40 pages • 1 hour read
Andrzej SapkowskiThe Last Wish
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Chapter Three: The Voice of Reason”
Two knights in the service of Duke Hereward, who controls the region, arrive at the Cult of Melitele. The knights demand Geralt’s immediate departure from the temple. Nenneke refuses—she governs the temple grounds. Geralt tries to reason with the knights, but recognizes his mistake when he sees their hatred of him—it is the knights, not Duke Hereward, who want him gone. They depart, but not before nearly coming to blows.
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Lesser Evil”
Geralt arrives in the town of Blaviken looking for a reward for a kikimora he has slain from an old friend, the alderman Caldemeyn. Unfortunately, there is no reward because no one knew there was a kikimora. They are about to throw the kikimora into the cesspool when one of the town guards suggests bringing it to Master Irion, a wizard living outside of town.
When Geralt enters the wizard’s tower, he recognizes Stregobor, whom Geralt has known for years. Stregobor fled to Blaviken under an assumed name in order to escape someone who wants to murder him. However, he believes she has found him, and asks Geralt for help.
After an eclipse many years ago, a number of girls were born monstrous in appearance and in nature because of the Curse of the Black Sun, also known as the Mania of Mad Eltibald. Geralt does not believe in this curse.
Wizards initially simply killed and performed autopsies on suspected monster girls, but after making a number of mistakes, they locked the girls in towers, instead. Some died; others escaped and ruled their countries with terror. In Creyden, after Stregobor identified a girl named Renfri as a cursed mutant, her stepmother Aridea hired a trapper to kill her in the woods.
However, Renfri killed the trapper and escaped. After some years, word spread that she convinced a group of gnomes to rob and kill travelers instead of working in the mines. Aridea hired assassins to kill Renfri, but they all turned up dead. Aridea again summoned Stregobor, but by the time he arrived, Aridea was dead; most assumed her husband simply wanted a younger wife, but Stregobor was convinced it was Renfri. The rest of Renfri’s family also died or disappeared in mysterious accidents.
Sometime after that, Stregobor encountered Renfri; she recognized and attacked him, but he turned her into a slab of mountain crystal and buried her. After prince reversed the spell, Renfri has been hunting Stregobor.
Stregobor wants Geralt to kill Renfri—he and the other wizards had hunted the girls as the lesser evil. Geralt refuses. For him, evil is evil—if he must choose between two evils, he prefers not to choose at all.
Geralt and Caldemeyn discover that Renfri and her gang are staying in the lesser alcove of the Golden Court. Geralt enters alone and encounters six antagonistic men. They are about to come to blows when Renfri returns. Caldemeyn wants to bring the matter to a tribunal and threatens to preventatively imprison Renfri. However, Renfri produces an order from the king stating that she is not to be mistreated. Caldemeyn acquiesces, but warns her that at the first sign of trouble, he’ll arrest her. After Caldemeyn departs, Renfri tells Geralt that Stregobor will die the following day, and that it would be “the lesser evil if he died alone” (110).
Renfri comes to Geralt’s room and tells him her version of her story: She was a princess forced into a life of crime because of her stepmother and Stregobor. She has no intention of forgiving and forgetting. She tells Geralt that the only people who can prevent mass murder the next day are Stregobor, if he gives himself up willingly, or Geralt, if he kills Stregobor for Renfri. Geralt refuses. Renfri agrees with Geralt that there is no such thing as a lesser evil; for her, there is only evil, greater evil, and true evil. After waxing philosophical, she unexpectedly calls off the assault.
Over breakfast, Caldemeyn tells Geralt that one of the men with Renfri, Civril, had been involved in the Tridam massacre: At Tridam three years ago, Civril and his gang took a river ferry hostage, demanding the release of some prisoners from the dungeon; they killed a dozen innocents before the prisoners were released. Geralt recalls that Renfri mentioned the Tridam ultimatum the night before and rushes off to the market.
When Geralt arrives at the market, Renfri’s men give him her message: “I am what I am. Choose. Either me, or a lesser” (123). Renfri’s men attack, but Geralt takes them out. Renfri arrives and tells Geralt that Stregobor told her to murder the whole town for all he cares. They battle, but Geralt gets the best of her, and she dies. Stregobor wants Geralt to load her body onto a cart for an autopsy; however, a stranger threatens to decapitate him if he lays a hand on her. Stregobor tells Geralt he’s returning to Kovir and suggests that Geralt come with him; however, Geralt ignores him.
The crowd throws stones at Geralt, so he uses magic to protect himself. Caldemeyn gets them to stop, but tells Geralt to leave and never return.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
The animosity that the knights Falwick and Tailles display towards Geralt in Chapter 5’s “Voice of Reason” clarifies the general attitude towards witchers. We already know that witchers are misunderstood, but now we see that they—and Geralt in particular—are despised. Geralt mistakenly believes that he can reason with the knights, but quickly figures out that he is encountering irrational hatred. Fortunately, the power of his world’s religious institutions makes the temple a safe haven, but Geralt recognizes that he will need to move on sooner rather than later.
As its title suggests, the chapter questions how we navigate morally gray choices. In “The Witcher” and “A Grain of Truth,” Geralt is an unambiguously antiheroic good guy. In “The Lesser Evil,” Geralt must make the best of bad choices and ally himself with terrible people. Stregobor believes that he and the other sorcerers chose the lesser evil in locking up potential mutants to prevent future catastrophes. However, from what we know of Stregobor, he is a self-serving and manipulative man who would rather save his skin than protect others—now he’d rather let Renfri slaughter the town than leave his tower, just like he stabbed Geralt in the back some years prior.
Renfri, on the other hand, dismisses the idea that one evil can be “less evil” than another. Instead, she justifies her violent actions as the product of rightful vengeance. Geralt’s position is that one should never choose to do evil: If forced to choose between two evil options, one should simply not act. However, this decision ends up tacitly ratifying the evil behavior of others—something Geralt faces in this story, which sets up a grudge match between two powerful beings who would rather see everyone else die than not get what they want.
In the end, Geralt must choose between a selfish wizard who earnestly believes he was doing right by Renfri’s parents, and a fierce young woman who was seriously wronged. Geralt prevents innocent townspeople from becoming collateral damage at the expense of Renfri and his own reputation. It is not clear that saving Stregobor was the better choice.
“The Lesser Evil” is a version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”: Renfri’s stepmother orders Renfri’s death after consulting a magic mirror, Renfri befriends mining gnomes, and a prince frees her from a crystalline enchantment. Sapkowski’s version, typically, is much more bloodthirsty: Renfri’s stepmother is worried not about beauty, but about Renfri bringing death and horror to the land; the huntsman rapes Renfri rather than sympathetically setting her free; the gnomes kill one another in a quarrel; and, Renfri is, in fact, a vicious menace.
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By Andrzej Sapkowski
