50 pages • 1 hour read
Anthony MarraA Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Morality During Wartime
This novel opens in the year 2004, and Chechnya has endured years of war, bombings, and violence. As a result, many of the characters are living in destitution. Due to limited resources and the violence surrounding them, characters often have to make morally questionable decisions or do things to protect themselves that they wouldn’t do in peacetime. The first example of this occurs when Sonja is offered a favor by a man in exchange for saving his brother Alu’s life. Sonja knows that the man is involved in criminal activity but accepts his help anyway. Sonja asks the man for medical supplies, but when she picks up the supplies, she realizes they are stolen. As Sonja considers accepting the supplies, “she could feel him testing her, ready to blunt the slightest edge of moral outrage with a lecture on relativism in war” (117). Nevertheless, Sonja is aware of the scarcity of medical supplies and accepts the criminal’s help, believing that the ability to care for her patients is more important than refusing stolen goods on the grounds of morality.
Before the start of the novel, Ramzan works for several years as a tradesman. After the war begins, rebel forces offer Ramzan a job transporting weapons to rebel encampments. Ramzan takes the job to buy food and insulin for himself and his father Khassan, who is diabetic. For Ramzan, “when he felt like a criminal, he reminded himself that a land without law is a land without crime” (238).
Nevertheless, Ramzan’s decision to protect himself instead of doing what is right eventually causes him to betray several of his friends and fellow villagers. Having endured brutal torture, Ramzan finally agrees to become an informant for the Feds in exchange for food, insulin, and his own protection, all hard to come by in wartime. After Ramzan betrays Akhmed, Ramzan tries to explain to Akhmed that he doesn’t owe it to anyone to protect anyone but himself. Ramzan tells Akhmed,
“We wear clothes, and speak, and create civilizations, and believe we are more than wolves. But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are. I know you think you are being noble, that this is some terrific act of sacrifice […]. You don’t owe this to Dokka.” (322)
Even though Ramzan was once good friends with Dokka and Akhmed, Ramzan doesn’t believe he has a responsibility to protect his friends in a situation this extreme. During times of peace, Ramzan would never go behind his friends’ backs. But Ramzan is an example of how the extremity of war can cause a person to do things that are morally wrong.
Gender and Women’s Roles
Sonja faces discrimination throughout her life for being a strong, independent woman. One example of this occurs when Sonja is shopping in the bazaar and a merchant says, “Perhaps it would be better if I spoke to your husband […]. I’d like to have a word with him about how he allows you to dress” (111). The merchant doesn’t respect Sonja because she is out shopping by herself and because of her manner of dress.
Even though Havaa is only eight years old, she experiences discrimination for being a girl as well. Havaa and her father Dokka are very close, and Dokka loves his daughter, but he still instills in her some sexist beliefs about her role as a woman. When Akhmed and Ramzan come over to play chess with Dokka, Havaa is allowed to serve them tea but must remain in the kitchen while the men eat. Havaa observes, “while the men ate she and her mother remained in the kitchen. The custom seemed so unfair, and she didn’t understand why her mother, usually as stubborn as an ox, submitted to it” (140). When Havaa meets Sonja, she is amazed to see a woman surgeon. Havaa asks Sonja, “If they let you become a surgeon instead of a wife, would they let me become an arborist instead of a wife?” (298). Hearing Havaa’s question, Sonja remembers “what it was to feel you were no brighter than the dumbest man, no stronger than the weakest boy, and with those ideas crowding your head no wonder subordination was the only inevitable outcome” (298). Many male characters believe women are subordinate and should primarily be wives. This discrimination is something Sonja had to overcome to become a surgeon, and something Havaa will have to overcome as well. However, by the end of the novel, Sonja becomes a role model for Havaa. After Sonja raises Havaa, Havaa goes to university and studies science, something Havaa hadn’t always believed she could do.
PTSD
Sonja can tell that something is wrong with Natasha after Natasha returns home. Sonja confronts Natasha and asks her if she’s heard of PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, and Natasha recites the definition from a book, stating,
“It is a psychological reaction that occurs after experiencing a highly stressing event outside the range of normal human experience, which is usually characterized by depression, anxiety, flashbacks, recurrent nightmares, and avoidance of reminders of the event.” (208)
Natasha’s PTSD manifests as her inability to leave the apartment or talk about her experiences with Sonja. When Natasha finally starts accompanying Sonja to the hospital, she witnesses how impersonal Sonja is with her patients. Natasha acknowledges that surgeons “must reduce each patient to her body,” but this attitude is uncomfortably similar to the one shared by the traffickers, pimps, and johns Natasha encountered in the brothels (303). So as Sonja examines patients without once meeting their eye or addressing them by name, “Natasha sequestered herself in the fourth-floor maternity ward” (303). Even though she seems to be recovering, Natasha can’t help remembering her traumatizing past throughout the day.
Ramzan’s PTSD from the first time he was tortured at the Landfill is one of the major reasons he later betrays his friends. The second time he is imprisoned in the Landfill, Ramzan remembers the pain he endured the first time and thinks,
Nothing in this or the next world was worse than physical pain. In the afterlife, as no more than a soul, he would be without a body to beat, skin to peel, blood to flow, eyes to gouge, fingernails to pry, lungs to drown, ventricles to stop, and so the retribution of God would always be greater than the retribution of man. (261)
Before he’s tortured again, Ramzan decides to become an informant if it’ll keep him from further pain, because he is haunted by the brutality of his first imprisonment. Though Ramzan does not do the right thing by betraying his friends, his PTSD helps explain why he made that decision.
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By Anthony Marra
