Caraval

“Whatever you’ve heard about Caraval, it doesn’t compare to the reality. It’s more than just a game or a performance. It’s the closest you’ll ever find to magic in this world. Her grandmother’s words played in Scarlett’s head as she looked at the slips of paper in her hands. The Caraval stories she adored as a young girl never felt more real than they did in that moment. Scarlett always saw flashes of color attached to her strongest emotions, and for an instant goldenrod desire lit up inside her. Briefly, Scarlett let herself imagine what it would be like to go to Legend’s private isle, to play the game and win the wish. Freedom. Choices. Wonder. Magic.”

Scarlett’s flashback to Nana’s stories about Caraval fill her with the sense of hope and wonder she had as a child. Scarlett’s longtime dream has come true: She is invited to Caraval, but she must “let herself imagine” it. She has restricted her imagination and stopped daring to hope for anything more than safety from her father in the arms of a stranger.

“Sometimes Scarlett felt all of Trisda was under a dome, a large piece of glass that trapped everyone inside while her father looked down, moving—or removing—people if they weren’t in the right places. Her world was a grand game board, and her father believed this marriage would be his penultimate move, putting all that he wanted within his grasp.”

Scarlett’s metaphor for her father’s action conveys how much she feels like a pawn in his political maneuvers. This metaphor parallels the larger game of Caraval and foreshadows that her father will play a role in that game as well. 

“She should have been the one to drown that night. She should have been the one whose head her father held under the water. Held until her limbs stopped thrashing and her body went as still and lifeless as the seaweed that washed onto the shore. Later people believed Felipe had drowned accidentally; only Scarlett knew the truth.’”

Witnessing Felipe’s death has a traumatic impact on Scarlett that causes her to internalize everything. She carries the guilt and burden of her father’s secret misdeeds, and that secret haunts her every day as she worries for Tella’s safety. This quote characterizes Scarlett’s father as a cruel antagonist while simultaneously posing Scarlett as an innocent victim. Her meekness here develops into strength near the end of the novel.