[pepesilvia.jpg] What if this is foreshadowing? What if by the conclusion of the series, Harrow is 22? What if she and Gideon have four more years of suffering ahead of them?? Four years and a universe away?
In the Mithraeum, Ianthe was teaching herself to cheat death by experimenting on apples:
Harrow was chillin in Ianthe’s room before the universe’s worst dinner party and she ate one of the apples. W-wha?! Harrow does not just nonchalantly. Eat. Food.
What does it mean???
There’s a parallel with Persephone, who rejects food while in the underworld but finally eats from a pomegranate, which traps her there with Hades for part of every year. By eating Ianthe’s apple, has Harrow bound them together? Or is Jod analogous to Hades in this comparison, and Ianthe merely his minion? Not to mention other instances in folklore where eating food in fairyland traps you there.
Then there is Eve eating forbidden fruit* from the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden, at the coaxing of the serpent. Is Ianthe the serpent, encouraging Harrow to sin by arranging the opportunity to kill G1deon? Though that act does not expel her from Jod’s grace.
I dunno my dudes. I love the symbolism in these novels that is so heavy handed but at the same time can be compared to a whole array of mythology and classic literature. I have more thoughts on Magic Fruit, but these are the most obvious atm.
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*The tradition of referring to the forbidden fruit as an apple is merely a headcanon of the Bible fandom.
