The Promise: The Omnibus (Parts 1-3)
45 pages • 1-hour read
Gene Luen Yang, Bryan Konietzko, Michael Dante DiMartinoThe Promise: The Omnibus (Parts 1-3)
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Themes
The Complexities of Decolonization
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, graphic violence, and death. In particular, this section deals with issues of colonialism, cultural appropriation, and genocide.
As Aang and his allies set out to undo a century of global trauma inflicted by the Fire Nation’s century-long campaign of conquest and genocide, they discover that these problems cannot be easily resolved. For most of the book, Aang and the Earth King Kuei are convinced that the best solution is a simple one: Fire Nation citizens should be required to leave the Earth Kingdom. This position is an extension of Aang’s fervent belief that “Harmony requires four different nations to balance each other out! You can’t have balance if one nation occupies another!” (66). When enforcing the Harmony Restoration Movement’s plan to evict Fire Nation citizens from the Earth Kingdom, Aang is oblivious to any potential harm he is causing to the individual residents. He tells some wary Fire Nation colonials who are being repatriated to the Fire Nation, “You’ll learn so much about your past by living here. And you’ll have fun too!” (32), revealing his overly simplistic view of what the novel reveals, over the course of the narrative, to be the complex process of decolonization.
Unlike Aang and Kuei, Zuko and Katara understand that the legacy of colonialism is too complicated to warrant a simple solution. After meeting the Morishita family, Zuko recognizes that, over generations, some Fire Nation colonials have become fully integrated residents of the Earth Kingdom cities that they live in, and there have been marriages and families formed between the two cultures. He also recognizes the accomplishments of citizens collaborating, including the fact that “Yu Dao now makes the finest metalwork ever produced, using both Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom expertise” (62). These collaborations and developments over generations show how, on an individual level, decolonization not only compensates for historical harms and injustices but also involves unravelling personal and professional relationships. The policy would separate families, couples, and friends from one another, destroying the fabric of the city’s society.
Nevertheless, all the world leaders agree that some form of decolonization must occur in Yu Dao. At the end of the book, Aang recognizes that the issue is more complex than his perspective at the beginning of the novel. He tells Zuko, “Whatever happens, though, Yu Dao can’t stay a Fire Nation colony…It has to be something new” (220). That “something” remains vague, undefined, for the entire book, indicating that the ideal form of decolonization remains elusive, even as Aang, Zuko, and Kuei strive for it. With the narrative’s lack of a solution for this problem, Yang highlights the complexities of the issue, emphasizing the importance of considering the implications in the lives of the individuals living under colonial rule.
The Position of Marginalized Cultures in a Multicultural Society
As Aang’s world becomes increasingly multicultural in the wake of the Hundred Year War, underrepresented groups find themselves in a particularly vulnerable social position. As the only remaining airbender in existence, Aang is particularly sensitive to this plight, telling Katara, “Whenever two nations come together, the stronger one can’t help but hurt the weaker one. They’ll conquer, or burn, or, at the very least, make a joke of the weaker nation” (169). The narrative highlights this risk of cultural erosion with the example of the Yu Dao Chapter of the Avatar Aang Fan Club’s adoption of air temple student robes and tattoos. Aang finds their act to be an insulting trivialization of his endangered culture, admonishing the Fan Club’s president, “For you to treat our tattoos like a part of some…costume…! My culture isn’t a game” (166). The language author Gene Luen Yang uses in this passage intentionally echoes the language of a real-life advertising campaign created by Ohio University students called “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume,” aimed at raising awareness of racially exploitative Halloween costumes. This allusion is one of the many instances in the novel in which Yang ties the cultural conflicts occurring within The Promise to real-world cultural and political conflicts to emphasize their importance.
