilt. It is only through his correspondence with Iris that he finally realizes that, despite the past, he deserves to feel loved and to make his own decisions about his future.

“She was writing brave, bold things. And it had taken him a while, but he was ready now. He was ready to write his own story.”

The phrase “writing your own story” is indicative of the powerful role that words and stories play in the development of the protagonists’ hopes, dreams, and goals throughout the story. Journalism is the most important way of spreading word of the war and influencing its outcome, and correspondence is a way to connect friends, family, and lovers across hundreds of kilometers. And in this instance, that same power is extended to Roman’s ability to control the narrative of his life and to make it matter.

“‘Inkridden Iris,’ he said, his rich drawl making her sound like a legend. ‘Oh, Autry fumed for days when he saw it, and Prindle cheered, and suddenly the city of Oath is reading about a not-so-distant war and realizing it is only a matter of time before it reaches them.’”

The impact of uncensored journalism is evidenced through the reaction that the citizens of Oath have in response to the pieces that Attie and Iris write for the Inkridden Tribune. Just as the war becomes more real once Iris and Attie reach the war front, they are using their articles to make it more real to the citizens living hundreds of kilometers away.

“But she wondered how much the two of them would change in this war. What marks would it leave on them, shining like scars that never faded?”

The reference to how people change as a result of trauma and hardships relates to the theme of The Intensity of Wartime Relationships and how they alter along with personal changes. Iris undergoes personal changes throughout her time at the war front, and the relationships she holds dear alter accordingly. Attie, Marisol, and Roman become the most important people in her life as she learns to let go of her emotional attachments to the family she has lost.

“But he knew the exact emotion she was experiencing. It felt wrong to run. To flee when others were hunkering down, preparing to fight. When men and women were on the ground, moaning in pain. Torn apart by mortar shells, waiting to die with the splintered shine of their bones and the bright red sheen of their blood.”

When separated by distance, it is easy for citizens to avoid empathy and pretend as though the war is not an issue that affects them. However, as Iris and Roman experience at the front lines, despite being war correspondents and not having any obligation to participate, they feel the guilt and wrongness that comes with seeing the carnage and destruction.

“She and Roman would survive this war. They would have the chance to grow old together, year by year. They would be friends until they both finally acknowledged the truth. And they would have everything that other couples had—the arguments and the hand-holding in the market and the gradual exploration of their bodies and the birthday celebrations and the journeys to new cities and the living as one and sharing a bed and the gradual sense of melting into each other. Their names would be entwined—Roman and Iris or Winnow and Kitt because could you truly have one without the other?”

Iris’s priorities have transformed drastically from the beginning of the novel. In the opening chapters, Iris’s mother and brother are the most important people in her life. By Part 3, however, the closest person to Iris is Roman, and she envisions their life together, becoming family in a way that two people do when they vow to love each other forever.

“Iris was stunned as the captain turned and began calling out more orders. She was a correspondent, not a soldier, but Private Stanley was now staring at her, holding one end of a bloodied and vomit-stained stretcher, and time suddenly felt heavy on her skin. Did it matter what she was?”

This passage further exemplifies how personal roles can change in wartime. Iris is a journalist and a sister to a soldier, yet in the trenches, it doesn’t matter what her titles are. It only matters that she’s an able-bodied person in a position to help the wounded. In small ways, Ross shows the brutality of the war front and, additionally, its simplicity, for in such a dire situation, the crisis of the present moment supersedes all other considerations.

“She scrubbed as if she could wash it all away. Her ears still held a faint ring; she wondered if it would ever fade. She knocked something off the soap ledge. The clang made her jump, her heart faltering. She almost cowered, but slowly told herself she was fine. She was in the shower, and it was just a metal tin of Marisol’s lavender shampoo. When Iris was certain she had washed away the dirt and the sweat and the blood, she shut off the valve and dried herself. She didn’t even want to look at her body, the marks on her skin. Bruises and cuts to remind her what she had experienced.”

Ross subtly inserts the effects of trauma and PTSD into the narratives of Iris and Roman. Something as simple as the bang of soap hitting the shower tiles can elicit a fight-or-flight response in a survivor of war, for such sounds invoke painful memories of gunfire and explosions. The physical bruises and cuts that Iris refuses to acknowledge likewise mirror the internal wounds that many soldiers bring back with them from the war.

