Scythe: Allusions 3 key examples

The novel makes clear that religions from the mortal age have all but disappeared. Still, these commandments seem to have the commandments from the Old Testament in mind. These 10 Commandments, which are referred to both in the book of Exodus and throughout the Bible, are well known in western culture. The Scythe Commandments emulate the biblical ones, first and foremost, in the use of the pronoun "thou." In many English translations of the Bible, "thou" is a familiar pronoun, used with people of equal or lower position, while "you" is a formal pronoun. Thus God would always use "thou" when speaking to a human. The use of "thou" in the Scythe Commandments gives them an ancient tone, as if the early scythes wanted to make the commandments sound more convincing by making them sound older. 

The Scythe Commandments also draw directly from the biblical commandments in their structure. The first Scythe Commandment, "Thou shalt kill," is a striking reversal of the fifth commandment in the Bible, "Thou shalt not kill." There are similarities between other commandments as well: granting immunity to the family members of the gleaned seems to connect to the fourth commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." It appears that early scythes manipulated the Judeo-Christian commandments to apply to a post-mortal world, while retaining the original commandments' biblical tone.

Note, though, that Curie herself does not see this connection. In fact she knows very little about the origin of the commandments at all: "I wish I would have asked them how the commandments came about. What led to each one? How did they decide upon the wording? Were there any that were jettisoned before the final ten were written in stone?" Curie's apparent confusion shows how separated the post-mortal world is from the culture and customs of the mortal one. While the allusions to the biblical commandments are obvious to any modern reader, they perplex even one of the most educated scythes.

For most scythes, there is no strong relationship between their Patron Historic (their namesake) and their character. Curie, however, thinks that the literature of Cervantes in fact does describe the scythe who took his name. Cervantes was a Spanish author who, in 1605, published Don Quixote, which is widely considered the first modern novel as well as one of the premier achievements in the history of world literature. The novel describes Don Quixote, a hapless knight, who goes on a series of quests to prove his chivalry.

In a famous scene early in the novel, Don Quixote sees some windmills in the distance and takes them for giants. He charges over to attack them, piercing one of the windmill's wings with his spear; the windmill keeps turning, pulling the knight up and off his horse before he tumbles clumsily to the ground. The common idiom "tilting at windmills" refers to this scene and describes fighting too hard for a meaningless cause. Curie uses this idiom to describe how Scythe Cervantes will administer the test—it will likely be some physical challenge, and likely not very thoughtful, just like Don Quixote's attack on the windmills.

Rowan beats Chomsky with the "toning mallet" "like the hammer of Thor." This simile alludes to the Mjolnir, the hammer of the Norse thunder god Thor. One of Thor's most important qualities, as described in the mythology, is his complete, unrelenting slaughter of his foes. Here Rowan, like Thor, seems totally committed to beating Chomsky to death and beyond. He beats him repetitively, again as Thor would, so much that it is "as if he were toning the hour." This toning of the hour was one of the practices of the Tonist cult. As such, in his attack on Chomsky, Rowan emulates both Thor's hammer and the practices of the Tonists. Rowan attacks Chomsky with a force that is divine in its strength and intention—both the mortal-age divinity of Thor and the post-mortal divinity of the Tonists.