55 pages • 1-hour read
The Book That Broke the World
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.
The Nootki
The nootki are small figurines carved by the ganar that represent their body and spirit. Each ganar whittles a small figure, made of wood, modeled after their own image. They are meant to be kept by the group after their individual creator dies, and at the camp Celcha is born into, a deceased ganar’s nootki is hidden somewhere in the rafters of their building so it may continue to watch over the others. When Celcha departs from the camp and is taken to Crath City by the librarian, several of the ganar from her community send their nootki with her so, they claim, “some small part of themselves might go with her and witness the wider word” (28).
These nootki become a symbol to Celcha of her past and the duty to she feels toward her people. Specifically, they become a spur to Celcha’s decision to help Hellet as he prepares a revolution meant to free the ganar from servitude. Celcha touches the nootki she has secured in her fur and thinks of each one as “a silent witness to her deeds, a reminder of those who laboured in the dark” (151). The nootki represent an imagined or spiritual autonomy that the ganar have achieved even under conditions of enslavement, and Celcha uses this as motivation to endeavor to secure them physical autonomy as well.
During her travels after the failed experiment and her separation from Hellet, when she is planning her vengeance, Celcha manages to visit the moon of Attamast, where her people originally came from and where ganar still dwell. She ceremoniously leaves the nootki there, feeling that she has done her former colleagues a justice by returning their spiritual representations to their original home. While she cannot repair what happened to the ganar of Crath, she has at least done what her friends who entrusted her with their nootki hoped, and she has exposed these pieces of themselves the wider world.
Livira’s Book
Livira’s book, like the ganar’s nootki, symbolizes a kind of imaginative freedom and escape from circumstances, or at least those are the intentions with which Livira wrote it; she pulled together, added to, and crafted her own stories in an attempt to create adventure and companionship for her and Evar. The book is described as “made from repurposed covers and stolen flyleaves […] a cuckoo that could sit within the library without being ejected by assistants as unchosen—the whole thing was merely books that were already chosen, but now redistributed and with added notes” (94). This rewriting and hiding the book amid the stacks alludes to the ways that myths, legends, folktales, and works of classical literature are reimagined, rewritten, and used as inspiration by other authors. Livira’s book signifies how literature can become an almost collaborative or communal effort, bringing together combined voices and telling old stories for new purposes.
In this novel, Livira’s creation also becomes a symbol of how books can become dangerous entities, adding weight to the argument that knowledge can be subverted to harmful or violent ends. She thinks of her book as a physical extension of herself, holding not just her imaginative investment but also her voice in a way that can communicate to other people long after her time. However, Livira’s creation has somehow violated the laws of the library and, in an unanticipated way, has connected points in time that were supposed to be separate. While the full weight of the book’s significance is not answered within the novel, the image of Livira’s book creating cracks in the library’s foundation foreshadows a dire consequence for this work of narrative if it is not used for appropriate ends, emphasizing the power of literature and art.
The Orb
The weapon that is somehow creating a boundary that protects Arpix’s encampment becomes a symbol of the ways knowledge of one civilization can be adapted and used by another. For Mayland, this borrowing is a danger that he wants to see stopped and the reason he wants to see the library destroyed. The orb that Arpix and the others uncover and use to return to the library is helpful or destructive as a matter of perspective, depending on who is wielding it.
Arpix discovers the orb in the underground and abandoned city, suggesting it is a technology belonging to previous residents, now vanished. It seems only to be repellent to skeer, as the cratalacs manage to cross the boundary in their attack. Clovis immediately refers to the orb as a weapon, and so it becomes when it is used to kill skeer to protect the human-canith group and help them achieve their goals. However, the orb also has the mysterious power to upset the workings of the ganar automata, and Starval uses it to defeat the machine attacking Hellet and the others at the end. This example of the technology of one vanished civilization being adapted for use by another, without complete understanding of its workings or original aims, illustrates the book’s larger argument about the ways knowledge can be manipulated or applied to give one group power over another.
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