62 pages • 2 hours read
Tress of the Emerald Sea
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Part 1, Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Chapter 1 introduces the world of Tress of the Emerald Sea. The novel is set on the Rock, or what is officially named Diggen’s Point, where locals mine salt for the kingdom. Nothing can grow on the rock, and the mines leave a constant presence of black smoke. The Rock is not a pleasant place to live, but the salt is a necessary resource, so the king ruled that no locals are ever to be taken from Diggen’s Point.
Another essential element of world building in this chapter is the introduction of spores. The ocean is not made up of water, it is made up of spores. When wet, spores “sprout explosively” (5), which, depending on the type of spore, could be deadly to humans. Only salt or silver render the spores “inert,” leading to the local saying: “[S]alt and silver halt the killer” (5).
The chapter also introduces the main character, Tress. Her real name is Glorf, but her wild, beautiful hair led to her nickname, “Tress.” Despite how inhospitable her home is, Tress thinks, “There’s a beauty to this, actually. I like it here. And I believe I shall be fine to remain here all my life” (6).
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
Tress believes she is “normal” and thoughtful. She has a collection of cups from all over the universe, acquired from visiting sailors. She loves her cups.
Tress cleans the windows of the duke’s home, which is where she meets Charlie. Charlie claims to be a gardener for the duke, but he is actually the duke’s son; he knows that Tress knows, but they both play along with the game. Tress and Charlie, both about 17, enjoy one another’s company and have feelings for one another. Charlie talks a lot and weaves stories for Tress that she enjoys, and Tress brings him pies and shares her cup collection with him. Charlie admits that he is not a good duke’s son and that he does not want adventure and danger. He does not want to wear armor. If Tress were in danger, though, he admits that he would put on armor. Charlie enjoys listening to Tress talk about her daily, ordinary life.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
The narrator, Hoid the cabin boy, describes Tress and Charlie’s connection as a pair of gloves that has been worn and used enough to develop the perfect level of comfort. Tress is scared, though, to call her feelings love, because the passionate love she hears about from others sounds dangerous.
When Charlie smiles at her as if he loves her, his hand over hers, Tress smiles back. But over Charlie’s shoulder, she sees the duke at a window, not smiling. Tress worries the whole way home that soldiers will come to demand why the girl who washes windows would dare to touch a duke’s son. She convinces herself in the morning that she was imagining the admonishment, and nothing is worse than the worry she feels all night. Then, she hears that the duke sent out a declaration that he and his family were leaving the island that day.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
The duke proclaims that his son is of age, so he is taking him to meet various princesses for possible betrothal. Tress feels upset that she must experience the pain of love without also the passion and happier parts of love.
As the ducal family boards their ship, Charlie finds Tress to say good-bye. He asks her what she thinks, and she admits that she does not want him to marry a princess. He says he also does not want that, promising to use his talkative nature to bore every princess enough so that she does not want to marry him. At each court, Charlie will find a cup to send to Tress as a sign that he was successful.
Tress, with a family she must help feed, works while he is away. She is busy, but looks forward to every cup and accompanying letter, brought to her by Hoid. Four cups arrive, but there is a long wait after the fourth. No fifth cup comes, and then, a year after Charlie’s departure, the duke sends an announcement to the entire town: the family is returning home with his new daughter-in-law.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Tress talks to her mother, who comforts her over Charlie’s marriage. Tress decides to be happy for Charlie even though she is hurt, because he finally became part of a story like the ones he would tell her. When the royal family returns, however, Charlie does not disembark. Rather a tall, muscular man of similar age to Charlie arrives with Charlie’s family. The duke announces that there was an accident and that he adopted his nephew Dirk as his heir who has married a princess.
