Discordia

The Poppy War — Opium, War, and the Illusion of Power

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Kuang, R. F. The Poppy War. Harper Voyager, 2018.

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang is a military fantasy novel deeply inspired by the Second Sino-Japanese War, exploring imperialism, genocide, addiction, revenge, and the cyclical nature of violence. Through the journey of Fang Runin (Rin), Kuang examines the devastating cost of power and the illusion that destruction can ever fully solve suffering.

Rin begins as a poor orphan raised by adoptive parents who profit from smuggling poppy products. In order to escape being married off to an older man, she studies obsessively to gain entrance into Sinegard, an elite military academy. Once there, her intelligence does not make up for her lack of combat training, and she is repeatedly targeted for being from the countryside. Alienated from the academy’s traditional paths, she becomes drawn toward Master Jiang and the world of shamanism, opium, and the gods.

Master Jiang explains the spiritual potential of the poppy seeds:

“These seeds are a shaman’s dream… used with the proper mental preparation, give you access to the entire universe contained within your mind” (47).

The poppy becomes more than a narcotic within the novel. It functions simultaneously as a spiritual gateway, a destructive addiction, and a metaphor for war itself.

War as Addiction

One of the strongest literary elements within The Poppy War is metaphor, particularly the relationship between opium and warfare. Throughout the novel, fire, the Phoenix god, and narcotics become emotionally intertwined. Rin gains access to incredible power through shamanism and the Phoenix, but every use of that power consumes her further.

When Rin first unleashes the Phoenix during battle, Kuang describes the fire almost like a drug overtaking the body:

“The fire billowed outward with a vengeance… She controlled the flame no more than the wick of a candle might” (252).

The power is intoxicating, overwhelming, and impossible to fully control. Just as opium offers a temporary escape while destroying the user, war offers the illusion of victory while consuming entire civilizations.

This metaphor becomes even more explicit later in the novel:

“But something so destructive inherently and simultaneously has marvelous potential” (192).

The same logic people use to justify opium is often the logic nations use to justify war: destruction becomes acceptable if it promises power, safety, revenge, or transformation. Yet both ultimately leave devastation behind.

Rin herself fears losing control to the fire in the same way someone fears surrendering themselves to addiction:

“She didn’t want to admit that she was scared. Scared of being in a state where she had little control of herself” (321).

Even Altan, who claims mastery over the Phoenix, eventually reveals himself to be entirely consumed by it. His use of power has become normalized to the point that he no longer recognizes it as a form of dependence. The novel subtly suggests that trauma, violence, and addiction can become inherited cycles passed through generations, particularly through Rin and Altan’s shared history as survivors of Speer.

The Gods Do Not Choose — We Do

The novel’s climax becomes devastating because Rin ultimately chooses annihilation. After witnessing unimaginable violence and genocide, she calls upon the Phoenix and destroys the Mugenese completely, including innocent lives alongside soldiers and political leaders. Before she acts, she is warned:

“To give your soul to the Phoenix is to enter hell” (499).

And afterward comes the novel’s most important line:

“The gods choose nothing. You chose” (502).

That line reframes the entire story. The gods, addiction, war, and fate are not solely responsible for destruction. Human beings still make choices within systems of violence. Power does not remove accountability.

This deeply connects with themes in my own writing in Discordia, particularly those surrounding Eris, the Kalonox, and the golden apple metaphor. Reading The Poppy War helped me think more deeply about autonomy, tyranny, and the illusion of destiny.

In Greek mythology, Eris uses the golden apple to create discord by appealing to vanity and self-interest. Eve’s apple similarly represents knowledge, disobedience, and autonomy. In Discordia, the Kalonox draws inspiration from both symbols. The oppressors pursue power, believing it will give them control over reality itself, while the deeper truth may be that liberation only happens when people stop waiting for gods, rulers, or destiny to save them.

Like The Poppy War, I want the story to suggest that fate is not something handed down by divine power. The gods do not create reality alone—people do. Tyranny survives because people fear standing alone against it. The Kalonox, therefore, becomes less about ultimate power and more about exposing the selfish desires of those who seek it.

What I take from Kuang’s novel for my own writing is the strength of layered metaphor. The fire in The Poppy War is simultaneously war, addiction, trauma, rage, power, divinity, and destruction all at once. The metaphor works because it exists emotionally, politically, spiritually, and personally throughout every layer of the narrative.

The Burning Earth — Man vs. Nature and the Cost of Empire

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Amrith, Sunil. The Burning Earth: A History. W. W. Norton & Company, 2024.

The Burning Earth by Sunil Amrith is a historical examination of climate change, empire, war, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The book explores how rising populations, industrialization, greed, and global conflict directly reshape the environment, while environmental collapse simultaneously reshapes the human condition. Throughout the text, Amrith presents history as deeply interconnected with nature rather than separate from it.

