The Deer and the Dragon

“Particularly as my lifestyle grew more controversial and obscure, it hadn’t taken long to prune my friend group further and further until I’d whittled it down to three—all of whom I saw almost exclusively through the accessible magic of the internet.”

Marlow compares her small circle of friends to a plant or shrub that has been pruned and whittled down to almost nothing. Aside from her three current friends, she has no one else on whom to rely, suggesting a pattern of self-isolation that could be caused, in part, by The Impact of Religious and Childhood Trauma. The fewer people Marlow lets in, the fewer people who can hurt or manipulate her.

“He consumed me like cold fire, and he knew it.”

Marlow uses a simile, which is also an oxymoron, to describe Caliban’s effect on her. The comparison characterizes him as being like fire, something that consumes and devours violently and painfully by burning a path of destruction. However, by using the contradictory word “cold” to describe his “fire,” she suggests that he chills her, adding another kind of discomfort. She cannot stay away, but she also feels that their connection is hurting her.

“I’d told myself it was an asset, that the same love for fantasy that had given itself to fiction and novels and gods and powers had simply been poured too strong, splashing over the edge and drenching my waking mind.”

Marlow compares her creativity and imagination to a liquid and her mental well-being to a glass. Her imagination, while it fills her figurative cup and makes her a compelling writer, is also “too strong,” as she believes that it is her imagination that causes her to see beings like Caliban. Marlow’s confusion over whether or not she is unwell reflects The Limits of Human Life and Logic.

“They were just really good people.”

Marlow describes Taylor and the other sex workers in this way, recalling how she found love and acceptance among the other young women who sold sex to make a living. Marlow’s past life as a sex worker adds another dimension to The Complexities of Identity and Self-Acceptance, as she has already balanced more than one identity and persona before discovering her fae blood.

“I allowed the silent moments to act like leeches, sucking the discomfort and suffering and misery of having to exist as a human in this world from my body.”

After returning home from the fan convention, Marlow uses this simile to compare the moments of silence to leeches because the moments drain her of the discomfort she experienced in public. However, the connotation of leeches as parasitic blood suckers colors this simile, clashing with the apparent healing that Marlow feels in these moments. This negative, rather dreadful, connotation foreshadows the danger waiting for Marlow inside her apartment: Richard.

“It was the surface of a lake fracturing in early winter. I could almost see ten thousand cracks as they broke between his silver eyes.”

Here, Marlow describes Caliban’s eyes when she banishes him from her apartment after Richard’s attack. She compares the way his eyes look to the cracked surface of an icy lake. This conveys both the color and beauty of his eyes’ appearance as well as the pain that her order causes him, knowing that he can do nothing to mitigate her imperative or the regret she will likely feel when he is gone.

“The moment I crossed the threshold into Richard’s house, I was hit with an inexplicable sensation. It was as thick as stepping into a cloud of pea soup.”

Marlow’s simile compares the air of her attacker’s home to a miasma of thick, viscous, opaque liquid, highlighting how nauseating and suffocating it feels to be inside Richard’s home. It also foreshadows the danger that she will soon encounter as she continues to explore the house.

“A sensation like ten thousand centipedes crawled from the floor up my spine and urged me up the stairs.”

When Marlow enters the waterproofed, antiseptic-smelling basement of Richard’s house, she immediately senses that the room is “wrong.” Thus, she uses this simile comparing the eerie, dreadful feeling she has to the sensation of bugs crawling up her spine. This comparison foreshadows the horrifying parasitic creature that she’s about to encounter.

“Your master makes such a fuss about free will but sends out his little slaves to make more little slaves and have newborns undergo ceremonies, or splash some water or sign life-debt contracts for him long before they know their own name.”

Fauna criticizes Christianity’s God, Silas’s master. One of the core tenets of Christian belief is the acceptance of “free will,” and yet, she says, this deity treats the faithful like enslaved persons, as people are often baptized before they are old enough to give meaningful consent. When Silas claims that his “side” has a claim on Marlow, Fauna questions the morality of promising infants to God, suggesting that such dedications are unethical and hypocritical because those babies cannot make their own decisions.

“‘I’m batshit,’ I said quietly. ‘Mental illness runs in my family, on my mom’s side. We’re all nuts.’”

Marlow’s statement highlights the limits of human life and logic. It is, in some ways, easier for Marlow to believe that she and her mother have the same mental illness than it is to believe that the fae and multiple deities of myriad world pantheons coexist. She struggles with accepting how complex and nuanced the metaphysical world and concepts like “good” and “evil” actually are.

“I can’t imagine what it does to the human brain to have fae blood pumping through your veins! […] What is it when you know something is true but you’re told over and over that you’ve lost your mind?”

Fauna’s statement emphasizes the limits of human life and logic. The fae are immortal, with special superhuman abilities, so the combination of fae blood and a mortal brain and body would be necessarily confusing for that human. She suggests that it’s no wonder that Dagny, Lisbeth, and Marlow have struggled to understand themselves, their world, and their preternatural abilities, invoking the complexities of identity and self-acceptance.

“The woman is set free, I pay my bills, and Azrames gets the victory of absorbing malevolence. The same way that a dam creates electricity from water or that we might get fire from wood. Malevolence does not feed malevolence. He’s paid by taking one thing and converting it into another.”

