The Fifth Season

“[S]he will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She’s old hat at this by now.” 

The Fifth Season opens with two “endings”: the “personal” apocalypse of Uche’s death, and the “continental” apocalypse Alabaster sets in motion (1). It’s noteworthy, however, that Jemisin begins with Essun’s private disaster, and—in this passage—explicitly downplays the significance of the “world ending outside.” In part, this is a means of foreshadowing that Essun is in fact both Syen and Damaya: She’s “old hat” at endings because she’s already lived through several tragedies and upheavals. However, it also hints that the end of the world (and Sanze in particular) may not be such a bad thing. For one, the fact that Essun has already experienced multiple “apocalypses” suggests that this ending may simply be the beginning of a new phase rather than the complete destruction of all life. What’s more, the murder of Uche is itself a testament to the fact that some apocalypses are justified; Jemisin implies that a society that brings about these personal apocalypses through its bigotry and oppression does not deserve to survive.

“[H]e reaches forth will all the fine control that the world has brainwashed and backstabbed and brutalized out of him, and all the sensitivity that his masters have bred into him through generations of rape and coercion and highly unnatural selection. […] He takes all that, the strata and the magma and the people and the power, in his imaginary hands. Everything. He holds it. He is not alone. The earth is with him. Then he breaks it.” 

The above passage describes the creation of the continental rift that destroys Yumenes and kick starts a potentially world-ending Season. It also introduces readers both to