Scarlet Morning

“It was bound in shiny brass, inlaid with a series of ivory dials, and engraved with the words Journals and Proceedings Relating to the Study of Bizarre Occurrences in the Curious Region Known as Dickerson’s Sea; Being a Record of Events Since the Crossing of Icharus Bend, Thus Written by one Alias Crowe—a long and clumsy title, so Viola and Wilmur just called it the Book.”

Though the Prologue hints at the Book’s importance, it is not until Chapter 3 that the narrative actually describes the Book and what it contains. This description makes clear how strange and mysterious the Book is. The complexity of its locking system also shows how clever Viola must be to learn how to open it, adding to her characterization.

“‘Did that Book really belong to a friend of yours?’ she said.

Chase glanced up. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Well, “friend” might be pushing it…There was a time, at least, when I considered him a friend.’

‘What happened to him?’ said Viola.

‘I killed him,’ said Chase, and went back to fiddling with the dials.”

Previously, the children asked why Chase wanted the Book so badly in the first place, and she claimed that it had sentimental value because it belonged to a friend. However, her blithe response in this passage, claiming to have killed the owner, indicates either that she is lying or that she feels no guilt about betraying a friend. This misdirection and ambiguity underscore the mystery surrounding Chase’s life and identity and the incongruity between who she claims to be and how she behaves.

“Spending her entire life in the company of a single other person hadn’t done much to prepare her for suddenly living in close quarters with fifty of them. Wilmur didn’t have that problem; everyone already loved him.”

This passage contrasts Viola’s shyness with Wilmur’s outgoing personality, positioning them as foils for each other. His ability to easily befriend the crew of the Calamary Rose and integrate immediately into their daily routines and banter directly contrasts with Viola’s feelings of awkwardness and displacement. The warm camaraderie among the crew casts Viola and Wilmur’s isolated existence on Caveat into sharp relief, introducing the novel’s thematic engagement with The Importance of Chosen Family and Community.

“The Bleachfields were a strange place, and strange things were always happening there—whether it was blue fire flickering from the mastheads on creepy-wet nights when the sky hung so close you could wear it as a hat, or whole weeks where the sun never seemed to set, or the crew waking up to find that everyone’s right boots had mysteriously turned into left ones.”

The description of the Bleachfields reveals the uncanny nature of Dickerson’s Sea, adding depth and detail to the world-building. The dangers Chase and Viola encounter form a large part of the external conflict of the plot, which centers on their survival amid a deadly natural environment.

“Alma leaned in closer. ‘There’s precious little to know about her—just rumors,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But I do know her name’s not Chase. Morgenstern—Rosselin Morgenstern. That’s the name I heard. Even that’s not her real name, though. Her real name’s a mystery.”

Alma shares rumors about Chase with Viola, introducing her to the first of Chase’s many aliases. This moment highlights the motif of names, which becomes increasingly important throughout the novel. Viola begins to suspect that Chase is Scarlet Morning when Alma notes that the name “Morgenstern” means “morning star” (114).

“All those poor sailors out there, frozen forever in the worst moment of their lives…is it really them we’re seeing? They were more than their pain, more than their awful end. They were people, and now they’re just things. I think it would serve their memory better to hear their friends tell stories about them at the pub…And forget their faces forever. Salt preserves, just as salt destroys…You just don’t get to choose which.”

This passage is part of a conversation between Viola and Chase, in which Chase argues that truth does not exist, only competing stories based on faulty memories. She uses the imagery of salt, a key symbol in the novel, to emphasize the ways that stories preserve people in a way that they would not choose to be remembered, just as the salt pack preserves the bodies of sailors in the positions in which they died. Chase argues that it would be better if the salt had destroyed them instead, just as some stories are better forgotten.

“‘All the best stories are already over. The world I grew up dreaming about doesn’t exist anymore. Even Faire Distance…Wilmur was right. There’s nothing for us there, no one waiting. I think I’ve known that all along.’ Her face felt hot; she ducked her head. ‘When I look ahead, I don’t see anything—just white. You had a golden age. All I’ve got is salt.’”

Highlighting the power of stories, Viola argues that the stories she cares about—and thus the kind of life she wanted to live—have already ended. For her, such stories represent a version of the world that is gone. This passage also uses the symbolism of salt, which, to Viola, represents an empty, purposeless future.

“Something was wrong with Dickerson’s Sea before that! I pay attention to these things—I’ve noticed. The maps are blank around the edges, even the ones from before the Great Blow. The history books are full of gaps, and they only go back so far. They don’t say where we came from, how we got here…what happened to Dickerson’s Sea to make it like this. It’s like something big, something important, got…erased at some point, and no one even noticed. And it’s still happening. Things—people—they keep disappearing, like they never existed at all. It’s not right. Why can’t anyone else seem to see that? Why isn’t anyone trying to stop it? Why doesn’t anyone care?”

