The Ropemaker Themes

In The Ropemaker, magic isn't about pulling a rabbit out of a hat or getting sliced in half. Nope—it literally saves and ends lives in this book. Magic is what protects the Valley, it's what caus...

What makes a story or a preconceived notion true? Is truth the same thing as fact? What happens when an actual event turns into legend? These questions plague the characters in The Ropemaker non-st...

Tilja's family is one of her driving motivations in The Ropemaker. She first feels estranged from her clan when she realizes she doesn't possess their ancestral power, but ultimately gears up to sa...

Woodbourne. In The Ropemaker, that single word represents so much more than just a simple farmhouse in the Valley for Tilja. For her, it represents an idyllic childhood, a home where she is safe wi...

What's in a name? If you're in the world of The Ropemaker, quite a lot. Magicians hide their true names for fear of being invoked or taken advantage of, and whenever someone does mention a wizard's...

Who wears the pants in Tilja's world? When she's at home it's her parents, but on the road Meena and Alnor are often in charge. Eventually Tilja takes over, since she's the only one who knows who t...

Father Time gets a new face in The Ropemaker. Imagine time as a big rope—at least, that's how Faheel and the Ropemaker think of it. But while Faheel's gotten pretty far along in terms of the numb...

Fate's great—and in The Ropemaker destiny plays a big role in how Tilja's journey resolves itself. Things manage to work out just as she had hoped, and she feels like something is guiding her. Is...

It seems like it would be almost impossible to go on a long and wild journey to find someone you've never seen before and not develop some ideas about what you think they'll look like. But one of t...

Are grown ups really the worst? Tilja finds out that they're not all bad when she does some maturing of her own on her journey to the Empire in The Ropemaker. She goes from a magic-less kid who doe...