Beyond Aang’s example, Yang also offers the example of a blended Fire and Earth Nation family, the Morishitas, to represent another marginalized group endangered by the sociopolitical conflicts central to The Promise. The Harmony Restoration Movement’s order to evict Fire Nation citizens from Yu Dao and other Earth Kingdom cities threatens to uproot, or even separate, the family. Zuko’s shock over the existence of such a family—evidenced by his exclamation upon meeting Mrs. Morishita, “You’re Mayor Morishita’s wife?! An earthbender…?” (64)—indicates that such a possibility was not considered by leaders of the Harmony Restoration Movement during its conception. With the Morishita family, Yang highlights the fact that some marginalized groups are endangered not only because of their small numbers but also because of their peripheral standing in the popular imagination. The fact that the leaders never even considered their existence means that plans were formed with no consideration of how it would affect them.
Despite the endangerment of marginalized and underrepresented groups illustrated throughout The Promise, the book ends on a note of hope for both the Air Nomads and for multicultural families. Aang begins the process of reviving his own culture by properly teaching Air Nomad philosophy to the fans who demonstrate an interest in it. He confesses, “I’m a little nervous about this. I love my people’s culture and I don’t want to see it corrupted. At the same time, it can’t just belong to history. Air Nomad culture has to belong to the future too” (224). Yang also illustrates this forward-facing mindset through Katara’s envisioning of her own family with Aang, blending airbenders and waterbenders, years into the future. Through these examples and perspectives, the narrative highlights the difficult position of underrepresented cultures in a society that makes decisions based on majority-culture thinking; however, the novel also offers examples of positive actions that can be taken to broaden understanding and consideration of those cultures.
Friendship Challenged by Moral and Political Differences
In The Promise, Aang and Zuko’s friendship faces an immense challenge as they find themselves on opposing sides of an important sociopolitical debate. Although they share the goal of restoring global harmony, their respective understandings of how to achieve that goal are fundamentally opposed. Aang fiercely believes that “the nations have to be separated for harmony” (109), based on teachings passed down from avatar to avatar. In contrast, Zuko feels that harmony can still be achieved if the four nations coexist and intermingle. Throughout the novel, the friends struggle to balance their opposing viewpoints with their love and respect for each other.
The book’s titular promise sits at the heart of this conflict and privileges Aang’s perspective by giving him the right to decide at any moment that Zuko’s politics are dangerous enough to warrant his death. The creation of that power dynamic is in itself a corruption of their friendship since Aang and Zuko no longer enjoy the sense of equality that they had before. However, this dynamic was created by Zuko’s own request, and he acknowledges the fundamental flaw in his request when apologizing to Aang:
Asking you to end me if I went bad—that was like me asking you to figure out right and wrong for me. I didn’t just want you as my safety net, I wanted you as my escape hatch. I can’t put that on you. I understand now. The struggle isn’t something a Fire Lord can escape (220).
In this quote, Zuko revises a metaphor he established at the very beginning of the story when he likened the promise to a “safety net.” By shifting his comparison to an “escape hatch,” Zuko recognizes that in forcing Aang to make the promise, he recused himself of moral and political responsibility for the future. A slight change in wording thus reveals profound character development; throughout the book, Zuko has learned that taking accountability for his own political decisions will be essential to maintaining his friendship with Aang in the future.
The conflict between Aang and Zuko is echoed by the parallel conflict between Roku and Sozin that occurred a century earlier. Roku highlights this parallelism by repeatedly referring to his decision not to kill Sozin in conversations with Aang. “You are still dealing with consequences of my own indecisiveness” (40), he tells Aang during their first conversation, alluding to his own passivity in the face of Sozin’s warmongering attitude. Roku’s regret over not killing Sozin before he started the Hundred Year War informs all of the advice he gives Aang, making him eager to see Aang fulfill the promise to Roku. Aang’s eventual decision to disregard Roku’s advice demonstrates that, like Zuko, who has a different moral compass from his father, Aang has a different moral compass from his past Avatars. Over the course of the novel, both Zuko and Aang learn to separate their ideological differences from their friendship, preserving it, in the end, from the pressures and decisions they face; they do so by staying true to their morals and not giving in to the pressures of their positions.
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