The Fifth Season

The Fifth Season

by

N. K. Jemisin

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Fifth Season makes teaching easy.

The Node Maintainer Character Analysis

The nameless node maintainer at Mehi is one of Alabaster’s children, whom he never was allowed to meet. Like other node maintainers, he has been essentially lobotomized, sedated, and strapped into a wire chair so that he constantly uses his incredibly powerful orogeny to quiet earthquakes while having no free will or control of his own. When he is awakened from his sedation for the sake of someone’s sexual fetish, the extreme pain that the node maintainer feels causes him to kill everyone around him and create a spontaneous seismic event beneath the area.

The Node Maintainer Quotes in The Fifth Season

The The Fifth Season quotes below are all either spoken by The Node Maintainer or refer to The Node Maintainer. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Hierarchy, Oppression, and Prejudice Theme Icon
).
Chapter 8 Quotes

“You think you matter?” All at once he smiles. It’s an ugly thing, cold as the vapor that curls off ice. “You think any of us matter beyond what we can do for them? Whether we obey or not.” He jerks his head toward the body of the abused, murdered child. “You think he mattered, after what they did to him? The only reason they don’t do this to all of us is because we’re more versatile, more useful, if we control ourselves. But each of us is just another weapon, to them. Just a useful monster, just a bit of new blood to add to the breeding lines. Just another fucking rogga.”

She has never heard so much hate put into one word before.

Related Characters: Alabaster (speaker), Essun/Damaya/Syenite, The Node Maintainer
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Fifth Season LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Fifth Season PDF

The Node Maintainer Quotes in The Fifth Season

The The Fifth Season quotes below are all either spoken by The Node Maintainer or refer to The Node Maintainer. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Hierarchy, Oppression, and Prejudice Theme Icon
).
Chapter 8 Quotes

“You think you matter?” All at once he smiles. It’s an ugly thing, cold as the vapor that curls off ice. “You think any of us matter beyond what we can do for them? Whether we obey or not.” He jerks his head toward the body of the abused, murdered child. “You think he mattered, after what they did to him? The only reason they don’t do this to all of us is because we’re more versatile, more useful, if we control ourselves. But each of us is just another weapon, to them. Just a useful monster, just a bit of new blood to add to the breeding lines. Just another fucking rogga.”

She has never heard so much hate put into one word before.

Related Characters: Alabaster (speaker), Essun/Damaya/Syenite, The Node Maintainer
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis: