“The Fifth Season” by N. K. Jemisin (post 3): Orogene/Rogga (Negro/Nigga), Essun’s memory gap, Syenite’s gibbering alternate personality

A third of the way through this novel, there are three more things of note.

One interesting sidelight is that this African-American author’s term for the main characters, “orogenes”—people who, according to the novel’s glossary, have “the ability to manipulate thermal, kinetic and related forms of energy to address seismic events”—appears to be “negro” backwards.

I didn’t realize this until “orogene” appeared on the same page with the novel’s derogatory term for orogenes, “rogga” (1, pp. 120, 144), which sounds similar to “nigga.” And when I then googled this issue, I found that other readers had made the same interpretation.

As to further suggestions of multiple personality in the first third of the novel, I would note two possibilities. The first is from a chapter involving the protagonist, Essun (with whom the reader is supposed to be identified). She is traveling south to find her husband (who had killed their son) and her daughter (alive). Essun is thinking that traveling south, away from an earthquake up north, is the only sane direction for her husband to have fled.

“Of course, a man who would beat his own child to death might not still fit the label of sane. And a woman who found that child and stopped thinking for three days…hmm, not you, either. Nothing to do but follow your crazy, though” (1, p. 79). This seems to mean that her having “stopped thinking for three days” means that she may be crazy, too. But it might describe a three-day multiple personality memory gap.

Another chapter features the orogene, Syenite, who witnesses something very disturbing, and is trying to distract herself by focusing on concrete details, so as not to feel too disturbed: “She focuses on all this, these little details, because it helps. Because there’s a part of her that’s gibbering, and the only way she can keep that part internal and silent is to concentrate on everything she is seeing” (1, p. 139).

This appears to mean that “a part of her” (an alternate personality) inside is so upset that it is “gibbering.” And if Syenite doesn’t distract herself, she fears that her alternate personality might get so upset that it will no longer remain inside, but might come out and speak out, which could be embarrassing.

1. N. K. Jemisin. The Fifth Season. New York, Obit Hachette, 2015.