53 pages • 1-hour read
The Serpent's Shadow
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
Shadows
Shadows are a key motif in the novel. In Egyptian myth, shadows are one of the five parts of the soul—in addition to the ba (personality), ka (lifeforce), ib (heart), and ren (a person’s secret/true name). As Carter describes in Chapter 20, shadows are the imprint a person leaves on the world and how that imprint is cast (or not cast) over those a person knew.
Through his relationship with Setne, Carter explores his relationship with his father’s shadow, specifically how Carter still feels partly trapped under the imprint his father left behind. In order to summon the strength necessary to defeat Apophis, Carter must truly understand the role of the shadow, as well as how he has begun to develop a shadow of his own. While shadows are shades of a person left behind, this does not mean they have to darken the path of others. Rather, as Carter learns, his father’s shadow is a way for Carter to pick up where his father left off in the battle to bring balance between order and chaos. In this way, shadows are also an extension of a person’s life and a way for people to link themselves to others across generations.
The shadow is also the part of the soul at the crux of the greater conflict against Apophis. Much of the novel’s plot revolves around the journey to find and capture Apophis’s shadow so it can be used to execrate the serpent and banish the strength of chaos from the world. Apophis and the force of chaos have left a strong and lasting imprint on the world: This is shown through the sheer size of Apophis’s shadow in Chapter 16, when it is shown to be as large as the nearly endless Sea of Chaos. The execration of Apophis’s shadow highlights what happens when a legacy is stripped of its power—either through choice or force. With the diminishing of chaos’s power, chaotic events, such as wars, no longer have such a hold on the past or present. Apophis’s execration also links shadows to Maintaining Balance Between Order and Chaos. Without Apophis’s shadow pressing so strongly upon the world, the shadows of the gods (and, thus, order) must also lessen.
Death
Death plays an important role in Carter’s and Sadie’s character arcs and is an important motif in the novel. Since their father merged with Osiris, Carter and Sadie have had a closer relationship with death and how it is both finite and eternal in Egyptian magician culture. Since their father is the god of the underworld and their mother resides at his side as a spirit, Carter and Sadie have not completely lost their parents to death. However, this does not mean their parents are the forces they once were. Both are bound to the underworld and the rules it imposes, meaning they cannot help Carter and Sadie beyond offering advice.
Further, Apophis’s increasing power weighs heavily on the underworld, placing spirits like their mother in danger similar to that which mortals face from death. Specifically for Sadie, her relationship with Walt and Anubis forces her to understand the limitations and rules of death. While her father’s position allows him to make an exception for her mother’s spirit, Walt’s death would bring no such special treatment, meaning Sadie would lose him completely if he died. Walt’s merger with Anubis yet again changes the rules of death, showing how Egyptian magic is not an absolute. Though Anubis is a creature of death, he can use Walt’s lifeforce to live among humans while staving off Walt’s death. Like order and chaos, Walt and Anubis’s relationship is a balance.
Magic
Magic is a symbol of Maintaining Balance Between Order and Chaos in the novel. Carter, Sadie, and their allies represent using magic to uphold the forces of order, while the rebels’ use of magic symbolizes the power of chaos to subvert order. Since the rebel magicians fall under Apophis’s influence, their magic also represents the threat Apophis poses to Carter and Sadie beyond just his ability to defeat Ra and plunge the world into chaos.
Apophis seizes on the division between the groups of magicians to sow more fear and chaos so the groups will fight against each other, not against him. Thus, the magicians’ perversion of their magic to serve Apophis speaks to how Apophis has used chaos to maintain his hold on the world for too long, threatening to overturn the world completely. By contrast, Sadie, Carter, and their allies use their magic to uphold order and restore balance to the world. In this way, magic represents how both order and chaos hold different kinds of power, and how a lack of balance can create threats to stability for all.
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