The Girl Who Drank the Moon

Birds represent several different things in The Girl Who Drank the Moon. They signify the madwoman’s hope and tenacity; she makes paper birds unceasingly, sending them out with her desperate but unheard message. Her sorrow changes to hope when Antain picks one up and recognizes it is a map. When Antain touches Ethyne’s hand, he feels hope and love like a “flutter in his chest—a shiver at first, and then a powerful lift and beat, like the wings of a bird, flying high over the forest and skimming the top of the sky” (126). Birds symbolize freedom and escape. The madwoman flies from the Tower on the backs of her magical birds. These paper birds are also an extension of her love for Luna, and they defend and protect Luna against the Sorrow Eater.

To both Luna and the madwoman, memories and self-knowledge are like birds that take wing and escape—things that cannot be grasped or held onto. Similarly, when Luna hears the word “mama” in her mind, it is elusive, distant, and uncatchable, “like the cry of a faraway bird” (138). Birds can also represent impatience. When Glerk advises Luna to be patient, his poem includes the line “Patience has no wing” (135), suggesting that patience is slow and steady rather than quick and impetuous. Several characters also share birdlike qualities. Small, quick, exuberant Fyrian is compared to a hummingbird. The madwoman, with her attraction to shiny bits of knowledge and magic, is like a crow. Xan becomes a swallow, “light and small and keen” (226), but her human age and weakness transfer to her bird form.

Sister Ignatia is the threatening cat, causing sorrow and death. She crushes baby starlings to death to ingest their mother’s sorrow. Sister Ignatia is mistaken for a tiger by several characters. The crow observes a tiger in the woods, but it is Sister Ignatia who appears before him and Luna. Tigers are fierce and merciless, two qualities Sister Ignatia shares. The madwoman calls Sister Ignatia “Tiger’s Heart,” and others describe her padding footsteps, growling voice, and glowing eyes. Ethyne asks Mae, “Does the tiger prowl [in the Tower]?” (276). When learning that Sister Ignatia is gone, Ethyne announces, “The cat’s away. And the mice shall play” (278). The cat, and tiger, symbolizes Sister Ignatia’s deadly, predatory nature.

Paper represents both the archiving of knowledge and the transmission of ideas. In the form of books and scrolls and journals, paper signifies learning and freedom of thought. Access to the Sisters’ library, for instance, is highly coveted and rarely granted until Ethyne and Wyn open it to the public. Luna learns Xan’s history from magical talking papers. The madwoman’s paper birds are also messages. Xan writes Luna a goodbye note because “some things are easier said on paper” (225)—which also suggests that communicating by paper is a less emotional method, one that doesn’t allow for questions or dissent. The magicians who recorded the details of their experiments on Xan did so without emotion (225).

Paper is valuable: It is expensive and takes time to craft. It is enduring, but also ephemeral and delicate. Older characters like Zosimos and Xan are described as “light as paper” (226), or “just sticks and paper and a cold wind” (349). As people age, they become fragile and insubstantial, like paper. Paper is also easily destroyed; it can be ripped and torn and shredded. Under Ethyne’s accusations of sending Antain to his death, Gherland feels himself “crumple and burn, like paper” (277).

“Only Bog, and Bog, and Bog” (83) is Glerk’s answer to both what happens when people die and where the world comes from. The Bog is the center of the creation story told and believed by the people of the Protectorate. A parent tells their child that “in the beginning” (83) there was the Bog. Glerk says that the Bog “is the heart of the world. It is the womb of the world. It is the poem that made the world. I am the Bog, and the Bog is me” (287). People speak of the Bog with the reverence of a god. Antain murmurs, “Bog be praised” (47) after recovering from an illness that allegedly kept him from attending a Day of Sacrifice.

The Bog is the source of “all good things” (82) in the Protectorate. The people feel the Bog loves them, and they in turn love the Bog. Their livelihoods and futures come from the Bog in the form of the Zirin plants that can be eaten and traded. When they are short on food, people eat the “thick rich broth of the Bog” (4). Because of its inherently good nature, the Bog cannot abide the Witch. The parent tells a child, “It would cough her out, the way a dying man coughs out his life” (83).

Glerk expands on the parent’s creation story, adding that “the world and the Beast and the Bog were all of one substance, and they were all bound by infinite love” (382). After Xan’s death, Glerk awakens Xan and takes her to the Bog, returning to the source of creation.

The heart is the seat of love, the location of emotions. It expresses and represents the characters’ most profound feelings. When faced with worries and fears for their loved ones, characters’ hearts ache. Glerk feels “a crack in his heart” (81) when Luna cries out after Xan’s spell contains her magic. Concerned about Xan, “tendrils of worry wind around his heart, nearly squeezing it to a stop” (285). The heart also conveys love and joy. When baby Luna says Glerk’s name for the first time, “his heart nearly burst in his chest” (73). As Glerk sets out with Fyrian to find Xan, joyful to be traveling the world as he used to, “his heart leaped within him” (237).

Loving hearts call to and search for each other, demonstrating an unbreakable bond. Luna’s heart is “pulled to her grandmother’s heart” (319) and also goes “wandering” to find her mother. The madwoman’s heart “paints a picture for her” (247), one in which her child is alive.

Notably, the madwoman asserts that the tiger-hearted Sister Ignatia has no heart, but she does. The Sorrow Eater took her existing heart and covered it with hard layers, suppressing her emotions and sorrowful memories, leaving her heart unfeeling. Luna learns, however, that the heart is infinite and can hold limitless feelings, including sorrow. Glerk knows that the Bog “is the heart of the world” (287), the source of life and infinite love.

The volcano is an ever-present threat throughout the novel. It represents power, danger, and repressed destruction. Five hundred years ago, Zosimos and Fyrian’s mother succeeded in stopping the volcano before it destroyed everything, but they didn’t quench it completely. Restless underground, the volcano leaks out hot geysers and vents of foul air, making travel through the forest dangerous.

Similarly, Luna’s, and to an extent, Fyrian’s, true natures are suppressed and restless. Glerk and Xan feel baby Luna’s magic increase without erupting, and they know she is a dangerous baby. Luna’s magic stays inside, “all potential and no force” (50), until she turns five and it erupts uncontrollably, a danger to others. Xan contains Luna’s magic, but bits still slip out as Luna gets older. Like the volcano that “swallowed power” it must release, Luna’s power also must come out. As the volcano nears eruption, Luna’s power emerges, and she comes of age. At the same time, Fyrian, also locked in babyhood, erupts abruptly into adulthood.