62 pages • 2 hours read
R. F. KuangThe Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Destruction and Inhumanity of War
Rin experiences the grim reality of war, realizing that neither her side nor her opponents have a clear ethical high ground and that wartime violence affects different demographics of people to varying degrees. There is no clear “right” or “wrong” side in a conflict, and even when Rin believes she has the moral high ground, she finds it difficult to justify committing retributive violence. Through her experiences, the novel suggests that all wars—even those that might seem justified—are tragedies.
Rin struggles with guilt after destroying Mugen. She tells herself that this is an “irrational feeling” and not a “moral concept” (15), even though her own unreliable narration shows she only wants to believe that it’s irrational. She “[tells] herself she [isn’t] sorry” for destroying Mugen though she nevertheless feels guilty and “the memory loom[s] like a gaping chasm in her mind” (15). Rin realizes that her act of violence isn’t justifiable, even though the Federation committed genocide against her people, the Speerly. The reality of war is that innocent people died as a result of the genocide she perpetrated in Mugen, and she struggles with this. She thinks about “[m]others reaching for their children” or “[h]usbands wrapping their arms around their wives,” dying “with no idea why their skin was scorching off” (63). In this way, she realizes that her ancestors, the Speerly, and her supposed enemies, the Mugenese, are not so different as they both lost innocent lives to war. In her mind, “the two islands blurred together […] because in all cases the narrative was the same” (63): They each had civilians who died as collateral in a war without clear protagonists and antagonists.
Rin also observes how war deepens class divisions and inequalities, and she notices that the effects of war do not cease with the battles. When she sees impoverished Nikara refugees begging for aid, she says, “I thought I brought peace” (104). She realizes that her assumption that all of Nikara would flourish without the Mugenese invasion was a false construct that she used to justify her wartime actions. Nezha tells Rin that she only brought “victory,” and that she was witnessing the aftermath of wartime violence. He lists the aftereffects of the war: displacement, famine, crime, scarcity, and more. However, in the rich city of Lusan, Rin realizes that the wealthiest citizens are “untouched by the refugee crisis that [has] swept the rest of the country” and can “afford to focus on luxury” (128). The reality of war is that the poorest civilians are affected the most by violence.
Further, Rin also notices that war destroys the natural world. After the battle in Arlong, “lush greenery” is “replaced by withered dead trees and ash” (599). The bodies in the river threaten to “poiso[n] the water supply for years to come” (601). While war immediately affects people, often along class lines, it can also decimate the landscape, which has the potential to negatively impact people for years and generations. Thus, even the so-called “victorious” side in a war is left with dead and wounded people, poverty, and large-scale destruction.
The Complexities of Power and Oppression
Rin and her allies grapple with the destruction and inhumanity of war, leading her to question whether her side is truly justified in its actions. She also considers to what degree she and her allies—especially Vaisra—are actively complicit in the oppression of both their own people and other marginalized groups. The novel therefore troubles the binary distinction between “victims” and “victimizers” even as it critiques exploitative power dynamics.
Rin feels guilty about her dehumanizing view of the Mugenese. Under the influence of laudanum, she sometimes regards her genocide “as if she had set an anthill on fire” and feels “no guilt in killing insects” (29). While she sometimes thinks about the blameless innocents she killed, she often justifies her actions by using a logic of oppression—she dehumanizes her enemies and excuses her complicity in their oppression and ultimate genocide. Rin equates her actions with Chaghan and Qara’s decision to break the dam that killed and displaced millions of Nikara. These acts are instances of complicity in oppression, rather than justifiable wartime violence—Rin understands the “balance of power” between them and their victims, since she and her hyper-powerful allies could “[wave] a hand and millions [are] crushed” (111). This conscious exploitation of an unequal power dynamic is a key factor of their complicity in oppressive violence.
