Violence is a habit, as this passage about an unimportant secondary character – the son of a coffin-maker – illustrates: “ He did no more than what a normal fellow does to his wife on returning home from the tavern on Saturday evening – just gave her a kicking, slapped her a few times, and nothing more.” These are horrible people in a horrible world.
Violence is also depicted in a casual, banal way that frames it as an ever-present element in the lives of the common folk. For example, they meet a noble couple that likes to hunt and kill children for sport: they look at Ciri as potential prey, but give up trying to buy her after seeing the look in the mercenary’s face. They are people.”ĭuring her captivity, Ciri comes across people so sickening that they disgust even Bonhart. They are not demons, not devils… Worse than that. The Tower of the Swallow displays this notion early on when a kid gets frightened by some dark riders that came in the night: “ Mamma, are they demons? Is it the Wild Hunt? Phantoms from hell?” he asks, and the mother quickly replies, “ Quiet, quiet, children.
THE TOWER OF THE SWALLOW SERIES
Geralt’s profession seems a thing of the past and of little importance now: who cares about a striga or a banshee when a single man is capable of such cruelty? The series has always been moving in this direction, showing how the real danger lies in a cruel man, not in a vampire. That’s what’s inside us all,” he explains to her.īonhart is more wicked and evil than any monster that has ever appeared in the Witcher books. She loved these people, but now their humanity is gone and what remains is just the flesh, which can be cut and torn apart with ease: “ Then have a look, she-rat. This is the lesson he wants Ciri to learn when he displays to her the bodies of some of her friends and starts to mutilate them. The mercenary treats death as the ultimate dehumanizing event: after it, a person becomes just a pile of rotting flesh. She thinks she personifies the concept, bringing this ill fate to those near and dear to her: “ I am death,” she warns an old man that helps her hide in an isolated cottage, “ Everyone who encounters me dies.” Bonhart also personifies death, but its cold, raw side. I take no responsibility.”Ĭiri’s narrative arc is about her relationship with death. Pronouns mean a lot, and the mercenary uses them to dehumanize Ciri, showing his contempt for the little witcher by referring to her as something akin to a dog that can bite: “ Please don’t touch,” he advises a man about Ciri, “ Don’t feed it.
He punches and kicks her, he drags her through muddy streets, undresses her in front of people, puts a collar on her neck, and makes her fight to the death with strangers for his pleasure. Bonhart, with his heart of bone, is a sadistic man who takes pleasure in torturing Ciri both physically and psychologically. Soon, however, tragedy strikes and she’s captured by a ruthless mercenary called Bonhart. The protagonist in Tower of the Swallow is once again Ciri, who is working with a young group of thieves and taking a liking to one of its female members. Geralt of Rivia is still lost in his search for his young apprentice, but this is not his story.
French, illustrates how the series has changed with each passing book: if at first, we had a collection of short stories that sarcastically played with fairy tales to discuss the importance of taking a stand in political matters, now we have a novel about violence and death that treats these subjects with shocking rawness. The sixth book of The Witcher series, written by Andrzej Sapkowski and translated to English by David A. “ At that moment sounded the howl of the fell beann’shie, the harbinger of imminent and violent death, and across the black sky galloped the Wild Hunt – a procession of fiery-eyed phantoms on skeleton horses, their tattered cloaks and standards fluttering behind them.
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