One of the few things that Xan can infer from the past is that sorrow is dangerous, and that a person should hide their sorrow at all costs, though she can’t remember exactly why. The reader eventually comes to learn that this is because Sister Ignatia—formerly known as the Sorrow Eater—feeds on other people’s sorrow, and does whatever she can to create and harvest it like someone might harvest crops. While Sister Ignatia’s ability to literally ingest sorrow is something wholly fantastical, the novel still makes the case that dwelling too much on sorrow can be a dangerous proposition, as sadness and grief can rob entire communities of critical thinking skills and the ability to recognize their own power. Hope, on the other hand, is something that the novel shows has the power to overcome sadness and restore the autonomy and wellbeing of individuals and communities alike.
The novel makes the connection between sorrow and a lack of agency early on by illustrating clearly how the Day of Sacrifice turns the horrific sacrifice of an infant into a respected tradition that no one has the power to question. When Grand Elder Gherland and the Council come upon the selected mother (Adara) and child (Luna) who will be sacrificed for the year, the mother shocks them with her animalistic grief and her attempts to protect her child. Such a thing, the narrator explains, just isn’t done. In this way, the novel suggests that one of the best ways to foster sorrow is to normalize and codify it (in this case, by making it a holiday of sorts). This also means that the Elders have the power to insist that the mother, who is known for much of the novel simply as “the madwoman,” is indeed mad—rather than a parent who is understandably and justifiably enraged that her government is kidnapping her child. Importantly, the specifics of the ritual function to ensure that the grief and sorrow aren’t experienced only by the parents of the child in question. Forcing the entire town to line up and watch the Elders carry the child into the woods, and setting up a system in which any family could be the next to lose a child, creates a population collectively gripped by grief. Forcing people to dwell on grief in this way, the novel suggests, is a very effective method of keeping people from asking questions.
Through Antain’s journey through marriage, early fatherhood, and his quest to kill the Witch, The Girl Who Drank the Moon suggests that there are a few things that have the power to give a person the tools to question sadness and develop hope: knowledge, love, and a personal stake in things. Because of Antain’s brief stint as a teenage Elder-in-Training, he’s witnessed firsthand what it’s like to leave a baby in the forest (which the Elders do in private after parading the baby through the streets)—and he found it absolutely horrifying. While this gives him the impetus to begin questioning and rejecting the Day of Sacrifice, it’s his love for his wife, Ethyne, and Luken, their newborn slated for sacrifice, that gives him the final push to attempt to put a stop to things more than a decade later.
After Antain goes into the forest to find and kill the Witch, Sister Ignatia goes in after him to kill him, knowing that “the Witch” must kill him in order to maintain the façade in the Protectorate. However, with Sister Ignatia out of the Protectorate and no longer actively stirring up sorrow at every turn, Ethyne is able to begin rallying people to her and Antain’s side, showing clearly that people who are forced to actively grieve every minute of every day can’t operate at their full potential and can’t experience what it’s like to feel hopeful or in control. Put another way, Sister Ignatia’s constant sorrowful presence and being consistently exposed to the trauma of losing children keeps people in the Protectorate from ever healing. More broadly, while people who experience loss of any kind can and should grieve for their loved ones, the novel makes the case that the issue arises when people never have the opportunity to move on and reorient themselves to more hopeful things.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon offers an example of a healthier way of dealing with sorrow after the volcano’s explosion, when Xan declines and ultimately dies. While Luna and her friends certainly grieve for Xan, they also have the skills to put a more positive spin on her death—she was more than 500 years old, lived a full life, and spent her life making those of others better. When Xan finally does die, Luna focuses on these aspects and on the future in order to handle her grief. While this is, of course, not a perfect parallel to the loss parents experienced on the Day of Sacrifice (which was senseless and pointless, while Xan’s death was natural and expected), it nevertheless encourages readers to consider that while sorrow may be an element of the normal range of human emotions, it shouldn’t be the dominant one. Rather, meeting sad experiences with hope allows individuals to frame those events in ways that allow them to heal and look to the future with curiosity and understanding.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Sorrow vs. Hope ThemeTracker
Sorrow vs. Hope Quotes in The Girl Who Drank the Moon
They left knowing that there surely wasn’t a witch. There never had been a witch. There were only a dangerous forest and a single road and a thin grip on a life that the Elders had enjoyed for generations. The Witch—that is, the belief in her—made for a frightened people, a subdued people, a compliant people, who lived their lives in a saddened haze, the clouds of their grief numbing their senses and dampening their minds. It was terribly convenient for the Elders’ unencumbered rule.
