There’s a line on the cover of Red Rising from author Scott Sigler: “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow”. Scott is placing Darrow in a master class of sci-fi protagonists, and yet, Darrow stands out. Darrow’s journey and the choices he had to make are more complex than those others listed. Darrow’s purpose becomes clear very early on in the story. He is needed to raise up and break the chains. In order to do so he must become a Gold and infiltrate their ranks. The Sovereign must be stopped, in order to make that dream reality. By the end of his journey, he accomplishes his goal. The path that ultimately leads to the ending, though, was filled with some dark and debatable moments for young Darrow. Many innocent lives were lost in the fulfillment of Eo’s dream, which has led us to wonder: Was Darrow right in what he did? At what times did Darrow venture down the wrong fork in the road? What decisions did Darrow make that could have spared lives? Let’s figure this out once and for all:
Brandon Wood:
I think it's important to at least start this conversation by saying that all of our opinions and thoughts are in hindsight. We have already seen the results of Darrow's decisions in Iron Gold, and whether or not those played to his advantage. So, while keeping that in mind, I guess the first aspect I'd like to talk about is Darrow and Roque's relationship. This is a huge part of the series and to me, one of the biggest what ifs. What if Darrow had enough trust in Roque to fill him in? Would the Poet have up and tried to murder him or would he have been the friend Darrow needed? I believe in Roque and I personally think that he would have been the extra logical voice in the room next to Mustang. Darrow had enough “act now and move, move, move” angels on his shoulder. It wouldn't have been bad to have another one who rationally thought out tactics a little more.
Jon Dau:
Look, you aren’t going to get any arguments from me that Darrow screwed up in a major way with Roque. He was his closest friend and Darrow pushed him away with multiple important lies and decisions. With Cassius, it was at least one giant action that was ultimately out of Darrow’s control, but he consciousnessly kept chipping away at the trust that held him and Roque together until it was too much. You’re right that Roque would have been the perfect stabilizer to Darrow’s fire, but as I try to look into the future of this imaginary world where Roque and Darrow are still together as friends, I keep seeing an ending that’s similar to the one that actually occurred. Darrow wasn’t ever going to stop lying and he wasn’t going to stop making drastic decisions without cluing in those around him. It’s part of what makes him so brilliant and effective, but eventually this would have led to Roque turning his back on him anyways.
I’m also not convinced Roque would have followed Darrow once he discovered what he was and what he was fighting for. Roque was kind and thoughtful, yes, but he was also proud, as well as blinded by the benefits that came with the structure of the caste system set in place. He would treat lowcolors kindly, but not as equals. I don’t think he saw them as equals, but rather an important piece of the foundation that held up his golden world. I could be wrong. I very much hope I’m wrong. Maybe Roque would have seen the cracks in the system of the society had Darrow been able to trust him and keep him close, but I see there always being a too strong of a difference in mentalities between the two. They were going to end up broken at some point. I truly want it to have worked out, and any world would be a better place with Roque in it, but with his pride and commitment to the ways that he always knew, I don’t see how it could have happened.
Roque was, to me, maybe the most frustrating mishap that Darrow made. I don’t believe, though, that in the grand scheme of things, it was Darrow’s most egregious offense. So many innocent lives were lost in Darrow’s fulfillment of Eo’s dream that it sometimes makes me feel guilty to continuously dwell on the one Gold that we became emotionally attached to. While at The Rim, he traded the locations of the camps of the Sons of Ares, which was basically a death sentence to his fellow brethren. He ALSO destroyed the docks of Ganymede! I understand the logic behind the decision for the most part, but that was thousands of lowcolor lives that he gave up when he may not have even needed to. If that’s the price that has to be paid on the road that Darrow took, then maybe it means he should have looked harder for another road.
