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Chapter One
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Word for World is Forest, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Violence, War, and Colonization
Nature and Ecology
Communication and Translation
Gender and Masculinity
Summary
Analysis
As Selver Thele walks through the forest, he notices its many colors: rust, brown-red, green. The ground is wet, partly because of living organisms and partly because dead ones fertilize it. Nothing is stable out here; everything in the forest is in constant flux, and no one can notice all of its elements at once. Selver is slowly ambling on a path near a body of water when he sees an old man dreaming near a willow tree. The man, still dreaming, spots Selver inside of his dreams. Selver asks the man if he can come to his Lodge. Selver then squats down, exhausted—he’s been walking for five days.
This passage demonstrates how Selver’s people (known among themselves as Athsheans) view the forest, which contrasts with Davidson’s view. Selver acknowledges the forest as its own entity that can never be understood, whereas Davidson wants to dominate and kill it. Selver’s description of the ecosystem in this passage also demonstrates the harm humans are doing by cutting trees, as every element of the forest fertilizes others—deforestation will have a widespread impact. Finally, this passage introduces the importance of dreaming in Athshean culture: it’s something that allows them to live both in dreams and in waking reality.
Themes
The man asks if Selver is from the “dream-time” or the “world-time,” and Selver tells him that he’s from the world-time. Leading Selver further into the grove of trees, the man admits that he at first mistook Selver for a god, since he’s seen Selver in a dream before. Selver replies that he comes from Sornol and is of the Ash people. The man says that this town is Cadast and that his name is Coro Mena. He asks Selver to confirm that he isn’t here looking for a wife, as travelers usually are, and Selver says that his wife is dead.
Apparently, Athshean dream-states are so closely intertwined with reality that Coro Mena can’t tell whether or not he’s dreaming when he meets Selver, especially because he has dreamed about Selver before (though it’s not yet clear why). This passage also demonstrates that the Athsheans’ lives are linked to nature, as Athsheans apparently identify by what trees (like the Ash) are native to their areas—again demonstrating how harmful the colonists’ deforestation is to the Athsheans’ cultures and identities. Because Athshean dreams aren’t the same as human dreams, Selver’s claim that his wife is dead doesn’t conflict with his earlier claim that his wife told him to attack Smith—it’s likely that she visited him in a dream.
Themes
The two of them arrive at the Men’s Lodge, located inside a tunnel near the base of white oak trees. Upon arrival, Selver immediately collapses and falls asleep. That night, Coro Mena and a healer, Torber, sit near Selver and wonder what could possibly have made him so scarred and wounded, and what could have given him his bizarre arm injury. Selver also has a weird iron engine with him.
Readers already know that the Athsheans are nonviolent, so it’s not surprising that they can’t recognize a gun or what is presumably a gunshot. The fact that Selver now carries Davidson’s gun with him is significant, as it suggests that he now bears the burden of violence, which the rest of his people are unfamiliar with.
Themes
Coro Mena feels deeply afraid and enters a dream state to figure out why. In the dream, giants walk through the woods among falling trees, with iron machines moving behind them and a bloodied man running away from them, toward the Cadast Lodge. Coro Mena exits his dream state and confirms Selver’s story, which he just saw in his dream. Selver must have come from Sornol, since the “giants” are there. Torber wonders if the giants will follow Selver here.
Coro Mena’s dream fleshes out how Athsheans dream: apparently, their dreams aren’t random and instead can provide crucial information about the past. Moreover, the Athsheans can dream at will. Apparently, the humans aren’t everywhere on the planet, because Coro Mena’s people aren’t familiar with them and refer to them as “giants.” This makes Selver all the more unique and isolated in his society, because he has direct experience with humans.
Themes
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Coro Mena slips in and out of dreams. Eventually, his sister Ebor Dendep, the Cadast Headwoman, calls him to the Men’s Lodge door and asks if Selver is awake yet—the Cadast people want to hear his story. She won’t insist on entrance to the Lodge, which would offend the Dreamers inside, but she’s worried for her people, since the giants might be following Selver. She asks Coro Mena to wake Selver, and Coro Mena agrees. Ebor Dendep wishes that Selver were a woman—then his story might make sense.
