64 pages • 2-hour read
A Drop of Corruption
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Symbols & Motifs
The Marrow
The marrow has no direct impact on the plot aside from the importance that the characters place upon it; this trope, which originates in television studies, is called a “MacGuffin.” Though Pyktis schemes to destroy the marrow, he fails, and though Din and Ana fight to learn about it, they ultimately do not use it to any effect in the text. Indeed, the movements and actions of the marrow would be entirely the same if Pyktis had never committed his crimes and Ana and Din had never come to Yarrowdale.
Symbolically, however, the marrow also indicates that titans and augmentations are incorporated into every aspect of life in Khanum. The Apoths in particular are obsessed with understanding the leviathans; the marrow, found only at the center of these leviathans’ massive corpses, parallels the mystery of the titans. These great creatures menace the people of Khanum but also give them meaning. They kill many, but, as Ghrelin notes, the augmentations developed from titans’ bodies have helped combat problems entirely external to the danger of the titans, such as maternal mortality, respiratory illness, and hunger.
The Shroud
The centrality of the titans, and the things their bodies produce, to the Khanum way of life is reflected in the reverent, worshipful way that Ghrelin discusses the marrow: “‘It sleeps, you see,’ [Ghrelin] whispered […] ‘Like a baby. Silent yet fitful, always threatening to wake’” (348). Ghrelin speaks lovingly of this highly dangerous, grotesque material, despite the friends he has seen killed trying to secure it. This suggests that the titans and their marrow elicit a form of religious devotion for the imperials, one that remains mystical even as they describe it in scientific terms.
The Shroud is the mysterious site near Yarrowdale inside which the Apoths perform their dangerous and secretive work in dissecting the bodies of the leviathans. The secrets of the Apoths are thus literally shrouded in mystery for much of the text, as they are hidden behind a barrier until Thelenai allows Ana and Din access.
The Shroud highlights the use of the sublime in the novel; Din fears that he is certain to die when Ana orders him to go inside, given the many strange substances and contagions that may exist within. Yet, as he enters the Shroud, he finds it awe-inspiring as well as terrible. He sees the magnitude of human accomplishment in the great structure, even as these accomplishments depend on the ghastly work of dissecting massive bodies for experimentation. The Shroud therefore stands as a point of tension in the novel’s exploration of The Price of Progress, as it shows that the cost of developing augmentations and grafts is great, but that the wonders that these developments yield are great, as well.
The Pithian Lyre
The two Pithian lyres that Ana plays in the climax of the novel have implications for the way the text presents character and genre. Ana’s preoccupation with playing two lyres at once so that she can perform duets on her own highlights her idiosyncratic personality. Instead of asking her assistant to play alongside her, for example, Ana prefers to accomplish the near-impossible, something that builds into her characterization as a detective with almost mystical powers.
The Pithian lyre is relevant to the plot, as well, however. As Ana tells Din early in the novel, duets are popular in Yarrow due to the frequency of multiple births in the royal line. This foreshadows the “secret twin” plot line that is revealed when Ana discovers that Pyktis is twin to the heir to the Yarrow throne, Prince Carmak. This reference early in the text reminds readers that, in a detective story, seemingly trivial details can offer hints to the final revelation—but that these hints are difficult to find for anyone but the most talented detectives. Ana ultimately uses the dual lyre to unmask Pyktis’s deception by playing a discordant tune that offends his finely tuned sense of pattern, revealing him as an augur. This constitutes an ironic reversal: She uses the duets that were penned to honor the twin princes to bring down the false prince and thus solve the crime.
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