The Predator - Romance in Dystopian World

Source - nazahafreen.com

What is Romance?

According to the Oxford Language Dictionary, the word Romance refers to a feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life. The definition itself explains that the said feeling sidetracks human beings from thinking rationally. It can be traced back to Plato who banned poetry for the same reason that it inspires us to think emotionally and provides no rationale. It influences and tampers with the mind or the rational part of individuals convincing them to think irrationally. Hence romance novels provide an escape from reality where the readers are aware of the fact that the characters are fictional and the society is dysfunctional yet somehow due to circumstances the lead characters fall in love in the morally grey society. 

The Predator

The novel “The Predator” is the first book in the Dark Verse series by Runyx and it provides a form of escape from the monotonous mundane reality of the readers by introducing them to another world. Amidst the chaotic world lies a rotten dystopian society where there is chaos, mafia involved in child trafficking, and the protagonists Morana Vitalio, and Tristain Caine are nemeses who are constantly on an adventure fighting the antagonists and falling in love at the same time and finding the fragmented shreds of evidence to form one thread of truth. Surrounded by malice, betrayals, destruction, and the greyness of the world, the protagonists belong to each other and fall in love and this is the primary reason for this novel being a guilty pleasure. 

Guilty pleasure is subjective to every individual and hence, finding love in a dystopian world is a guilty pleasure because even after the awareness that this is something that is never going to happen in real life, the readers find romance in a chaotic world fulfilling and satisfying by living the thrilling life and falling in love through the characters, experiencing everything all at once by sitting in the corner of their room. 

Highlighted Literary Elements

The story is written in third person narrative form where the narrator creates a narrative in fictional two cities named Shadow Port and Tenebrae Outfit and the mafia in respective cities where Morana Vitalio is a computer genius, a hacker, and Tristian Caine is known by the name of ‘the Predator’. Surrounded by the web of lies they find each other, understand each other while being enemies because of a dark past, work together, and see each other for what they keep to themselves. The title is symbolic of the character of Tristian Caine. A predator is someone who preys on others and the male protagonist hates Morana because of his dark past and yet doesn’t kill her, he preys on his targets and kills them but the female lead is spared and she manages to unravel the hidden past and find the truth. 

The cover of the book is red and black depicting a man, a woman in one, and an entire city in themselves, moreover from the head, the blood is spreading. The cover resembles the main essence of the book. The colour palette is majorly ‘red’ because of the bloodshed in the book, the colour also resembles the car which is possessed by Morana and the car means freedom to her, the individual chapter numbers are present in the middle of a splash of drop of blood. The title of every chapter is a verb ending with ‘ing’ which describes action which acts a structure to central experience. The plot of the story has a start with Morana trying to kill Tristian which is the introduction to the characters and leading towards the conflict where they have to work together and the climax is finding the truth. 

Silence

The main motif in the novel is ‘Silence’, because most of the story has silence referring to remaining in shadows and communicating through actions rather than communicating, moreover, there are only a few dialogues and overall, there are different meanings of each silence in a different circumstance, it is also one of the major themes in novel. The setting as mentioned above is located in two cities, the entire novel is written from a third person perspective, and both the characters are rounded and have a redemption arc towards the end, there is also in between use of Allusion and the imagery of rain is used to describe an event which brings both the protagonist together because whenever there is rain there is unravelling of a layer of truth and increment of understanding between these two. 

Another motif and literary aspect are flashback and past where the past is very crucial and acts as a conflict in between the two protagonist and at the end through another perspective the past is revealed through flashback. Hence these were some literary elements. Major themes are silence, love, past, truth, injustice and justice, violence, loneliness, power struggle. The love in the world of guns, killings, abuse happens and it becomes beautiful for both of them, the past where Tristian killed his own father because of Morana and Morana who is unaware of this, the injustice that happened when Tristian’s sister was kidnapped and trafficked and the injustice when Tristian was beat to death and was tortured so that he would crack and when Morana’s own father tries to kill her because she seeked protection under enemy, the loneliness Morana feels because she is betrayed by her own family has nobody who would support her or stand up for her and has nowhere to go. 

Final Thoughts

Therefore, this novel is written where there are actions and silence more than dialogues which is the beauty of this novel, it makes the reader immerse into the narrative of Morana and Tristian. Because this love that happens in the fictional world is romanticised. People fall in love with the idea of love and this narrative feeds it to the readers and because through these novels they live another life. The author Runyx was suffering through depression when she started writing as a form of letting out and created an idea of love in a chaotic and dystopian world and made it interesting so that at every point the readers are captivated and want to keep reading more to unravel. It is an amazing novel with several plot twists and a third person narrative technique which provides different perspectives of characters and a look into their thoughts and how they feel. Hence, it’s an engaging and remarkable novel.

“Tristan Caine terrified her, but it wasn’t because of the death he was bringing her slowly, the death he would bring her one day, the death he raised in her. No. It was the life.”(RuNyx)

Written By Divya

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