Tress sees one of the duke’s servants, Flik, gesturing to her, and finds out from him that Charlie tried hard to put off the princesses, even going so far as to throw up in one’s lap. Flik gives her the last cup Charlie had chosen, which is now in pieces. When she pushes for more information, Flik admits that the duke was angry when he discovered Charlie’s plan, and that Charlie sailed the Midnight Sea. Flik explains the duke’s cover story that the king had wanted to make the Sorceress of the Midnight Sea less of a threat by marrying her to one of his nobles, so Charlie was sent to marry her. Tress realizes that they actually sent Charlie to die. The Sorceress sends ships to raid the borders of the Verdant Sea, and her stronghold is the most dangerous of them all. Flik anxiously abandons the conversation.
When Tress asks the duke’s steward for more information, she discovers that the Sorceress sent a ransom letter; the duke had judged it a trick to lure more ships into the Midnight Sea, and the king declared Charlie officially dead.
Tress lives in a daze. She gathers the courage, after weeks, to go to the duke herself and request that he send the ransom money. He insults her and forbids her from cleaning any windows in town, forcing her to knit socks for far less pay.
Tress becomes sad. She realizes no one else cares about Charlie. Two months after the duke’s return, she decides that she cares. As she does not like imposing on others, she decides she will have to rescue Charlie herself.
Part 1, Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Part 1 of Tress of the Emerald Sea introduces the protagonist, Tress, and her love interest, Charlie. Hoid, the cabin boy who is also the narrator, describes their home, the Rock, and provides some world-building details to flesh out the setting. He introduces the theme of Identity and Change through his focus on Tress and Charlie’s personalities and emphasizes Tress’s desire never to impose on others and Charlie’s distaste of danger. These qualities set up Tress’s journey of self-discovery, as she must evolve into a leader in order to save Charlie, and Charlie’s journey of maturation as he develops bravery and a sense of self-sacrifice. The ages of the two characters also place them within a literary tradition of coming-of-age tales. In these stories, young adults or teenagers are confronted with a dramatic conflict that forces them to take control of their adulthood and destiny as they mature into independent adults in their society.
Sanderson’s exposition is unique as he is Flipping the Gendered Script that is typically associated with fantasy literature—that of the brave young man, often from a lower class, who risks his life to save a princess. Whereas readers might expect to read about Charlie’s trials as he works to escape his capture, Sanderson shifts the focus of the narrative to the lowly servant girl who takes up the role of the hero as she sets out to save Charlie. No one else seems especially concerned about Charlie’s absence, and the duke seems to have quite easily replaced his son with his nephew as his heir. In this way, Tress’s decision to rescue Charlie not only flips the gendered script of the hero narrative, but it also flips the expectations of what awaits the conclusion of a rescue. Often the servant boy who saves the princess is adopted into the royal line. Here, Charlie seems to have lost his status and may not be a “prize” in the same way that princesses have been in the traditional hero story.
Fear and Knowledge is introduced through Tress’s feelings and thoughts about spores. When Tress receives the butterfly cup from Charlie, she considers the reckless danger a butterfly experiences when flying over the spore seas. Yet, as Tress frets about the spores and the threats they pose, this fear will be unpacked later in the novel as a feeling that stems from profound misunderstanding. Thus, the theme of Fear and Knowledge intersects with that of Identity and Change. As Tress develops her knowledge and her fears ease, her identity also changes.
The tone of the novel is established in this section as one of great drama, with occasional playfulness. Uniquely, Hoid as the narrator provides something of an outsider’s perspective on Tress, our protagonist. Hoid’s personality is dominant, and a bit performative, as if he knows he’s telling a story for the reader’s entertainment. For example, Hoid wraps up a description of the Rock with, “In summary, the atmosphere was dismal, the ground wretched, and the views depressing. Oh, and have I mentioned the deadly spores?” (4) His personality as narrator, whether reliable or not, is revealed in the ways he chooses to control the narrative, and even addresses the reader directly: “Well, this isn’t the part of the story where you ask questions. So kindly keep them to yourself” (7). Hoid claims that he is honest about his opinions and narrative choices, which ironically creates a sense that he might actually be an unreliable narrator. Hoid is a character that appears throughout Sanderson’s other Cosmere texts, and so for the familiar reader, his presence indicates that a reader should hold the truth of his tale lightly.
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