One of the most compelling ideas within the book is the danger of believing that technology alone can solve climate collapse. Amrith discusses the concept of the technosphere, humanity’s attempt to “engineer the climate itself” (331), while warning of the consequences that follow: “species loss, the depletion of fresh water, assaults on the forests and the oceans—and reducing the incentive for the wealthy and the powerful to change their behavior in any way” (332). The book repeatedly returns to the idea that those in power often exploit both land and people while avoiding responsibility for the damage left behind.

War Against Nature

A major theme throughout this book is Man vs. Nature, but also the illusion that humanity exists separately from nature. Amrith argues that environmental destruction and human suffering are directly intertwined. Civilization expands, consumes, wages war, and extracts resources while ecosystems collapse alongside it. He writes, quoting Hannah Arendt, that “earthly nature, for all we know, may be unique in the universe in providing human beings with a habitat in which they can move and breathe without effort and without artifice” (252).

This quote deeply resonated with me because it reinforces how fragile and rare our planet truly is. The Earth is not simply a backdrop to human history but the condition that makes human life possible at all. Throughout history, conflict between rulers and the ruled, empires and indigenous peoples, industrialization and sustainability, has repeatedly led to environmental collapse alongside human suffering.

Amrith traces these patterns through multiple eras of history. In 1426, Portuguese colonizers burned the forests of Madeira for sugar plantations, destroying ecosystems alongside local culture and community. During periods of empire and expansion, gold, oil, and resources fueled war while forests, oceans, animals, and entire ways of life were erased in the process. The industrialization of warfare only accelerated this destruction. “War machines were thirsty for oil” (171), Amrith explains, connecting environmental extraction directly to global violence and political ambition.

Discordia and Environmental Tyranny

This book strongly reinforced the central themes within my own novel, Discordia. My thesis asks: How does tyranny affect our environment? And beneath that: When and how do we rise against tyranny?

What The Burning Earth helped crystallize for me is that war, environmental collapse, and the human condition cannot truly be separated from one another. As long as we treat issues like sustainability, politics, war, and social inequality as isolated problems, the destruction continues to spread outward into every part of life.

One of the most haunting passages in the book describes wounded soldiers during World War II, comparing modern warfare to mythological monsters and apocalyptic visions. A Punjabi Rajput soldier wrote, “This is not a war… this is the end of the whole world” (172). That line captures something deeply relevant to our present moment. Environmental destruction is not disconnected from political violence or greed; they are reflections of the same imbalance.

This book ultimately reminded me that humanity behaves as though it stands above nature, when in reality, we are part of a singular living organism. To harm the planet is to harm ourselves. Healing the environment also requires healing the systems of violence, exploitation, and tyranny that continue to consume it.

Tarot Card Writing Prompt:

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Photo by Irina Demyanovskikh

Snapshot. Choose a sing card and write a one-page story that explains or describes what’s happening. Try to add drama. Be imaginative. –Tarot for Writers by Corrine Kenner.

Death

A woman of wings, feathers, and beastly qualities emerges from the embers. She held a half-moon metallic staff with a burning red ember at its center. She hovered forward. The darkness of the underworld is colder, the stillness denser, and the vastness hollower than she had ever experienced on Earth. The creatures crawled toward her in fear, pulled by power. They bowed and trembled, pushing through the energy to graze her presence. She stepped up on the night crawlers and lost souls as they traveled into a staircase, throwing themselves over each other as she ascended out of the darkness until a blue light illuminated Pluto’s gate.

“Come with me,” she spoke to the doomed. “You deserve closure.”

Eris opened the gates of hell for all the creatures to return to earth. She flipped the hourglass and froze the stone doors open until the end of Samhain. “May chaos bring peace and understanding.”

The man on the moon sent Pegasus down from the cosmos and invited Eris for tea, and she gladly accepted.

“A shift,” A strong man with skin the color of bark and the face of a sacred ibis spoke.

“Yes, I have emerged,” Eris lit an herbal sacrament and inhaled, and she found a suitable stone like an altar to make herself comfortable on. 

“To make changes, “Eris spoke arrogantly.

The eternal being Yah’s eye squinted. “I make the changes.”

“I have basked in the light of your earthly realm presence and experienced your ‘changes,’ “she spoke unhindered.

“Well, please… indulge me on your human experience.”

“I was not needed,” she flicked the joint, and plants began to grow from its ashes. Yah quickly stomped them out.

“And what makes you think you are needed now?” Yah said dryly and annoyed.

“I thought you invited me for tea?” Eris responded. She felt no need to reveal her skin or to batter her eyes.

Yah snapped his fingers, and the creatures of the moon, blue earth-dwelling characters, set up a table and porcelain arrangement along with silver utensils.

“What are you doing on earth?”

“Creating chaos. There’s a need for that.” Eris said, making up her tea the way she liked it- black.