Because the Lodge is only for men, who are known as “Dreamers” in Athshean society, readers can infer that Athshean women’s roles are different. However, Ebor Dendep appears to have more authority in her society than the human women have in theirs, since she makes demands of Coro Mena. Her comment regarding Selver’s gender also suggests that in Athshean society, female opinions are valued, which is a sharp contrast to the humans’ colony.
Themes
When Coro Mena returns to the Lodge, Selver is awake and explaining to the group that his city, Eshreth, was destroyed by “yumens” (his people’s name for humans) who cut down the trees there. The yumens enslaved him, and one of them raped his wife, Thele, who died. In retaliation, Selver attacked that yumen, who almost killed Selver, but another yumen intervened before he could do so. Selver then came to the North Isle, but the yumens followed the same path and destroyed more cities along the way.
This passage explains why Selver attacked Davidson back in Centralville: Davidson sexually assaulted Selver’s wife, which led to her death. This means that not only was Selver’s violence provoked, but it was the direct result of Davidson’s violence. This idea of violence generating more violence is one that the novella will continue to explore, particularly because the Athsheans were never violent before encountering the humans. It’s not clear whether Davidson genuinely doesn’t know why Selver attacked him, but it does seem plausible that he wouldn’t remember killing Selver’s wife, as he doesn’t value the Athsheans’ lives.
Themes
Selver remained free and would sometimes visit the yumen camps, speaking to the people that the yumens kept in pens. Those people told him that the same yumen Selver had attacked was living in that camp. Selver was going to help his people escape, but the women were shut up in another, more secure area, and the men couldn’t leave them behind. Instead, the men came up with a plan to kill the yumens and burn their city.
While the Athsheans had every reason to retaliate against the humans, it’s unlikely that they would have done so without Selver’s prompting, because the colony began four years ago and the Athsheans never retaliated before. Furthermore, the first mass attack on humans specifically targeted Davidson’s camp. This suggests that the Athsheans’ violence against the humans specifically stems from Selver’s hatred of Davidson, which was prompted by Davidson’s violence against Selver’s wife. Again, the novella suggests that violence is a cycle, even though the humans will likely see the attack on Smith as an unprovoked massacre.
Themes
The yumen Selver had known initially got away, but then he returned to his camp after they’d burned it. Selver pinned him down and sang to him, but when the yumen wouldn’t sing back, Selver let him escape once again. Then, after this yumen left, a ship came to hunt Selver’s people and set the forest ablaze, but no one was hurt, since Selver’s people had already fled. Selver abandoned the group and continued on alone, since he’s recognizable to yumens and therefore would make the group less safe.
This passage still doesn’t explain why Selver sang to Davidson, but Davidson’s refusal to sing back must have been why Selver let him go. Selver’s isolation from his own people is also on clear display in this passage. He’s marked with a scar, which makes him recognizable, and he’s had experience with the humans that none of the other Athsheans have had. His connection to the humans allowed him to free the enslaved Athsheans, but it also separates him from his people.
Themes
Selver tells Torber that his wound is from the yumen’s weapon, which he took and has with him now. Coro Mena asks if Selver was once a Dreamer, and Selver says that he was, but he rarely dreams now, and when he does, he always does so while awake. He can’t always shape his dreams or walk the roads they lay out, which he should be able to do. Selver reassures Coro Mena that the yumens won’t follow him here, as he didn’t leave a trail. That’s not what everyone should be worried about, anyway. They should worry that the yumens will hunt and kill them all in retaliation for what Selver’s people did to the yumens.
Not only is Selver physically isolated from his people, but he’s also culturally isolated, since he can no longer dream. The reason for this isn’t clear, but it seems likely that it has something to do with Selver’s unique capacity for violence, which is symbolized by the gun’s continued presence. Selver also has a unique understanding of the humans’ capacity for violence, because none of the other Athsheans at the Lodge considered that the humans might retaliate with a massacre. Having already experienced Davidson’s point of view, readers can see the truth of what Selver is saying—wiping out the Athsheans is exactly what Davidson wants.
Themes
Torber insists that such horrible things happen only in fever dreams, but Coro Mena says that the world can always change and adapt. He asks Selver what the yumens are like and whether they’re men. Selver doesn’t know: they certainly aren’t like men he knows, as they kill their own kind and kill Selver’s people mercilessly. Coro Mena knows that everyone’s dreams will never be the same now that the yumens are here. But he says that Selver did what he had to do by killing men. Unfortunately, it was also the wrong thing to do, since it involved murder.
Davidson spent much of his time insisting that the Athsheans weren’t men, so it’s interesting to see that the Athsheans wonder the same thing about the humans. Because the Athsheans are nonviolent, it makes sense that the humans’ capacity for violence makes Selver believe that they may not be people at all. Coro Mena’s dual approval and condemnation of Selver’s actions is the novella’s first hint that the Athsheans’ violence against the humans was both practically necessary and morally wrong. The Athsheans had no choice but to retaliate against the humans, but they had to kill humans to do so. This raises the complicated ethical dilemma of whether or not violence is ever justified.
Themes
Coro Mena, who has seen the yumens once and concluded that they appear to be men, asks if yumens dream. Selver says that they dream like kids: only while sleeping and without training. Lyubov taught Selver the yumens’ ways, and Lyubov understood how to dream, but even he distinguished between dream-time and world-time as though one is more real than the other. Selver falls back asleep, and Coro Mena tells Torber that Selver is now a god unlike any other. They’ve all dreamed of him for years, foretelling his approach, but now Selver has left dream-time behind. He’s a god who knows what death is, one who “kills and is not himself reborn.”
Again, Davidson and the humans treated the Athsheans as aliens, so it’s a significant reversal to see the Athsheans discussing the humans the same way. The difference, of course, is that Coro Mena comes to the conclusion that the humans are men like them. Readers already know that Selver had some connection to Lyubov, and that connection was apparently significant, as Selver learned about humans from Lyubov. Selver is further isolated from his own society in this passage. It’s not yet clear what it means that Selver is a god, but his experience with the humans’ violence makes him unlike his people—apparently, they believe that beings who die are “reborn,” but Selver’s experiences make this impossible for him.
Themes
Ebor Dendep acts on Coro Mena’s prophecy and gets Cadast ready to evacuate just in case the humans attack. Then, she sends scouts out to monitor yumen activity and has Selver tell his story to everyone else once he regains his strength. Because she’s frightened, her people are, too. It’s the Dreamer’s job to make judgments, and her job to carry them out. Her people have messengers spread information about the attack and about Selver across the land.
In Athshean society, the role of women is just as important as the role of men—a sharp contrast to human society in the novella. Women like Ebor Dendep act as political figures, absorbing information that men give them, choosing how to distribute it, and dictating how others will react to it. Without the women, the men’s information wouldn’t have value or reach.
Themes
Each land (of which there are 40) has a different dialect, and its people have different appearances and customs. But the forest barely changes, and the ocean never does. Selver’s people have regular trade-routes that enable them to marry between lands, and the Dreamers speak a pretty consistent language, one women and non-Dreaming men rarely learn. The Dreamers interpret written documents to the Old Women, and the Old Women choose whether or not to believe them.
Not only are younger women like Ebor Dendep significant to Athshean society, but Old Women are, too. Apparently, information on the planet comes first from Great Dreamers, who share information both with Headwomen and with Old Women. Headwomen disseminate that information, while Old Women decide its value and importance, which might vary by land. Again, this is a huge contrast to human society, where women are solely meant to breed.
Themes
Still asleep, Selver dreams about being in a room at Eshsen (which is now the human city), which he can’t leave or something bad will enter. But he decides to go outside anyway, to see the trees that have been planted. Unfortunately, the trees are all uprooted, and when blood runs out of the end of one of them, he thinks about his wife, Thele. Selver returns to the house and notices that he’s near a street in Central, the yumen city.
Selver’s dream further demonstrates how closely intertwined the Athsheans’ lives are with nature. Selver is compelled to see the trees even though doing so will put him in danger. He then imagines the trees—which the humans cut down—as living things with “blood,” and he even likens them to his deceased wife. This dream also implies that the Athsheans plant trees regularly, further contrasting them with the humans, who only destroy the forest.
