54 pages • 1 hour read
Marissa MeyerScarlet
Fiction | Novel | YA | 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.
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Running and Hiding from Destiny and Identity
Scarlet begins with a prison break, a daring escape, and a chance at a new life. However, Cinder is running from more than just the Earthen authorities or Queen Levana. Throughout the novel, Meyer illustrates Cinder’s struggle to accept the truth of her identity and the newfound expectations that come with it. Meyer uses Cinder’s chapters to show that a person’s destiny cannot be outrun and that avoiding the truth only leads to self-delusion and denial.
Cinder refuses to tell Thorne or Iko that she is the Lunar princess until the novel’s final pages. This is partly because Cinder isn’t sure if she can trust Thorne, but when she doesn’t tell Iko right away, the reader is led to suspect that Cinder is in denial about her royal lineage, and she knows that speaking the truth to her friends will make it more real. Dr. Erland wants her to come to Africa so he can prepare her to take on Levana, but Cinder wants to go to Europe, track down Michelle Benoit, and “figure out where she had been during all those lost years” (195). In Cinder’s mind, this trip is crucial to understanding what happened in her early life and how she came to be Linh Cinder of New Beijing instead of Princess Selene of Luna. However, Cinder suspects that she is also “avoiding the inevitable” and creating “a distraction to keep her from going to Dr. Erland and accepting her fate” (195).
Cinder also tries to cover up the truth about her cyborg parts by using her Lunar gift. When Cinder realizes that she can use her glamour to make her metal hand look like a human hand, she is thrilled: She thinks she can “convince everyone that this [is] real” and “no one [will] ever know she [is] cyborg again” (196). However, Cinder is quickly struck with horror and shame. She doesn’t want to become like Levana, who uses her glamour to conceal her true appearance. Cinder has seen beneath Levana’s glamour, and she knows that a dark secret lies beneath her facade. False beauty isn’t beauty in Cinder’s eyes. Cinder can use her glamour to hide from her identity as a cyborg, but as her flashing orange lie detector points out, she is only lying to herself and everyone around her. Cinder will always be a cyborg, and she can accept or deny this aspect of her identity.
Passing Judgment and Seeking the Good in Others
In the original “Little Red Riding Hood” story, Little Red falls into the clutches of the evil wolf because she disobeyed her mother, strayed from the path of tradition, and dared to trust a stranger. At the beginning of Scarlet, the titular character is wrestling with the idea of being too trusting. Scarlet scolds the people in the tavern who mock Cinder, and she defends Wolf when Thorne and Cinder suggest throwing him off the ship at the novel’s end. From beginning to end, Meyer uses Scarlet to suggest that it is easy to pass judgment on others without knowing them, but sometimes, giving someone the benefit of the doubt will pay off in the long run.
When Wolf comments that he has heard Scarlet defend Cinder twice, she replies that she “just think[s] [they] shouldn’t judge [Cinder], or anyone, without trying to understand them first” (165). At this point in the novel, Scarlet hasn’t met Cinder, and she is unaware of the connection between her grandmother and Cinder. However, when Scarlet sees her on the netscreens, she doesn’t see a hardened criminal deserving of execution. Instead, Scarlet feels “a twinge of pity” for this “wholly pathetic” girl who will be sentenced to death. Scarlet refuses to believe what the netscreens are showing her, and she knows there must be more to the story than what the media is letting on. Scarlet’s prediction turns out to be right, and the hated cyborg turns out to be the lost Lunar princess.
Similarly, Scarlet chooses to see the best in Wolf, even after he betrays her and almost kills her. Wolf may be a trained killer, but he takes no pleasure in killing. He is filled with shame when he remembers “who he really [is],” or rather, “what he really [is]” (306). But when Wolf becomes wrapped up in self-loathing, Scarlet is there to call him back to the other side. When they open up to each other in the train station, she tells him that he’s “not a dog who can’t be taught new tricks” (166). He can have a life outside of fighting and the Wolves, and when Wolf is about to attack Scarlet in Chapter 40, she speaks gently to him and tells him that she believes he won’t hurt her. Scarlet’s faith in Wolf is enough to temporarily shake the thaumaturge’s control, and Wolf is bonded to her forever.
Prejudice and Xenophobia
The Lunar Chronicles may take place in a fantastical, sci-fi-driven future, but as Meyer demonstrates, prejudice will always follow on the heels of human progress. In Cinder, Meyer establishes that cyborgs are second-class citizens who have few rights and are largely untrusted by the general public. Similarly, Lunars are seen as purely evil, sub-human creatures who are sadistic and cruel, like their queen. It is only fitting then that the story’s main hero is Lunar and cyborg to challenge the status quo.
Prejudice has followed Cinder throughout her life (or, at least, the parts she can remember). The operation that turns a person into a cyborg should be seen as a miraculous life-saving procedure, but instead, those who receive this operation are met with distrust and revulsion. Cinder has dealt with “the sneers and hateful words of strangers who didn’t trust the cyborg girl who was too strong and too smart and too freakishly good with machines to ever be normal” (149-150). Even her stepmother is disgusted by her. Adri tells Kai that “[Cinder] is the first and hopefully the last cyborg [she’ll] ever have the misfortune of knowing” (289) and adds that cyborgs are “dangerous and proud creatures, “who are “a drain on [their] hardworking society” (289). Even Kai thinks that he “should” be repulsed by Cinder because so much of her body is “not natural” (65). However, during his press conference, Kai clearly states that he is unbothered by the fact that Cinder is a cyborg. Instead, he fixates on the fact that Cinder is Lunar, and because Kai’s only interactions with Lunars have been with Levana and her thaumaturges, Kai has a visceral reaction to the thought of Cinder being like Levana in any way.
Cinder was brought to Earth as a Lunar refugee, and although her presence on Earth was kept a secret, other Lunars fled from Luna to escape from the wrath of Queen Levana. The people of Earth fear the thought of Lunars hiding among them for the same reason that many societies fear outsiders: They allow stereotypes to shape their opinions of an entire group of people. Levana may be cruel, but as Cinder grows to learn, Lunars, like Earthens, come from all walks of life with a vast array of personality types and political leanings. The crowd may scream that Cinder “should be executed” (17) simply because she is Lunar, but Meyer offers the characters of Dr. Erland, Logan Tanner, and even Wolf to demonstrate that Lunars have the capacity for decency and goodness as much as anyone on Earth. Until people are willing to put their biases aside, nothing will change, and people will continue to live in fear of one another.
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By Marissa Meyer