BW:
You're right, he might have been too proud a Gold to accept Darrow. Roque was set in his ways, but he was also young. Young enough that maybe he could have been swayed to fight the good fight. He also might have taken the Mustang route, where he just needed time to process the information. Darrow being a red “makes him inferior” to Golds like Roque, and I think, like you said, it's just wishful thinking they could have been on the same side. There will always be a part of me that thinks they could have been friends, even more so than Sevro and Darrow. Roque’s death was a tragedy that I think Darrow could have avoided had he just opened up.
On to your point about the shoot first and ask questions later mentality of Darrow, again I agree. In order to save his people he does some messed up things. The Ganymede docks is probably the most blaring evidence of this. He was willing to sacrifice many innocent lives for his cause. Does that make him much better than the Sovereign? Just because he views his way as right, does it make it right? Don't get me wrong the system in place is terrible and should have been changed, but Darrow made a bad move there.
Darrow's aggression mixed with his ego is a deadly pair. He sometimes was a little too confident and as time went on he got better at keeping it check, but if he had just taken care of the Jackal from the beginning instead of toying with him, Pax would still be here. Or at the very least he would have made it through the Institute. Having a person like Pax in your squad would definitely have made things easier for Darrow.
JD:
Pax is great and it’s a bummer that he had to go so early, but if I can be honest, I don’t blame Darrow for his death. We had no idea of the extent of the crazy in the Jackal’s head. If someone started sawing off their hand in front of me, I might freeze too. It was an insane move by the Jackal and it worked. Rest in Peace Pax, but Darrow was not the culprit, the Jackal was.
Now we’ve been hammering Darrow pretty hard, so maybe let’s try to look at it from the other side. Wars are ugly. There wasn’t going to be a change in the society structure without the sacrifice of uncountable lives. It takes someone willing to get their hands dirty in order to create change. This isn’t a Disney movie. This wasn’t going to happen with song and dance and conversation, so in comes Darrow to bloody everything up. There are moments where sacrificing lives would have worked, but he found ways around it. I come back to the taking of the Vanguard, when he could have vented the ship and he probably would have made it out fine and without much of a struggle. He blatantly says he isn’t going to sacrifice thousands of lives to get rid of sixty or so enemies. Do you think the Sovereign or the Ash Lord would have had that same restraint? Do you think even Golds like Roque or Cassius or Sevro would have? Darrow seems to have the heart to keep what is morally right at the front of his mind while also having the brains and the balls to pull these things off.
I don’t know. Am I just making excuses for him? Could he have found even more peaceful ways of causing change? Maybe, but if he leaves Ganymede be, and The Rim decides to come collect the spoils of war from the aftermath of the Sovereign’s death, do we then think Darrow should have destroyed the docks? It’s easy for us to say that what he had to do in order to achieve Eo’s dream was too far off of the moral compass, but in the end it worked didn’t it? The chains broke. The more I say these things out loud the more I’m thinking that Darrow may have actually been right in a lot of what he did. Am I crazy? He did some messed up stuff, but still.
BW:
Yeah, the Jackal is a messed up and unpredictable person, but there were also stories of him resorting to cannibalism to survive. His name was the Jackal, and he didn't earn that for no reason. I get it's summer camp and rumors spread, but in a game of life and death those rumors need to be taken seriously.
I'm not saying that Darrow didn't do any good while trying to overthrow the corruption. I think he made choices that, again in hindsight, were dumb. He could have set up something with the people of Io, but instead, he kills. He also let Victra be the one to pull the trigger. I know she insisted, but still, he shouldn't have let her put that blood on her hands.
As far as the Vanguard goes, he also knew that he needed more people, because at the time they didn't have a lot of them. It was a brilliant way to both benefit him and the lowcolors aboard the ship. He let them make the choice of death, or living for something more. I think Darrow had some chances to take the peaceful route and a couple times he did, sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't.
I don't hate Darrow. I respect him for making the choices I know I couldn't. One thing I did love about Darrow is how easily it was for him to sell people on Eo's dream. He helped open people's eyes to what could be. His speeches were perfect at inspiring many who were fine with the status quo. Darrow wasn't okay with how things were, and that fiery passion, even in the hardest of times, was a tool he needed to help create change.
