Ozma & Salem: A Clash of Earth & Time
At this point, I think its fairly self-evident that the main overarching theme of RWBY as a show is the conflict of growth versus stagnation. The mantra of “keep moving forward” is not just a cute little slogan; it is a core ideal that is quite literally baked into the inner workings of the show via its setting, characters, and plot. In this context, stagnation appears in the form of characters (and sometimes the setting the characters are tied to) becoming entrapped by trauma and/or complacency and being unable to move forward and grow as people.
Two of the most prominent examples are James Ironwood and Adam Taurus, two characters who have been victimized and traumatized in horrific ways by the violent and dehumanizing system that is the Atlesian military-industrial complex. Instead of seeking and receiving help to move on from this trauma, they themselves become engrossed in their pain and become perpetrators of a perpetual cycle of violence and dehumanization that only further causes stagnation within the world they live-in, whether that be furthering the Atlesian machine at the cost of human life and dignity, or regressing human and faunus relations into further division and violence. It is no coincidence that many antagonists in RWBY fall into this category of stagnation, weighed down by either apathy or despair.
On the flip-side, many of the heroes themselves are those forged in trauma, grief, and pain, but, rather than lose themselves to stagnation, their struggle is to grow and learn from their pasts and not be defined by them. They do this not just for the sake of themselves, but for the world they are sworn to protect as Huntsmen and Huntresses. From Ruby losing Summer and Penny, to Yang losing an arm, to Weiss and Blake being victimized by Jacques and Adam respectively, to Ren and Nora losing their families and Jaune losing Pyrrha, the central heroes of RWBY have already gone through a lifetime of loss and pain despite being so young.
But they resolve to keep moving forward, and to not let their past mistakes define who they are, and they grow and change to become better people. In doing so, by changing and growing as people, they, in-turn, inspire change and growth in the world around them. Already we’ve seen how this resolve on the part of the heroes has inspired characters like Ilia, Qrow and Hazel to not be shackled down by grief, despair and regret and to move forward with living. Outside of the personal, individual level, on a more wide-spread, societal level it has encouraged positive change and thinking in the White Fang (as seen in Volume 5), hopefully pushing human and faunus relations into a direction of healing and unity, away from the stagnate cycle of apathy and violence and into a better tomorrow.
With all that being said, the real meat of what I want to get into with this particular “essay” is how the ongoing conflict between Ozma and Salem is itself a microcosm of this overarching metanarrative of growth versus stagnation. More specifically, I want to illustrate this through the lens of interpreting Ozma and Salem’s war as an ongoing clash of time versus earth, casting Ozma in the role of Father Time (and representative of growth and change) and Salem in the role of Mother Earth (and therefore representative of stagnation).
Throughout much of the series the concept of time has become a rather prominent motif that is associated with Ozma’s most familiar and prominent iteration, Professor Ozpin, but one that, upon closer examination, permeates throughout the core being of Ozma as a character. For one thing, Ozpin is visually associated with clocks; his office is on top of the Beacon Tower with clock gears placed throughout, his emblem is a clock gear, and his own handy weapon, Long Memory (the name of which itself is also alludes to the concept of the passage of time) also contains clock gears in the handle. In this regard, it’s not difficult at all to view him as an allusion to Father Time. He is an old and wise figure that carries with him both a sense of admiration and fear due to his longevity as a seasoned and weary god-like figure (despite his many efforts to downplay that). On top of that, Ozma is very much a paternal figure, serving as a strong mentor to Ruby Rose and Oscar Pine in particular. It also helps that himself was a loving father for at least two points of his many, many lives (well, two that we’ve actually seen for ourselves onscreen).
But most important of all, Father Time is viewed in many cultures in the real world as a symbol of fertility and growth, and, in the context of Greek mythology, the Titan Cronos (the Titan of Time) was viewed as an agricultural deity, hence him and other interpretations of Father Time wielding a sickle, a farming tool. It is especially fitting, then, that Ozma’s first and latest reincarnation (i.e. his form that married Salem and sired four children, and his current form Oscar Pine) were both farmers. Moreover, as Father Time is seen as a figure that encourages growth and change, Ozma’s task given to him by the God of Light also ties into him as a champion of said growth and change, in the sense of trying to help Humanity 2.0 learn and grow from the mistakes that led to the destruction of Humanity 1.0 in the first place.
Ozma’s ability to reincarnate into different lives and forms also alludes heavily to the change and growth associated with Father Time as a concept. In essence, Ozma goes through various different physical changes and stages in life as he experiences various aspects of the human condition. In one life, he’s a drunken hermit; in another, he’s worshipped as a god in the form of the Infinite Man; in another, he’s the King of the Vale ending the Great War; and in his latest, he is just a boy trying to find his place in the world. Though he ultimately passes on the unofficial mantle of the Wizard and champion of Light to his various successors, throughout his various different lives he grows and changes as a person as he takes in different viewpoints via interacting with and making peace with his hosts. Funnily enough, this also happens to tie directly to the notion of Father Time passing on his mantle and role to Baby New Year, which, theoretically, would make Oscar the equivalent of Baby New Year because, well, he baby.
Fittingly enough, Ozma’s role as Father Time is further compounded by his association with the Maidens, themselves viewed in-universe as symbolic manifestations of the Seasons. It goes without saying that the concept of the seasons themselves are indicative of the passage of time. Most interestingly, in some cultures, especially in Greco-Roman mythology, deities representative of the seasons (in this case, the Horae) are also seen as deities of fertility and growth, much like Cronos and Father Time. When looking at it through this lens, the tale of the Four Maidens becomes especially thematically appropriate in two major aspects. The most obvious, superficial aspect is that the story is showcasing Father Time literally creating the Seasons as a means of encouraging growth and change over time. The other, most crucial aspect however is that the Maidens themselves help Ozma free himself from the cycle of stagnation following his discovery of Salem’s seeming invincibility and encourage him to “keep moving forward.”
