64 pages • 2-hour read
Katabasis
A 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
Content Warning: This section includes discussion of substance use.
Chalk
While chalk is a motif related to the working of magic, it is also a symbol of memory and history. Chalk is made from “compressed, tiny fragments of ancient sea creatures that died millions of years ago” (114). It contains the concentrated life essence and all their memories. When Alice snorts chalk near the climax of the novel, she has visions from the lives of all the ancient creatures who made the chalk: “A woman laughing. A deer startling. A giant’s stride. A midnight streak into the lake, and the plunging cold. All the axioms in the world swirling and dancing above her” (468). These visions show all the pasts and memories encapsulated in the chalk.
The histories embodied in the chalk can be hyperlocal. Since different areas contain different creatures whose bones are compressed under differing environmental factors, the “efficacy of chalk depends on where you dug it up” (114). In this way, memory is unique to place. The chalk also gives Alice a sense of power and agency, helping her to move forward instead of feeling detached and unwilling to face what her past experiences in academia were really like.
Lethe
The underworld’s river, Lethe, is a symbol for new beginnings and future potential. In Greek and Roman mythology, the Lethe is the river of forgetting. This characteristic is preserved in Katabasis, though in the novel, Shades drink a distilled form of the river to rinse away the memories of their past lives and to prepare for reincarnation. Drinking the pure river of being submerged in its waters dissolves souls.
When Alice and Peter meet the group of undergraduates who fear reincarnation, Alice equates this forgetting to a “loss of identity” (36). Initially, Alice misinterprets the symbolism of the Lethe: She sees the forgetting induced by the river as an escape and thinks about “how nice it would be to offload them to the depths; to swirl away and then disseminate forever” (105). She wants to alleviate herself of her past traumas by becoming disembodied and full of forgetfulness.
However, in reality, the Lethe provides a new, embodied, material beginning filled with potential. When Gradus drinks the distilled Lethe before reincarnating, he becomes “undefined future, brilliant in its potential” (493). When the Lethe eventually burns away Alice’s pentagram scar, releasing her from the burden of limitless memories, she can free herself from the intellectual torture of never forgetting and finally appreciate the fleeting, material aspects of her existence.
Paradoxes
Paradoxes, drawn as chalk equations, allow magic to be performed. They are an important motif related to The Mutability of Facts, Reason, and Logic. A paradox is a statement that seems absurd, counterintuitive, or contradictory at first, but which has an inherent logic or truthfulness within it when investigated further. Fundamentally, magick in this universe is about “the power of belief” and “self-deception” (125). A spell will work if someone can “assemble enough proof to convince [them]self the world could be another way” (125)—in other words, that a paradox is true or viable. This involves following a sequence of logic and reasoning until what someone formerly believed to be an immutable fact of the universe is shown instead to be mutable.
For Alice, who initially holds an immutable vision of her academic future in mind, paradoxes also reflect her unreliable narration and become a lesson in how she approaches her future. What is truly troubling about a paradox isn’t that its “conclusions are true” but that they “make us rethink all of our premises” (371). Alice’s entire katabasis is a paradox that makes her rethink and reprioritize her own vision of what’s important to her and what she wants her future to be.
Unlock the meaning behind every key symbol & motif
See how recurring imagery, objects, and ideas shape the narrative.
- Explore how the author builds meaning through symbolism
- Understand what symbols & motifs represent in the text
- Connect recurring ideas to themes, characters, and events