Themes
Anticipating yumen attack, Selver notes that he has a gun he can use to shoot Davidson, who does eventually arrive. But when Selver fires the gun, nothing comes out, and he ends the dream in frustration. He’s been in Cadast for 15 days and has begun to dream in the correct rhythm, which should happen 10-14 times per day. His dreams are awful, but he welcomes them, since they prove that he can still dream at all.
Earlier, Selver noted that he can no longer control his dreams the way Athsheans should be able to. But the fact that he’s now easing back into dreaming suggests that he should be redeveloping this control, so his inability to shoot Davidson with Davidson’s gun is significant. Although Selver has the ability to kill Davidson, he seems to subconsciously resist doing so, again suggesting that violence is something unnatural for the Athsheans. This choice not to kill Davidson, even in his dream, also mimics Selver’s earlier choice not to kill Davidson in reality—a choice that will remain a point of tension throughout the novella.
Themes
Selver enters back into his dream state and imagines himself pinning Davidson down again, this time hitting him with a rock and breaking his teeth. It’s a familiar wish-fulfillment dream, but he stops it before it can progress further, because he doesn’t want to feel relieved right now—he’d rather feel bitter. Instead, he dreams of his encounter with Davidson in Central, when Davidson beat him. Back in world-time, Ebor Dendep sits next to Selver in the birch grove, which is at the center of Cadast. There are houses at the roots of trees, and 800 people live there. Now, Cadast is hosting 60 strangers who came to see Selver.
Because the novella has hinted that violence always generates more violence in a cyclical fashion, Selver’s choice to fixate on Davidson’s violence against him rather than his ability to hurt Davidson makes sense. Davidson’s violence is what motivates Selver’s violence, and Selver needs to feel motivated if he wants to further retaliate against the humans. The structure of Athshean society once again demonstrates the Athsheans’ close ties to nature, as they rely on roots for shelter. When the humans cut trees down, they disrupt Athshean society.
Themes
A young girl, Tolbar, comes to tell Ebor Dendep that there’s a messenger from the South at the Women’s Lodge. Tolbar watches Selver sleep, both fascinated and afraid of him. Two Old Women bring the messenger to Ebor Dendep, and once Selver wakes up, Ebor Dendep invites the messenger to speak. The messenger tells them that she comes from Trethat and has a message for Cadast and Selver specifically: there are “new giants” in Sornol, including females, and all the giants in Sornol know that Selver burned their city. The Great Dreamers elsewhere foresee that eventually there will be more giants than trees. Everyone is silent at this proclamation, and one of the Old Women says that this is a “bad world-time.”
Once again, Selver is clearly isolated from his society—his unique relationship with the humans leads people to either treat him as holy or fear him, as demonstrated here. Readers already know the information that the messenger shares in this passage; Davidson was going to Central to see these “new giants” himself, as the messenger is referencing the shipment of women. But hearing it from the Athsheans’ perspective puts it in a new context, as the Athsheans are clearly afraid that more humans arrive on the planet means more danger.
Themes
As they all sit there, Selver tells Ebor Dendep about Lyubov, who saved and freed him. Lyubov told Selver that half of his race is women, but the men were waiting to summon women to the Forty Lands until it was comfortable for them. Ebor Dendep scoffs at this—their men want to create “dry beaches” (her language doesn’t have a word for “desert”), and yet they call this comfort. They should’ve sent women first—maybe in their culture, women are the ones who dream. Ebor Dendep believes that the yumens are insane, since they “only dream in sleep,” but Selver insists that a whole people can’t be insane.
Again, this passage demonstrates the different roles of women in human and Athshean society. Athshean women like Ebor Dendep seem to value human women more than human men do, as Ebor Dendep suggests that the human women might have a broader worldview than the men (or they would if they were able to dream). This suggests that the Athsheans can’t imagine the inequality of human society. And the fact that the Athsheans don’t have a word for “desert” again demonstrates how important nature is to their lives, as they can’t conceive of a place without abundant greenery and wildlife.
