57 pages • 1 hour read
Olivie BlakeThe Atlas Six
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Rebirth
Several major plot points are underlined by motivic destruction followed by rebirth, all framed by the premise of the story, the loss of The Great Library of Alexandria. A parallel example of this motif is Atlas’s plan to destroy the Alexandrian Society to remake it, for example. He says, “No more fixing, no more tinkering around with broken parts. When one ecosystem fails, nature makes a new one. Nature, or whoever’s in charge. That’s how the species survives” (362).
Similarly, thinking about the new initiates, Dalton remarks to himself:
You are entering the cycle of your own destruction, the wheel of your own fortune, which will rise and fall and so will you. You will deconstruct and resurrect in some other form, and the ashes of yourself will be the rubble from the fall. Rome falls, he wanted to say. Everything collapses. You will, too (372).
Death and destruction are presented as natural parts of a cycle that leads to greater power and knowledge. Amongst the protagonists, Reina seems to understand this best, as she is more likely to acknowledge that “the presence of life meant accepting the presence of death” as a medeian naturalist raised “amid Eastern philosophies” (263). This motif symbolically frames the ending of the story as tragically ineluctable.
Sight
Throughout the story, Tristan has access to different types of “sight” that enable him to perceive hidden aspects of reality. This motif first appears through his observation skills, which enable him to deduce information from objects and interactions, as Atlas points out:
You saw a number of things, of course—far more than I was able to distinguish from my brief foray into your observations—but you looked at this nondescript portrait of a nineteenth-century Society benefactor and interpreted the details which led you to conclude what you were looking at, which no one but you would have seen (57).
Secondly, on top of physical sight, Tristan can also see magic being used, like matter being influenced by the physicists or the illusion charms used by other medeians.
Finally, Tristan then learns to see even more abstractly to perceive other dimensions in time and space. This ability becomes crucial to uncovering the truth about Libby’s apparent death. Tristan’s first experience with time travel foreshadows his role in finding her:
Tristan became conscious of a familiar pulse, an old friend: time. His orientation within it became irrelevant. The dead body of Libby Rhodes, which still possessed waves of energy—no, was waves—no, was energy—became … not an object. Not a fixture. Not reality at all. [...] What he knew for sure was this: whatever was lying on the ground wearing Libby Rhodes’s cardigan, it was magic. Not simply magical, but magic itself. Particulate, granular magic that cycled in waves, changing directions the more he chose to let it go (324-24).
This motif illuminates the novel’s theme of Knowledge as Power. Sight and insight are common figures of speech to describe understanding. As Tristan’s (literal) sight improves, as he sees more things more clearly, he better understands the other initiates, the Society, and himself, and he becomes an increasingly powerful figure in the novel’s fantasy universe.
Balance
The motif of balance underlies most of the narrative, but it becomes explicitly prevalent in the last two chapters, as the candidates learn about the necessary sacrifice to make to be initiated into the Society. Atlas explains that “power [...] cannot be created, nor drawn from an empty well” (279) and that death is the cost of that power.
Characters experience balance (or imbalance) in different ways throughout the narrative, such as Nico and Libby’s abilities balancing each other; Dalton’s fractured—and therefore unbalanced—mind; or even Ezra’s fear that Atlas’s plan will eventually unbalance the world. The narrator suggests that the larger motif of the balance between life and death is illustrated by Reina, however, because
[She] had the benefit of being raised amid Eastern philosophies as opposed to Western, which meant she was more willing to trust general policies of dualities. She understood, in a way the others did not, the existence of polarities, the mysticism of opposition: that acknowledging the presence of life meant accepting the presence of death. That knowledge necessitated ignorance. That gain meant loss. Ambition suggested contentment, in a sense, because starvation implied the existence of glut (263).
When Dalton introduces the idea of balance in Chapter 7 (“Intent”), he is preparing the candidates for their upcoming decision concerning the elimination. Because it is rooted in fundamental truths about the world, the cost of initiation into the Society is made to seem natural and legitimate.
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By Olivie Blake
