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Chapter 3
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Broken April, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Revenge and Cycles of Violence
Tradition vs. Modernity
Hospitality
Family and Duty
Summary
Analysis
Mark Ukacierra, the steward of the blood, goes up the wooden stairway of the Kulla of Orosh, passing a terrified-looking man along the way. Mark is a cousin of the prince. It’s nearly April, although it is still cold and overcast outside. Mark oversees the blood tax as well as keeping archives for the kulla. A writer (Bessian) and his wife (Diana) recently arrived at the kulla, and Mark doesn’t care much for either of them, in part because he senses they dislike him too.
The story shifts perspectives to explore the impact of blood feuds on High Plateau culture from a wide range of perspectives. While Bessian is an outsider to this culture and Gjorg is completely inside it, Mark and the prince play an intermediate role. The Kanun is an integral part of their lives, but their elevated position in society means that the Kanun’s rules don’t set the course of their lives in quite the same way that the do for Gjorg.
Active
Themes
The prince mentioned to Mark the previous evening that some people would like to soften the code of the Kanun, but the prince himself is clearly against the idea. The prince needs the power he has over the blood feuds because as the number of killings falls, the amount of money that the prince collects also falls. The prince seems to suggest that Mark should do more to encourage feuds, but Mark doesn’t want to get involved.
The prince represents the opposite of the romantic ideas about the Kanun that Bessian has. For the prince, the Kanun is just a tool to increase his own power and to collect money. The Kanun theoretically provides ways to resolve blood feuds, but for the prince and for Mark, it’s more lucrative to try to find ways to make the blood feuds continue, which means encouraging the strictest, most traditional interpretations of the Kanun.
Active
Themes
Mark goes over to a bookshelf to consult The Blood Book, which keeps a record of all blood feuds and debts. He flips through the book, which goes back to the 17th century, looking at years of “harvest” and years of “famine” for blood feuds. He realizes with horror that if not for the one singular killing on March 17 of the current year, it would have been the first day with no blood feud in a long time, perhaps centuries.
Local journals publish articles debating the morality of blood feuds, but Mark can’t stand to read them. He especially hates an article that argues that the Kanun and its traditions used to be part of Albanian culture but are now just part of a capitalist machine to make money off the feuds. Still, even Mark has some doubts he doesn’t voice, like why weddings—which are supposedly happy occasions—so often play a role in instigating blood feuds.
Active
Themes
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Mark’s thoughts continue to wander. When Mark travels around the region for work, he always notices what proportion of fields are cultivated and which are fallow. Mark likes the fallow fields, because they are a sign that people are so engaged with the blood feuds that they forget to tend to their crops.
The prince has been blaming Mark recently for how the blood feuds are declining. Mark resents this and believes that the prince would have a hard time replacing him as steward of the blood. Mark feels he has a special knowledge of how things work, imagining the blood feuds as one big piece of machinery, like a mill, that connects the whole region. He pictures all 74 towers of refuge on the High Plateau and all of the people they contain.
Active
Themes
About seven years ago, Mark got a mysterious condition known as “blood sickness.” Normally, it only affects people who kill, but the doctor told Mark that the nature of his work made him susceptible. Eventually, the illness went away, but Mark has been feeling it again recently. He hopes the illness isn’t really back and that he’s just suffering from some passing condition.