This complicity is most evident when Vaisra allies with the Hesperians. Though Rin doesn’t realize Vaisra’s complicity until later, it is foreshadowed early on when Rin asks Nezha if Vaisra is “selling [her] for their aid” (224). Vaisra understands the power he holds over Rin, and he uses this to control and manipulate her; he even uses her life and body as a bartering chip with the Hesperians, who see her as a “lesser” type of human than them. Before acknowledging her complicity, Rin recognizes Vaisra’s role in occupying, displacing, and oppressing Nikara southerners. Only after seeing entire villages of frozen refugees does she realize that she “never once paused to consider just how many people they had killed or displaced” (333). Rin saw Vaisra coercing villages to vote to join the Republic under threat of death, but these instances initially seemed like isolated and necessary tactics rather than part of a systemic disenfranchisement.
Rin fully understands Vaisra’s complicity when she discovers the extent of his collaboration with Hesperia. She realizes Vaisra purposefully let the Federation “kill hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands” to destabilize the country (521). Additionally, Hesperia’s inaction in the war wasn’t a “political mistake” but a deliberate stalling tactic to let masses of people die before colonizing the area. Vaisra’s alignment with Hesperia in the oppression of the Nikara is ultimately tragic, as all Hesperians continue to believe that the “white race” is superior to the Nikara people (320), whether they temporarily ally with them or not. Vaisra’s pale skin, technology, warfare strategies, willingness to assimilate, and his wife’s Makerism all give him proximity to Hesperian whiteness; however, the nature of Hesperian oppression, imperialism, and colonialism ensures that they will always prioritize their own interests.
The Impact of Religion on Conflict and Conquest
The clash between Nikara shamanism, which worships polytheistic gods of the pantheon, and Hesperia’s monotheistic Makerism underscores the conflict between two different worldviews. In both cases, the novel suggests that religion can be a powerful tool—but not necessarily a positive one.
In Nikan, shamans and steppe clans alike use psychedelics to ascend to a spiritual plane where they can commune with their pantheon of gods. This method avoids bringing the gods into the human world, as they are powerful and driven by fundamental instincts, making their physical presence dangerous. Instead, humans go to the realm of the gods, using psychedelics as a conduit. This traditional method—mirroring practices of various historical cultures such as pre-Incan Abya Yala nations, Vedic, Zoroastrian, and Bantu people, and even early Christians—uses psychedelics “to commune with the divine and create bonds among the living and the dead” (“Psychedelics (Entheogens) and Spirituality.” UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics).
However, the Trifecta abandon this careful approach when they learn how to call the gods from the Ketreyids and then exploit this knowledge. They forsake the “wisdom” of the Ketreyid approach to religious communication for the sake of power. This recklessness can have devastating consequences when the shaman is inevitably overpowered by their god; an example of this is Feylen, whose wind god uses his body to decimate whole fleets of ships. The Sorqan Sira tells Rin that steppe clans would “never dream of the folly your shamans commit” (383); she says that shamans “are the only people foolish enough to call the gods into the world” (383). Despite recognizing this danger, Rin still encourages shamanism because she does not want to give up the power she gains from being a shaman. She wants to raise an army of shamans to fight against Hesperian imperialism.
In contrast, Hesperian Makerism is a monotheistic religion reminiscent of European Christianity. Jiang taught Rin that Hesperians “think they are lords of the world” and so they “like to think something in their own image created the universe” (235). Like European colonizers, the Hesperians use their religion to justify their colonial ambitions and missionary endeavors. Petra calls the Nikara “lesser peoples” and uses a pseudoscience called physiognomy to support her false claims that Nikara have “smaller” brains and that Hesperians need to “fix” and “civilize” Nikara people. The Hesperians also see shamanism as a manifestation of “Chaos,” the evil force in their own religion. Nezha tells Rin that a shamanic army is “precisely what the Hesperians are terrified of” (618). While Nikara shamans weaponize their religion to create shamans to fight defensive wars, Hesperians use their religion to influence their larger cultural ideologies and justify imperialism and colonization.
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By R. F. Kuang