JD:
That was a very diplomatic answer Brandon, but yeah, you make some decent points. They may not have been able to get the Vanguard out of there if he had vented the ship, so maybe it was for a little more selfish of reasons. That selfish reason could have led to better decisions down the line, though, because of how well it turned out. If I made a giant controversial decision, and ended up with Ragnar, I’d start to rethink some of my genocides too. Maybe it prevented more killings down the road. We may never know.
I feel like at some point we may have to take up a hard stance on the subject at hand. I say that knowing that I don’t know if I’m ready to do that yet. Honestly I feel like after all this conversation, I’m leaning in Darrow’s favor.
We’ve been harping on two of his flaws a lot: His inability to let people in, and his body count. I think I am ready to look past the body count and chalk it up to the causes of war. I don’t blame Pax’s death on him. We haven’t talked about it yet, but I don’t blame Quinn’s death on him. I don’t love what he did on Ganymede or basically his entire sequence of actions on the Rim, but I am starting to see those more as calculated risks, rather than pure brutality. The moments when the death count gets astronomical, are all happening to prevent more deaths down the line and risk the unraveling of the entire mission.
I keep thinking about his inability to trust as this intense demerit to him. If he would’ve trusted Roque more, then maybe things go better. If he tells Cassius the truth from the get go, then maybe he looks at the death of Julian a little better. He even keeps so much from Mustang. I’m starting to get it. He grew up as a Red and found out that he was a slave to the Golds. His mission was to break the chains in order to give his people equal footing in life and a chance at freedom. That’s some pretty substantial shit.
I think that I have an easier time understanding why he lied to Roque than I would forgiving him If he had told Roque the truth only to be betrayed later. He’s known these Golds for maybe five years, and they’ve carried on their lives being perfectly fine with Darrow’s true people being shoved to the bottom of the food chain. What does he owe them? Even the kindest of them may only seem that way because they are standing next to the Karnuses of the world. Can we really blame him for not wanting to jeopardize everything he’s been working for, just because he’s been pals with some cool people lately. All it would take is one person to not care enough about Darrow, to overlook the fact that he’s a Red. He picks and chooses who he tells very carefully. Sevro and Ragnar were ones who had been oppressed by Golds themselves, so they didn’t have a motivation to turn against their friend. Roque and Cassius and even Mustang all had great lives, and any one of them could have turned on him. Mustang ends up being on the right end, but she kept things from Darrow too! She wanted trust when she couldn’t always give it either. I think you could argue that he should have kept his secrets even closer to the vest than he did.
I think I may have talked myself into it, but I’d been teetering on the fence long enough that you may still be able to bring me back. What do you think? Darrow good? Or Darrow bad?
BW:
Honestly, you've steered me into pro-Darrow territory. He isn't perfect, but war is messy. People are going to die no matter what you do to prevent it. For me, I think it's more of the people who suffered because of Darrow's choices. I grew to love these characters quite a bit, and any of them dying hurt. That goes to show how wonderful Pierce Brown is at character development and world building.
I couldn't imagine going through what Darrow did. Your whole life is a lie and then you have to live among the people who have been oppressing you. Not only that, if you're found out (as we see in Morning Star) your mission is all but over. Like I've said, I never hated Darrow, but I think I put way too much blame on him for making decisions that cost the lives of many innocent people. You want to finish this out for us?
JD:
Well man, we did it. I didn’t honestly know where we’d come out on this. I think we can both agree that there isn’t any flawless war hero, but I feel like now that we’ve had this talk, Darrow is a little more justified. He can be frustrating as hell, and make highly questionable decisions, but he’s doing it for the greater cause. To me, and sounds like you as well, Darrow did what had to be done, and overall, he comes out as strong on the morality meter as you could hope.
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