Themes
Ebor Dendep doesn’t agree: these people are mad, unable to distinguish dream-time from world-time. They must think that if they kill a tree it’ll come back. But Selver shakes his head. The yumens understand death, he says. In fact, Selver is the one who didn’t understand a lot of what Lyubov told him, though this confusion wasn’t because of a language barrier—Lyubov and Selver learned each other’s languages. Lyubov told Selver that the men want wood and land, and that the yumens are men, just like Selver.
Because the Athsheans use dreaming to make major decisions, it makes sense that they can’t understand the humans’ limited mindset—essentially, Ebor Dendep is accusing the humans of having a narrow worldview, which is true for characters like Davidson. This passage also demonstrates how vital the connection between Lyubov and Selver was, because Athsheans like Ebor Dendep don’t understand anything about the humans, including their motivations for being on the planet. Since Selver connected with Lyubov, he can provide that information.
Themes
The yumens come from a place that has no forest, something that Selver can’t understand. But it doesn’t matter. The yumens want the forest, they have weapons, and their women will bear children, which means that their population will grow. They kill without mercy. They can’t sing “in contest,” they take poisons to make them dream, and those poisons make them drunk. The yumens may be insane, but it’s irrelevant—they have to leave the forest either way. If Selver’s people wait to get rid of them, they’re the ones who will die.
Some of the information Selver provides here comes from his own experience as an enslaved Athshean, but some of it also comes from Lyubov—for instance, Selver wouldn’t otherwise understand the purpose of the humans’ drugs, and he certainly wouldn’t understand that wood is the humans’ focus. Again, Selver’s connection to Lyubov is vital, as it helps to convince him that the humans have to be driven off the planet. Incidentally, this passage also explains why the Athsheans are afraid of hallucinogens, something that confused Ok: the Athsheans see drugs as a forced dream state, which would presumably interfere with their own dreaming. This passage also explains why Selver sang to Davidson after pinning him down: singing is a nonviolent “contest” for Athsheans.
Themes
Selver once saw the yumens kill a woman as she begged for mercy. Even if the yumens are also men, they’re unfit to be men. Selver wants to return to Sornol and gather exiled and enslaved people, all of whom are likely dreaming about burning cities.
It would be easy for Selver to assume that, because the humans are willing to kill innocents, they’re animals—but like Coro Mena, he agrees that they’re men. This complicates his decision to retaliate further against them, even though retaliation is necessary for the Athsheans’ survival. This passage also implies that the Athsheans share dreams, which means that not only has Davidson’s violence prompted Selver’s violence, but Selver’s violence has prompted other Athsheans to dream of violence themselves. Once again, the novella suggests that violence begets more violence, and the structure of Athshean society enables this on a mass scale.
Themes
Selver leaves the grove, and the messenger asks who he is. Ebor Dendep says that he’s a god of forest-fire, “the one who is not reborn.” That night, Coro Mena walks with Selver to the place in the forest where they met. Sixty men will follow Selver, and they’ll gather more along the way, but he’s setting off alone first. Coro Mena tells Selver that this spot will be known as Selver’s Grove one day. Selver replies that Coro Mena believes in him more than Selver believes in himself.
The Athsheans frequently imply that death means rebirth within dream states: earlier, Ebor Dendep was certain that the humans think trees regenerate, and Selver implied that he sees his dead wife in dreams. The fact that Selver’s godhood takes regeneration away from him further demonstrates his isolation from society, as does his solo journey away from Cadast.
Themes
Coro Mena tells Selver that he sees things clearly: his people have been afraid for years, and Selver is gathering and harvesting that fear, since he’s experienced more than anyone. The world will change as a result of that harvest. Coro Mena dreamed about Selver before they ever met: in the dream, Selver walked a path, and trees grew up around him. Selver leaves Coro Mena and chooses a spot to rest against a tree, protected from falling rain by its leaves.
Even though Coro Mena outlines a violent future for Selver, he also suggests that Selver’s violence will allow for progress. His language likens Selver’s violence to natural growth, as he claims that Selver will “harvest” fear. Similarly, Coro Mena’s dream shows Selver helping trees grow. This contradiction mimics what Coro Mena said earlier in this chapter: Selver’s violence is wrong and necessary at the same time, since it’s the only thing that will ensure the Athsheans’ (and the forest’s) survival.
Themes
