If a person is different and if their talents are not the norm inside the society, the others will try to get rid of such person because she represents a liability. Because of this, she can be seen as a metaphor for the capitalist society, driven by the need to earn more money and to make everything and everyone as useful as possible. The person who stresses Kira’s incapability to work is Vandara. The reason why they did it was because they saw Kira as being useless and a burden to the community. Vandara convinced other women that Kira was useless so they all agreed to do everything in their power to drive her out of the village. Vandara is a powerful character who seems to be able to influence those around her.

They simply do those things because those before them did them too. The community usually respects unwritten rules and traditions and offers all their power to a selected few even if they do not know why they do such thing. Their actions are seen as a metaphor that stands for the way people treat figures with authority in general and traditions.

When Kira and Vandara enter the room where the Elders hold meetings, they both bow in front of a crucifix despite the fact that they do not know what it represents or for what it stands for. They are not to be trusted or left on their own, let alone let to make decisions and be treated as slightly more intelligent creatures than an animal raised for slaughter. Here, Vandara treats the children as one would treat livestock and the comparison between the two groups highlights the idea that children are seen as being powerless in the society. The women from the village planned to build a pen for the healthy children in the village. When Vandara comes and tells Kira that she no longer can live on the land her mother used to live, she also reveals what the village plans to build on that plot. The act of burning and fire in the novel are used here as a metaphor for cleansing, as it appears in instances when people would feel the need for a new start or the need to break away from a painful part of their past. Kira mentions that when more people in the village get sick, whether it the disease were related or not, the people left alive may choose to burn every house in the village. The reason why that person’s house was being burnt was because the villagers hoped to avoid spreading the disease that killed the person in question by burning the place where the disease started. In the society where Kira lives, the villagers have the tradition of burning the house of a recently deceased person. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.

Gathering blue book