The Rifle Symbol Analysis

The contraband rifle that Gan’s father has hidden—a leftover from the time when Tlic and Terrans were actively fighting—represents the quest for individual agency—one’s capacity, used or not, to make their own decisions, act in meaningful ways, and have some amount of control over their future. Although Gan, in his coming of age, eventually gives up his right to live fully independently (that is, to live without regard for the needs of others or his obligation to society), the rifle becomes an important object in his relationship with T’Gatoi as a way to negotiate for his own agency and force her to see him as a partner rather than a subject.

Gan first uses the rifle is to kill an animal that he would not otherwise have been able to kill, since he has not been trained as butcher like the rest of his family. Gan convinces T’Gatoi to let him help her with Bram Lomas in place of Qui, but immediately realizes that Qui, with his size and strength, would have been better suited to the task of killing a large animal. In giving him the means to kill an animal, the rifle offers Gan a degree of power otherwise inaccessible, neatly foreshadowing his confrontation with T’Gatoi.

Later, while they are in the kitchen, Gan briefly entertains the thought of using the rifle to kill T’Gatoi. T’Gatoi is physically superior to such a degree that without the rifle, killing her would be an impossibility. Once again, then, the rifle increases Gan’s personal agency. When Gan turns the rifle on himself and considers suicide, he is similarly reacting to his own utter powerlessness against his role in society and the mortal danger that he will face by bearing Tlic young. Feeling that he has no ability to choose the life he wants for himself, suicide becomes an assertion of his autonomy. After deciding not to use the rifle to kill himself, he nevertheless forces T’Gatoi to let it remain in the house, despite the fact that it is illegal and frightens her to do so, saying “Leave it here! If we’re not your animals, if these are adult things, accept the risk. There is risk, Gatoi, in dealing with a partner.” The rifle forces T’Gatoi to accept him as a partner, a being with the potentially dangerous capacity to act and make decisions for himself. Notably, it was Gan’s father, though cast as a model citizen of the Preserve, who hid the rifle in first place. Even this paragon of interdependent cooperation with the Tlic felt the need to maintain his own agency by hiding weapons, further suggesting the importance of personal freedom.