The Blue Sword

“She might have screamed, and hammered on the walls with her fists, or jumped over the low windowsill in her room, clambered to the ground by the ivy trellis […] and run off toward the mountains; but she was trying her best to be good. So she was merely first to the breakfast table.”

Harry is stifled by the social expectations of her role in the Residency and also by the sense that her restlessness must be suppressed in order to be “good.” The fact that her rebellion is reduced to something quiet and outwardly proper shows how much effort she’s putting into conforming and The Longing for Connection and Belonging she wrestles with. It also foreshadows her eventual journey into the mountains and her transformation into something freer and more aligned with her true nature.

“They say that in Corlath the old kings have come again. You know he’s begun to reunite some of the outlying tribes […] I imagine he can call lightning to heel if he feels like it.”

The image of someone who can “call lightning to heel” is evocative, bordering on the mythological, and suggests a deep, innate power that is far removed from the rational and bureaucratic world of the Homelanders. This distinction underscores one of the novel’s central thematic tensions: The sterile, ordered imperial power of the Homelanders versus the mysterious, organic strength of the Hillfolk, invoking The Nature of Cultural Tension and Reconciliation. Jack’s belief in these old powers also positions him as a liminal character between the two worlds. His openness to the strange and unexplainable marks him as different from the rest of the colonial establishment.