Hope

Maintaining hope keeps people moving forward. Several characters in the novel know the importance of clinging to hope.

Tane is one character who has hope for the future, and her hope shows itself early in the novel. Tane has spent most of her life working toward becoming a dragonrider, and she holds onto the hope that she will be good enough to reach that goal. While most of her hopes are fueled by her incessant work, she is sometimes wistful. On Choosing Day – the day she will learn if she has a chance to become a dragonrider or will be sent to some other vocation, Tane “stitched her gaze to the horizon” (24). She is looking forward with the hope that her future will be all she imagines it can be. Tane experiences loss of hope later, when her rank as dragonrider is stripped away and she...