ATLA Book Two: Earth
Chapter Four: The Swamp
In which Sokka gets an
elbow leech, Iroh sings a song, and Momo throws away Sokka’s shirt.
“The Swamp” takes us to a mystical setting for a story that
plays with horror tropes for the first time since Koh scared the living daylights
out of us in “The Siege of the North”. It is a mystical setting that draws
power out of the unknown, of the tension between past and future that allows
for a further exploration of the tension between season one and season two that
has informed the first section of the second book.
The tension is most clearly apparent through the visions of
people close to the Gaang from the past and future that appear throughout the
swamp, visions that echo key parts of the first and second seasons. Sokka’s
vision of Yue in particular emphasises the continued presence of book one in
this part of Book Two. Seeing Yue softens her fridging to a point, as it
reminds us that she has level of consciousness after her death, but in other
ways it deepens the extent to which her death is a fridging. The scenes are not
so much about what becoming a spirit means for her as much as they are about
losing her means to Sokka. The focus of her sole line of dialogue is to
emphasise Sokka’s guilt at failing to protect her, and beyond her physical
appearance, we are given nothing to emphasise any retention of her human self
now she is a spirit. That said, discussion of fridging aside, the scene shows
that the series is willing to deal with grief in a way that acknowledges its
lasting effect, with a reminder that Yue’s death was not a moment for cheap
drama, but something that has a profound effect on the people who cared for
her.
Where Sokka and Yue represent the past of the show, Aang’s
glimpse of Toph hints at the future of it. Toph is introduced through her
laughter, immediately a teasing figure, with her running as Aang chases after
her serving as a slight foreshadowing of Aang’s struggle to track her down and
persuade her to teach him in “The Blind Bandit”. Interestingly, she is seen in
her Beifong robes, not the “Blind Bandit” outfit that will become her iconic
look for the show. This choice is partly plot purposed, as Aang seeing her
robes and the family crest enable him to find her in “The Blind Bandit”. The
choice of Toph’s costume is also an act misdirection: with Aang searching for
one at this point in the series, the obvious candidate for the person from
Aang’s future for her to be is his Earthbending teacher. But as she isn’t in
her fighting outfit, she looks like a slight rich girl, not the Earthbending
master we will learn she is. Her introduction highlights the tension central to
her character: the episode’s theme about things not always being what they seem
is embodied in the introduction of Toph, a character whose appearance is made
to defy expectations.
If Sokka and Aang’s plots represent the past and future,
then Katara’s glimpse of her mother represent the present of her internal
journey. Her bond with her mother has been a part of her character, and a
crucial part of the show from the beginning, informing multiple aspects of her
character in Book One, but it is a bond that stays through to the ending of the
show, always being a part of her character: it is something the show always has
the capacity to bring back and expand upon.
The tension between the first two Books is also evident in
Zuko and Iroh’s plot, a b plot that sees them pushed right on to the fringes of
the narrative, with only two brief scenes that nonetheless take on a great deal
of structural weight by serving as the framing of the episode, beginning and
closing this chapter of book two. We see Zuko struggling to adjust to having
fallen to the sidelines of the world and the story, begging for money on the
streets of the Earth Kingdom, and watching Iroh be bullied by a swordsman. This
further develops Zuko’s position from the previous episode. There, he met a
person who had suffered from the Fire Nation’s war, now he spends some time
living the life of someone on the fringes of society. Iroh is trying to help
him adjust to this setting, once again attempting to placate Zuko by spinning thir
situation in the most positive light possible, even smiling after the swordsman
gives him the gold piece. And Iroh’s song “It’s a long long way to Ba Sing Se”
also provides a key statement of the series’ structure: all the main characters
are slowly making their way to Ba Sing Se. The shape of Book Two’s narrative is
slowly beginning to emerge.
The transition between Book One and Book Two is further
evident in the final reappearance of the Blue Spirit, as Zuko re-adopts the
persona he used to steal Aang from Zhao. Here, he takes on a new role for the
persona, as it becomes his way of surviving in the Earth Kingdom, and keeping
his sense of self-worth, whereas for most of “The Blue Spirit”, he seemed like
a potential ally for Aang, and the Blue Spirit’s identity was at least framed
as a mystery. Now we know it is Zuko’s adopted persona, it becomes a way of
exploring his double identity, a sign of his fractured state of mind. The Blue
Spirit is a part of who Zuko is this season in a way it wasn’t in Book One.
This transformation also furthers the sense of Zuko as an anti-hero: he fights
genuinely loathsome bully of a swordsman, and gives him his comeuppance, taking
the swords to reclaim the persona of his anti-hero alter ego. Now he’s not a
threat to Aang, we genuinely root for Zuko to do well in his plot thread.
Ultimately, the episode is very much about its main location.
The story is about understanding the nature of the swamp, a mystical, spiritual
space, episode full of binary oppositions: rational and irrational, nature and
humanity, mundane and the spiritual. The task of the protagonists is discovers
what parts of these oppositions truly apply to the Swamp.
This task is carried out in the episode’s debate between the
rational and the irrational. Once again, Sokka takes on the rationalist stance,
rejecting the sense anything strange could be going on, while Aang and Katara
are more readily accepting and unnerved by the swamp’s mystical nature. And
again, Sokka’s stance is out of place in the Avatar world, where strange and
irrational things dwell in abundance. In this case his rationalism isn’t merely
ineffective but understandable, as it was in “The Fortuneteller”, but is
instead completely out of place in this episode, making the Gaang’s situation
worse while shining very little light on the nature of the swamp.
While the swamp is clearly a mystical space, it is also
defined by its human population. The plot thread of the swampies attacking Appa
and Momo provides a further example of the tension between nature and humanity,
with humanity being shown as a threat, something dangerous and scary, and we
are asked to sympathise with the animals Appa and Momo, who are characters we
have followed and grown to love: it is a plot thread that asks us to sympathise
with the other. It is also a plot strand that emphasises the bond between Appa
and Momo, which will be crucial to later arcs in the season. It is a bond that
is naturally explored without dialogue, but also through the unique animal
behaviour of the two. We see them bicker, assist and protect each other, and
with no attempt to anthropomorphise them, the story successfully conveys their
feelings and bond.
The central mystery of the episode revolves around these
binary tensions, which are built up through the episode’s use of horror tropes,
such as the slowly growing dread, and the Gaang being split up by an unknown
force to face the terrors of the swamp. And while the nature of their attacker,
and the threat from the swamp, is revealed to be a human, not some force of
nature, a sense of the mystical underpins the episode. The Gaang’s unknown
summons to the swamp remain unknown: the inexplicable nature of the swamp is
never truly diminished.
The Banyan Grove Tree at the centre of the swamp holds the
key to the nature of the episode, with Huu’s statement everything is connected providing
the episode’s second key line for the season. The interconnectedness of the
world is a key theme that holds the many interweaving plot strands and threads
of the season together. The interconnectedness of the world is particularly
evident in this episode, as the rational and irrational, past and future, and
the scary and familiar all exist in the same location, not in opposition to one
another, but happily occupying the same space.
End of Part Twenty
Two.
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