Sometimes. I have this dream. About your brother. He would be eighteen now. No. Nineteen. I have this dream that he has dark hair and luminous skin and stars in his eyes. I dream that when he smiles, it shines for miles around. Last night I dreamed that he waited next to a tree for a girl to walk by. And he called her name, and held her hand, and his heart pounded when he kissed her.
What? No. I’m not crying. Why would I cry? Silly thing.
Xan visited the Free Cities twice a year, once with Luna and once without. She did not explain to the child the purpose for her solo visit—nor did she tell her about the sad town on the other side of the forest, or of the babies left in that small clearing, presumably to die. She’d have to tell the girl eventually, of course. One day, Xan told herself. Not now. It was too sad. And Luna was too little to understand.
But he didn’t kill the Witch. The Witch killed him instead.
This is why it doesn’t pay to be brave. Bravery makes nothing, protects nothing, results in nothing. It only makes you dead. And this is why we don’t stand up to the Witch. Because even a powerful old wizard was no match for her.
“I remember. All at once.” He shook his head. “Why had I forgotten?”
Xan pushed her wrinkled lips to one side. “Sorrow is dangerous. Or, at least, it was. I can’t remember why, now. I think we both became accustomed to not remembering things. We just let things get...foggy.”
The madwoman in the Tower could not remember her own name.
She could remember no one’s name.
What was a name, anyway? You can’t hold it. You can’t smell it. You can’t rock it to sleep. You can’t whisper your love to it over and over and over again. There was once a name that she treasured above all others. But it had flown away, like a bird. And she could not coax it back.
What if we are wrong about the Witch? What if we are wrong about the sacrifice? Antain wondered. The question itself was revolutionary. And astonishing. What would happen if we tried?
Why had the thought never occurred to him before?
And the things that they did not speak of began to outweigh the things that they did. Each secret, each unspoken thing was round and hard and heavy and cold, like a stone hung around the necks of both grandmother and girl.
Their backs bent under the weight of secrets.
They say she even stole it from the moon. And then she cast a spell over all of us—a great cloud of sorrow, covering the world.
Well, of course it covers the world. That’s why the world is drab and gray. That’s why hope is only for the smallest of children. Best you learn that now.
While it was annoying to have to go hungry in one’s own home, there was always sorrow aplenty throughout the Protectorate, hanging over the town like a cloud.
Or normally there was. But this blasted hope stirred up by Antain was spreading through the town, disrupting the sorrow. Sister Ignatia felt her stomach rumble.
But the volcano never really went out. The wizard stopped it up, but it went underground. And it leaks its fury into the water pools and the mud vats and the noxious vents. It poisons the Bog. It contaminates the water. It is the reason why our children go hungry and our grandmothers wither and our crops are so often doomed to fail. It is the reason we cannot ever leave this place and there is no use trying.
“Today the doors are opening.”
“Even to the library?” Wyn said hopefully.
“Especially the library. Knowledge is powerful, but it is a terrible power when it is hoarded and hidden. Today, knowledge is for everyone.” She hooked her arm in Wyn’s, and they hurried through the Tower, unlocking doors.
But as the clouds broke and the sky began to clear, they found themselves feeling something else, too. Something they had never felt before.
Here is the baby holding her own sweet baby. My grandchild. Here is her knowing that no one will ever take that child away.
Hope. They felt hope.
Here is the baby in his circle of friends. He is laughing. He loves his life.
Joy. They felt joy.