This passage reveals important clues about the Lacuna Laridae, hints at the possibility that Dickerson’s Sea is somehow connected to the “real” world, and demonstrates Viola’s ability to notice things no one else has. Additionally, this conversation is the first step toward motivating Viola to accept the burden of fixing the problem, pointing to the novel’s thematic engagement with The Burdens of Inherited Failure.

“Quagga’s head lolled to one side as if she lacked the strength to hold it up, filmy irises adrift in her bulging eyes. ‘Evening red and morning gray,’ she said, ‘sets the traveler on his way. Evening gray and morning red, brings down rain upon his head.’

Chase froze.

[…]

Quagga was laughing now, harder and harder. ‘The Silver Circle will find you, Danny-Boy,’ she croaked between guffaws. ‘Did you think could run from it forever?’”

The encounter with Quagga introduces the threat of the gulls that leads to Viola’s visions. Quagga’s sailor’s warning poem recurs later in the novel when Viola confronts the mogrim and reveals the origins of Scarlet Morning and Vesper Argent’s names. Quagga’s warning to Chase positions the Silver Circle as a symbol of the trauma of the past and its impact on the present.

“A new golden age of piracy is about to dawn, Elize, with you at its head. The courts will be yours, and with their armadas at your command, we will bring the Civilized world to its knees. And then, at last, we will be together in the light of day.”

Here, Stevenson uses the device of Viola’s dreams to reveal a plot twist in the novel. Viola discovers that Hail Meridian is a pirate girl named Elize, placed on the throne by a mysterious man called Ves. She also learns about Ves’s plans to take over Dickerson’s Sea, concluding that Chase is not the villain the stories make her out to be, but in fact the hero who tried to save them from a pirate conspiracy, foregrounding the relationship between story and truth.

“Skeletons, hundreds of them, caged within bands of black iron. The weathered skulls had been layered like bricks, packed in with stripes of femurs and spinal columns and punctuated by whole skeletons held together by chains. Around their necks were plaques bearing names: Captain Alvord Cutthroat, Yallara Kill-Devil, Blackjack Gillyflower, Livyatan de Ojos Azules. Another plaque had been set into the ground at the foot of the monument, this one bearing only one word: Pirates.”

On Wilder’s Green, Viola comes across a monument built from the bones of hundreds of pirates, proudly commemorating the Pirate Massacre. Previously, Viola believed that pirates were evil and the Queensmen were justified in killing them. Now, she has befriended pirates on the Calamary Rose and understands that the truth is much more complicated—a crucial moment in Viola’s growth and character development.

“‘It’s all right, love,’ said Elvey. ‘We’re all piratekind, just like you. Most of us here lost our families to the Massacre…Now we take care of each other.’”

Elvey’s comment underscores the burdens of inherited failures, in which the children suffer the consequences of adult cruelty and violence. At the same time, it highlights the power of found family, as Elvey invites Viola into their family, offering her comfort and support despite having few resources of her own.

“‘There’s one more thing,’ said Herman. ‘What kind of name is Wilmur?’

‘Why? What’s wrong with my name?’ Wilmur was indignant.

‘It’s not a real name,’ said Herman.

‘I don’t know why not,’ said Wilmur. ‘It’s my name, and that’s all there is to it.’”

This dialogue between Herman and Wilmur reinforces the importance of names in the narrative, particularly when Wilmur recalls that Herman is the second person to claim that his name is not real (Chase was the first). This moment foreshadows the revelation that Wilmur is, in fact, Herman’s long-lost son William.

“Nausea overcame Viola, and her knees buckled, the cobblestones rushing up to meet her. But just before it all went black, she was aware of someone approaching behind her, an indistinct figure amid the cloud of gulls—a man, slight and willowy like a rapier, a gigantic bird perched on one narrow shoulder. She caught a flash of silver hair, a fang-like incisor behind a cruelly curled lip, and Viola knew at once who it was.”

A repeated image in Viola’s visions is a figure standing amid the cloud of gulls. Her description in this passage echoes the description of Ves in Chapter 22. The image recurs in Chapter 45 when Viola realizes the figure is Chase rather than Ves, underscoring the subjectivity of truth in the novel.

“In the light, Viola could see the oracle’s face a little better. She wasn’t as old as Viola had assumed, though her matted hair was so pale as to be white, and her eyes weren’t pits after all; they were blue and shockingly large in her sunken, hollow face.

No, not blue—

Violet.

She was looking down at the face of Queen Hail Meridian.”

The first major plot twist of the novel comes when Viola’s vision reveals Hail Meridian’s true identity as Elize. The second major plot twist occurs in this moment, when Viola discovers that Hail Meridian is not dead but living in hiding on Wilder’s Green. This scene emphasizes the novel’s attempts to grapple with the relationship between story and truth, as Viola has constructed a story in her head about Chase’s heroic efforts to stop Ves’s conspiracy by killing Hail Meridian.

“They can’t see me. How many have looked into my eyes, just like you did, and then looked away—because it can’t be, she’s dead, Hail Meridian is dead, everyone knows that. They want me to be dead. They like the story better that way. Good, innocent Hail Meridian, struck down in her golden youth… Won’t you shed a tear for one so pure, so beautiful, so voiceless in death—a pretty face to mark a bloody banner? And so, I am dead…because if I’m not, then they were wrong, this whole world is wrong, and the blood that has been shed cannot be washed away.”

Hail Meridian/Elize explains why she has not come out of hiding to take control of the Queensmen. Her argument that those in power prefer the version of the story in which she is dead reinforces the idea that stories have more power in the world than truth and fact. Her statement echoes Chase’s claim that there is no truth.

“And I felt like…maybe I did matter, just from being near her. Like I was part of the story, too. But now I’m alone, and I don’t know what story I’m in anymore, and everything is so frightening and overwhelming and confusing…but somehow smaller than I thought it’d be, too. Like everyone here has already given up, too…like the things that happened before I was even born are just too big to fix. But they can be fixed, I know it. It’s not too late. Someone’s got to do something…and if no one else will, then maybe that someone has to be me.”

In a conversation with Elvey, Viola tries to explain how her adventure with Chase made her feel, describing them both as characters within a story. She views her own life as a piece of a larger story and decides to take control of her role in it. Ultimately, she chooses to take on the burden of fixing the world, though it was broken by others, highlighting the theme of inherited burdens and tying her personal story to the burden she carries.

“Viola’s heart was pounding hard, but not with fear. She caught the queen’s hands and gripped them tight until she opened her eyes again. ‘It’s not over,’ said Viola. ‘We’re alive, aren’t we? They couldn’t kill us, even though they tried. You keep reliving the same night, obsessing about what you could’ve done differently…but it’s not over. Everything that happened then is still happening now, and that means we still have a chance to change things.’”

In her vision of Hail Meridian hiding in the cellar, Viola discovers that Hail Meridian can see her, and they can interact. This realization reinforces the metaphor of passive and active characters within the story of their own lives. Viola once again accepts the responsibility to “change things” (345) and fix the world, finding strength and hope even at this moment of trauma and horror. Though Hail Meridian is the adult in this situation, it is the child who takes charge and urges Hail Meridian not to give up.

“‘You haven’t been listening,’ said the mogrim. ‘You need to listen. You need to remember, because we can’t. We did with no stone to mark our graves. We died in pain, and now we are only pain—and that will be the fate of everyone in Dickerson’s Sea unless it can be stopped. The Silver Circle will take and take and take, until there is nothing left. What are you going to do about it, Viola?’”

Viola’s encounter with the mogrim in the Second City, foreshadowed by the passage from the Book in Chapter 3, provides clues to the central mystery of the narrative, including the fact that the Lacuna Laridae is spreading and overflowing, which has allowed dangerous creatures like it to walk free. The mogrim’s question to Viola pushes her to decide whether she will take an active role in shaping her own future.

“One by one, the crowd moved in, wrapping arms around her or resting hands on shoulders until the crowd was one big knot. And Viola was not so dumb with grief that she didn’t marvel at the sensation of being at the center of it, bodies pressing in on every side, passing shared sorrow from one to another until the weight of it was—not diminished, not exactly, but dispersed, a little lighter with so many hands lifting it up.”

This scene epitomizes the novel’s thematic argument for the value of chosen family. As Viola reflects, the family-like community that Elvey is part of comes together to share the grief among them, making it more bearable for all. The novel suggests that the ability and willingness to share not only the joys in life, but the horrors as well, is one of the most crucial aspects of such a family.

“Viola had seen this scene many times before in her dreams, but not like this. Because this time, the figure stepped into the light, looking down at Viola with flat, dark eyes.

It wasn’t Vesper Argent.

It was Chase.”

Viola's recurring vision of the figure standing amid the gulls echoes her vision in Chapter 31, but the figure resolves into the image of Chase, rather than Ves. This revelation signals a plot twist in the narrative, calling into question once again who Chase really is and what she has done.

“‘Hail Meridian…not bad.’

‘Do you like it? I thought it was fitting. Scarlet Morning, Evening Gray, and a fleeting, golden afternoon in between. This is it, Fritz, this is the big one…but I need your help. Someone needs to be there in Faire Distance to keep an eye on Elize and make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid. Luckily, I’ve found you the perfect cover.’”

Ves’s comment in Viola’s vision once again highlights the importance of names in the narrative. Not only does he reveal yet another of Chase’s aliases, Fritz, but he also hints at the symbolic meaning of their names. Scarlet Morning refers to the red morning mentioned in Quagga’s poem, and Vesper Argent refers to the gray evening. By extension, the “golden afternoon” (416) is Hail Meridian, whom they control between them.

“‘I’m sorry,’ sniffled Viola into Wilmur’s shirt. ‘This is all wrong. It’s wrong and it doesn’t make any sense and I don’t—I don’t understand…but I’m on your side, Wilmur, no matter what. I’m your family, and you’re mine, so flog all the rest of them.’”

Epitomizing the theme of found family, Viola and Wilmur agree that they are each other’s real family. This moment underscores the value of their chosen connection, which is more important and real to Wilmur than the biological connections he’s discovered to Herman and Chase.