Betty explains how her partnership with Azrames works, and it demonstrates the complexity of “good” and “evil” in the novel. Azrames is a demon, and he lives in Hell, which suggests—according to Lisbeth’s (and, to a lesser extent, Marlow’s) worldview—that he is “evil” or malevolent. However, in reality, he actually punishes evildoers and then transmutes their wicked energy into something positive. This is very different from the Christian view of Hell and its demons who, as Lisbeth says, just want to drag humans to Hell.

“A young man, scarcely older than Fauna, tucked his hands into his pockets at the far end of the space […] I could have sworn that the beautiful male was in monochromatic shades of black, white, and gray.”

Given that no other fae are presented in the same way, Azrames’s grayscale coloring is symbolically significant. Christians, like Lisbeth, characterize him as evil, though in the novel’s reality, he is actually a great deal more loving and virtuous than most humans. His coloration suggests that he is a combination of virtues and vices and that no one in the world is wholly good or evil, no matter what others might believe.

“This was worse than stepping on Legos, burning your tongue on your morning coffee, or learning your favorite TV show had been canceled after a cliffhanger. This was worse than a man in a white coat with a clipboard telling me that this had all been a long, vivid delusion. She expected me to visit my mother.”

When Fauna suggests that they visit Marlow’s hometown to find Aloisa’s sølje, Marlow’s response showcases the impact of childhood and religious trauma. Her past was so painful, and her memories are still so vivid and upsetting, that Marlow would rather learn that she’s been committed to a psychiatric hospital for hallucinating this entire series of events than see her mother.

“I wondered how many humans with fae blood were simply trying to make sense of seeing through the veil and found their only validation within the church. Finally, someone wouldn’t tell them they were crazy.”

Marlow’s feelings after learning the truth about life beyond the mortal veil highlight the limits of human life and logic. She is aware of the struggle that one feels when one has fae blood, as a human, and how deeply one desires community and understanding. Since Christianity (and other religious traditions) actually does acknowledge some aspects of the metaphysical world that the novel presents, she reasons, people find what they seek there.

“While other teenagers were getting boyfriends and going to parties, I was excelling as a student of the church, glowing each time I earned her approval. Her praise was like the sun after winter, cutting through the freeze-outs, the silent treatments, the punishments that frosted my misdeeds.”

Marlow describes her childhood and Lisbeth’s emotional manipulation and abuse. Marlow’s mother treated her with love when she did well in her church studies but then neglected her whenever Marlow displeased her. These memories highlight the impact of religious and childhood trauma and how Marlow’s past continues to influence her.

“I wanted to throw up. She referenced Odin’s wife with the casualness as if she had been talking about an old pal. The most sovereign goddess in Norse lore should be a myth.”

When Fauna references Frigg and tells Marlow that Frigg enjoys Marlow’s writing, it tests the limits of human life and logic. Marlow wants to consign this powerful and venerable goddess to myth because it is easier for her to retain her old worldview. The truth is a little mind-boggling.

“Life is hard on sides, so who’s to say who has it better? They both believe in their cause, and in that way, I guess neither side is wrong. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter.”

When Fauna describes the war between Heaven and Hell, she presents “good” and “evil”—and the concepts of “right” and “wrong”—as mutable and relative. Despite Hell’s infamous reputation and Heaven’s association with goodness, she presents the attitudes of both sides as understandable. This is a significant departure from what Lisbeth taught Marlow.

“My anxiety remained a cinched corset, unwilling to grant me oxygen.”

When she goes to her mother’s house, Marlow compares her anxiety to a too-tight undergarment designed to restrict women’s physical bodies. She even personifies the metaphorical corset, ascribing intention to it, as though it possesses the desire to prevent her from being able to breathe. Her physical response to the possibility of seeing her mother also emphasizes the impact of childhood and religious trauma.

“I looked down at my chest to see if a physical thread was sticking out where my heart should be. I knew that while under their roof, I was a single tug from unraveling.”

Marlow compares herself to a tangle of thread or string, something that could easily become unraveled or undone while visiting her mother. Her trauma was so intense that even after many years of independence and thousands of dollars in therapy, she knows that one word from her mother could make her feel powerless.

“People have seen my value for what I can do for them […] But with Caliban, I was just me. And he never pushed me to change, you know?”

This description characterizes both Marlow’s trauma and her relationship with Caliban. Her parents attempted to use her to correct their own personal failings, and her clients saw her only as a valuable accessory. Caliban, on the other hand, always accepted her as is rather than exploiting her or focusing on what she can do for him.

“My intestines climbed into my chest cavity, wrapping around my heart, making me nauseous and dizzy at the same time.”

When Marlow is about to meet the King of Hell, she uses this hyperbole to explain her feelings. Her intestines aren’t literally moving around her body, but she is so anxious that she exaggerates the truth to emphasize her nervous state. Her life is so surreal in this moment that it feels like her body is doing unnatural things in response.

“I don’t know whether they stumbled in on accident, or how they’ve come to be, but this city is a spider web. No one from any of the realms can come to save us.”

Caliban describes the town of Bellfield, comparing it to a spider web. This comparison is particularly ominous because even though the deities trapped in Bellfield are relatively minor, a spider web is an extremely efficient trap for collecting victims. This comparison foreshadows that escaping Bellfield’s “web” may be more challenging and dangerous than Caliban realizes.