“Why choose to view the world through a small window when the door leading out to it was right at his side? It was a compelling argument. And after only a moment of brief hesitation, the wizard left his home - and stepped outside. The warmth of the sun brought with it a surge of energy and life, and soon the wizard wasn’t feeling much like himself anymore. He was feeling much better.”
-World of Remnant: The Four Maidens
Following this, Ozma grants the Maidens magic so that they may become unofficial arbiters of growth and change to the rest of humanity, thereby helping him to carry out the mission handed down to him by the God of Light. In Volume 3, Ozpin literally refers to the Maidens as “guardians,” which, going back to the Horae of Greco-Roman mythology, is also thematically appropriate. Just as the Greeks viewed the Horae as arbiters of fertility and growth, the Romans viewed the Horae as deities of order and justice of the natural world. In-turn, the Maidens themselves help to maintain the order of the world by guarding the Relics from Salem.
Now admittedly, Salem being representative of the archetype of Mother Earth is not as clear-cut on the surface as Ozma being Father Time. However, I do maintain that the overall concept of the earth-mother as a primordial being does tie-in thematically with Salem’s character arc and helps to emphasize her role as the arbiter of stagnation diametrically opposed to Ozma’s role as the arbiter of growth.
In particular, many mythologies and folklore around the world emphasize the role of a primordial earth-mother as one that is unchanging and unyielding in the face of time and change. Even as her surface changes, Mother Earth still remains, and will always remain until the end of time itself. To go back to Greek mythology once more, Gaia is the primordial manifestation of the earth, and in the face of constant upheaval on her surface (from the overthrow of the Titans and the rise of the Olympians to the rise and destruction of various human civilizations) she still remains beneath it all. Constant. Unyielding. Unchanging.
This is very much indicative of Salem’s current status as an immortal being. By virtue of her curse, she has witnessed the perilous destruction of Humanity 1.0, and bore witness to the rise of Humanity 2.0 from their ashes. She has experienced first-hand the collapse of many a civilization in her time, including the one where she was at the head of an empire alongside her beloved Ozma as a pair of god-kings. And yet still, in-spite of the cycle of change, she remained. Moreover, while her physical appearance has drastically changed as a result of diving into the Grimm pool and becoming corrupted, at her core she still remains the same scared, traumatized and spiteful sixteen-year girl raging at her father, raging at the gods, raging at the world for all the injustices that have been incurred upon her. Only now that rage is also directed at the very man she once loved for throwing away their chance at a peaceful, happy life (at least, that’s how she perceives it).
Funnily enough, Salem’s plight also ties in well with the story of other primordial mother deities throughout history. In certain mythologies, particularly in the case of Greek and ancient Babylonian myths, the primordial mother deities Gaia and Tiamat respectively rage against their pantheons for a grievous injustice committed against their families. In the case of Gaia, she plots against her husband (the primordial sky deity Ouranos) and later Zeus, who wish to imprison her various giant children. In the case of Tiamat, she creates an horrific army of monsters to fight against the gods who murdered her beloved husband Abzu. Both are instances of primordial, motherly entities becoming driven by vengeance, grief and spite towards higher beings as a result of an incredibly personal wound.
In many ways Salem’s story is oddly reflective of both Gaia and Tiamat; she lost both her husband and her children, raised an army to fight against the gods who took her husband away, and now has very much become a mother of monsters, as shown in her actively creating new monstrous forms of Grimm to besiege Ozma and humanity. This also helps to emphasize Salem’s role as a dark maternal figure (or, in this particular instance, an evil fairy godmother) for Cinder Fall, as she twists and molds the Fall Maiden, whose powers are meant to protect and maintain order and justice in the natural world, into a weapon aimed at Ozma and tearing his carefully crafted system down. As a result, Salem, despite herself being a victim of her father’s abuse and the gods’ sick cruelty, simply becomes a perpetrator of a millennia-spanning cycle of abuse, with Cinder becoming further entrapped herself. In this matter, Salem truly is an embodiment of the stagnation that opposes the efforts of our heroes, just as Ozma is an embodiment of the growth and change our heroes aim to achieve and spread to the rest of the world.
This concept is only further reinforced by Salem’s association with the Grimm. The Grimm themselves were a weapon forged from spite by the God of Darkness, a twisted facsimile of the God of Light’s own creations. Stagnation is literally baked into their very DNA, as their lack of souls makes them unable to effectively grow and change in the way that living beings with Aura can. Moreover, their bony visage and their propensity to spawn from black, oozing pools of tar-like ichor draws striking comparison to prehistoric Ice Age animals falling into tar pits and becoming nothing but fossils. In this way, the Grimm themselves, much like Salem, are very much relics and fossils of a by-gone era, where the rest of the world has passed them by, yet their presence still remains a very painful reminder of fleeting existence and the inevitability of death.
In summary, Ozma and Salem’s ongoing narrative conflict, as viewed through the lens of them as allusions to new manifestations of Father Time and Mother Earth, serves as an encapsulation of the ongoing metanarrative of growth versus stagnation that encompasses RWBY. In-turn, it further emphasizes the decisions that Teams RWBY and JNPR collectively make. Their necessity and desire to not let the tragedies of their pasts define their future is what, in the end, will be the deciding factor in how Ozma and Salem’s war ends, as well as the very fate of Remnant and the people who inhabit it.
pixelskylines
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
izzy806
