Assignment for How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Chapter 18: If She Comes Up, It’s Baptism
In the Avatar television franchise, consisting of two series, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and The Legend of Korra, the four traditional elements are very central symbolic motifs linked largely both to the visual elements of the show, and to the theme of each season. Each season is written and titled as a chapter, and each named after an element either literal or an element of the agents of plot in the show. The chapters are titled sequentially: Water, Earth, Fire, Air, Spirits, Change, and Balance. The first three seasons are of the first series, and the rest are of the second, and each hosts some metaphorical baptism.
In Chapter 1: Water, a baptism occurs to an unexpected character in an unexpected scenario. Though the central plot of the season is the education of Aang, the Avatar, in his manipulation of water, the baptism occurs to Prince Zuko, the antagonist who seeks to destroy the Avatar. Near the end of the series, Aang’s companion and water teacher, Katara, defeats Prince Zuko in his assault with her mastery over water, and so his defeat is symbolic of water overtaking fire, and the metaphorical balance overcoming chaos, or fascism, in this case. After his defeat, a small, brave seed is planted Zuko’s mind that there may be no nobility in his quest, that indeed he may be seeking after a goal for a father who had no love for him, hunting fruitlessly. Though this only really bears fruit far later, his “baptism” brings him an inception of order.
Skipping ahead, in Chapter 3: Fire, upon Zuko’s budding of the fruit of balance that was planted by his defeat, he intends to teach Want his last element: fire. He finds, however, that he has no manipulation of fire any longer, seeing as his entire understanding of his fire powers was rooted in aggression, hate, and chaos, which are mental elements which he has forsaken. Upon investigating a myth, the two climb a mountain to find two legendary mythical dragons, previously thought extinct. The dragons emerge in a very rare ceremony, deeming Zuko and Aang worthy to be taught, and breathe a spiral of multicoloured fire around them, giving the two a new inception of understanding of the element rooted not in hate, but appreciation and awe of the element itself. While this is a less literal baptism, the two are as close as possible to submerged in fire, and they come out with a new foundation rooted in good and order.
Finally, in the second series, in the chapter of Spirits, Korra, the new Avatar, has been displaced to an island that it, coincidentally, home only to an isolated temple. Korra is, less subtly, submerged in sacred spirit water, in which she has unconscious dreams and visions from her past selves, the previous Avatars, and is told the origin story of the first Avatar. She emerges, three episodes later, with a new understanding of balance and spirituality, and now understands the nature of the spirit world, so that she may save it in its need from an evil who seeks to rise to godhood.
Each of these baptisms involve a symbolic submersion, and the rise out of the metaphorical pool brings a new understanding of the Harmony of the universe, and how to use it to enforce itself, which is a very important theme, and one vitally central to the series.
