Several major plot points are underlined by motivic destruction followed by rebirth, all framed by the premise of the story, the loss of The Great Library of Alexandria. A parallel example of this motif is Atlas’s plan to destroy the Alexandrian Society to remake it, for example. He says, “No more fixing, no more tinkering around with broken parts. When one ecosystem fails, nature makes a new one. Nature, or whoever’s in charge. That’s how the species survives” (362).

Similarly, thinking about the new initiates, Dalton remarks to himself:

You are entering the cycle of your own destruction, the wheel of your own fortune, which will rise and fall and so will you. You will deconstruct and resurrect in some other form, and the ashes of yourself will be the rubble from the fall. Rome falls, he wanted to say. Everything collapses. You will, too (372).

Death and destruction are presented as natural parts of a cycle that leads to greater power and knowledge. Amongst the protagonists, Reina seems to understand this best, as she is more likely to acknowledge that “the presence of life meant accepting the presence of death” as a medeian naturalist raised “amid Eastern philosophies” (263). This motif symbolically frames the ending of the story as tragically ineluctable.