“‘Very well. I had a pet snail when I was seven.’

‘A snail?’

Iris nodded. ‘His name was Morgie. I kept him in a serving dish with a little tray of water and some rocks and a few wilted flowers. I told him all of my secrets.’

‘And whatever happened to Morgie?’

‘He slinked away one day when I was at school. I came home to discover him gone, and he was nowhere to be found. I cried for a fortnight.’”

A simple, seemingly innocent anecdote that Iris shares with Roman about a pet snail who went missing in her childhood encapsulates the lasting insecurities that she holds about her lost loved ones. She once shared all her secrets with her pet snail, becoming emotionally vulnerable with her animal companion, and when he left, she was distraught. This pattern of vulnerability, abandonment, and grief continues with her loss of her grandmother, Aster, and Forest.

“Because good things never lasted for long in her life. She thought about all the people who had been close to her, the threads of their lives weaving with hers—Nan, Forest, her mother—and how they had all left, either by choice or by fate.”

Iris refuses to acknowledge her feelings for Roman for as long as possible. Even when she does, she is afraid of becoming fully vulnerable with him. Her insecurities about how her family have abandoned her, whether by choice or by fate, are the foundation of her worries and fears. However, she ultimately overcomes this obstacle when she marries Roman and believes his promises that he will never leave her.

“I’m quite fond of Carver. His words carried me through some of the darkest moments of my life. He was a friend I desperately needed, someone who listened and encouraged me. I have never been so vulnerable with another person. I was falling in love with him. And yet my feelings became conflicted when you arrived at Avalon, because I realized that I halfway liked you.”

Iris verbally validates The Emotional Impact of Written Words by admitting that Carver’s letters emotionally supported her through the darkest periods of her life. Their words to one another gave Iris the space and courage she needed to be vulnerable with another person.

“The explosion. His hand being ripped from hers. The smoke that rose. Why had she been unscathed, when so many others hadn’t? Men and women who had given so much more than her, who would never get to return home to their families, their lovers. Who would never see their next birthday, or kiss the person they least expected, or grow old and wise, watching flowers bloom in their garden.”

This passage indicates another moment in which Ross subtly explores the realities of war and the effects it has on the people involved. After the trenches, Iris suffers from survivor’s guilt when all the members of the Sycamore Platoon lose their lives in the conflict. This occurrence demonstrates that even if a war is won, it’s only seen as a cause for celebration by the citizens who did not have to fight; for the soldiers and the survivors, it becomes the start of a mental battle just as difficult.

“She sighed, surprised by the relief she felt to hear his decision—he wasn’t going to abandon her, no matter what the next day brought—and she wrapped her arms around his waist.”

Iris finally overcomes her insecurity about loved ones abandoning her when she chooses to fully believe Roman’s promise to remain by her side. His decision to stay with her, even as Dacre’s forces march toward the town, prompts this acceptance.

“They were both anxious to be free of the garments that had held them through countless troubles. Once liberated, they tossed their raiment across the room with hushed laughter. And the world melted into something new and molten.”

Throughout the entire novel, Iris and Roman have been shedding their metaphorical armor piece by piece as they’ve become more emotionally vulnerable to one another. Undressing for their night of intimacy is symbolic of shedding the last pieces of armor.

“‘Tomorrow,’ Roman said, lacing his fingers with hers, ‘I want your hand to be in mine, no matter what comes. Just like this. We have to stay together, Iris.’ […] Little did he know she had already planned this. To stay close to him. To be ready to support his weight all the way to the lorry if he needed her. To keep him alive.”

This promise foreshadows the moment when Roman and Iris get separated in the battle at Avalon Bluff. It also mirrors Iris’s moment with Forest in the Prologue when Forest makes a promise to return but is unable to keep it. Iris makes the promise to stay with Roman, but her choice to leave his side to grab a stretcher for a wounded soldier irrevocably separates them.

“She soaked in the forlorn truth that she was back where she started. She was ‘home,’ and yet she felt like a stranger here. She felt like an entirely different person. Iris shut her eyes, listening to the rain tap on the window.”

Iris has experienced extreme personal changes while at Avalon Bluff. Her relationships with others, her view on life, and her perception of home have been irreversibly altered. The apartment she once viewed as home has been replaced with Marisol’s bed-and-breakfast, which she accepts as her true home just days before the traumatic events that conclude the novel.