by David Lorehound
I’ve been thinking a lot about episode 7 of Severance season 2, “Chikhai Bardo,” particularly how Gemma's journey is connected to Tolstoy's final novella, Hadji Murat, which is referenced twice in the episode. The humble thistle—a prickly, persistent wildflower—turns out to be the key symbol for understanding Gemma’s struggle on Lumon’s Testing Floor.
The episode reveals Mark and Gemma's relationship from their first meeting to her apparent death. They meet while donating blood at Ganz College, where they are professors. Mark grades essays about WWI soldiers using drugs to detach from trauma, while Gemma studies religious conversions in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Personally, I don't think it's an accident that their academic interests foreshadow the themes of detachment and transformation that run through the series.
Tolstoy's Thistle: More Than Just a Weed
I don’t know if Hadji Murat is widely read. I certainly had never heard of it. (Fortunately, I had no trouble sourcing a copy from my local library. Kudos to our public library system!) The novella contains an passage about a thistle that becomes a central metaphor:
“In front of me to the right of the road I saw some kind of little clump, and drawing nearer I found it was the same kind of thistle as that which I had vainly plucked and thrown away. This 'Tartar' plant had three branches. One was broken and stuck out like the stump of a mutilated arm. Each of the other two bore a flower, once red but now blackened. One stalk was broken, and half of it hung down with a soiled flower at its tip. The other, though also soiled with black mud, still stood erect. Evidently a cartwheel had passed over the plant but it had risen again, and that was why, though erect, it stood twisted to one side, as if a piece of its body had been torn from it, its bowels drawn out, an arm torn off, and one of its eyes plucked out. Yet it stood firm and did not surrender to man who had destroyed all its brothers around it.”
The narrator immediately connects this stubborn thistle to Hadji Murat, the Chechen rebel commander caught between Russian invaders and his own leader:
“Suddenly I remembered a story of Hadji Murat that I had heard long ago in the Caucasus...Like that torn thistle, he had tenaciously clung to life to the very end, and had died only because he was mown down.”
Tolstoy's thistle symbolizes defiance. It represents persistence when everything around you wants you gone. It represents the indigenous people of the Caucasus, who refuse to be stamped out and continue to thrive despite being crushed.
Thistles Aren’t Just for Russian Novelists
Before exploring the metaphor deeper, it’s worth noting that thistles carry symbolic weight beyond Tolstoy. As Scotland’s national emblem, the thistle represents strength and determination. According to legend, a Norse invader stepped on a thistle during a nighttime raid, cried out in pain, and alerted Scottish defenders to the attack. The plant that seems vulnerable from a distance reveals its strength when threatened—a metaphor for Gemma's journey.
Thistles thrive in harsh conditions where other plants can’t survive. They’re covered in protective spines but produce beautiful purple flowers. They’re cut down at the end of each season but return from their deep roots.
Gemma on the Testing Floor: A Thistle Among Thorns
In the current timeline, we find Gemma navigating Lumon’s Testing Floor—a psychological obstacle course where each room corresponds to a specific MDR file and represents a traumatic experience someone might want to sever; hostile terrain indeed!
The Testing Floor subjects Gemma to brutal mind games. She’s told Mark has moved on and remarried—a clear attempt to sever her remaining emotional connections. Like Hadji Murat caught between opposing forces, Gemma is trapped between Lumon's experimental protocols and fragments of her life with Mark.
We also learn that Mark and Gemma’s relationship included the grief of a miscarriage—a profound loss that echoes through their story. This background adds another dimension to the thistle symbolism, as the plant represents personal resilience and the capacity for renewal after devastation.
Why the Thistle Perfectly Captures Gemma’s Struggle
Looking at Gemma's situation through the lens of the thistle, several things click into place:
Thriving Where Others Would Wither
Just as thistles grow in poor soil, Gemma maintains her essential nature while withstanding Lumon's rigorous psychological experiments. We don't yet know the Testing Floor’s true purpose, yet something in Gemma persists—like a thistle growing through cracks in concrete.
Protective Spines
A thistle’s spines are its defense mechanism—protection against being consumed or destroyed. Gemma develops similar psychological defenses against Lumon's manipulation. In a key scene, we see purple thistles in Mark and Gemma’s kitchen during their argument about stopping fertility treatment as Gemma fills out a Lumon questionnaire. That visual cue could suggest multiple meanings, but certainly, we can understand that their love endures despite conflict—the protective mechanism of their bond.
Adapting to Survive
Thistles are masters of adaptation. Gemma has demonstrated a similar capacity throughout her time as Ms. Casey and is now on the Testing Floor. Rather than breaking under the severance process, she finds ways to preserve her identity, even with fractured memories.
The Cycle of Death and Rebirth
Thistles follow a natural cycle: they bloom, die back, and return from their roots. This mirrors Gemma's apparent “death” and continued existence within Lumon. The outside world (including Mark) believes she’s dead, yet her consciousness lives on in a new form—just as a thistle returns after being cut down.
The Black Thistle: When the Metaphor Gets Dark
While the crimson thistle represents vibrant resilience, the damaged black thistle in Tolstoy's novella introduces a more ominous note—could it foreshadow Gemma’s fate?
The black thistle directly represents Hadji Murat's ultimate fate in Tolstoy’s work. It may suggest a difficult choice ahead for Gemma, similar to Murat's impossible situation when his family was captured. Will she have to choose between her fragmented identity within Lumon and her connection to Mark?
Does the black thistle symbolize the corruption of her natural state or the toll Lumon’s experiments have taken on her? This darker symbolism acknowledges the duality of resilience and vulnerability—recognizing that even the strongest spirit can break under enough pressure.
Between Death and Rebirth
The episode “Chikhai Bardo” refers to concepts of transformation and transition. It mentions the Bardo concept from Tibetan Buddhism, which describes the state between death and rebirth. This framework helps us understand "severance" itself: not as a complete erasure of the previous self but as a transitional state in which aspects of identity persist.
Gemma's studies of religious conversions in The Death of Ivan Ilyich gain new significance here. Both works explore transformative states bridging life and death. The thistle's natural cycle becomes a metaphor for the characters' journeys—particularly Gemma's apparent death and continued existence in a transformed state.
What Thistles Tell Us About Being Human
Beyond Gemma’s specific situation, the thistle speaks to broader themes about human nature. “Severance” constantly asks whether human consciousness can be truly divided or controlled. The thistle's persistence, despite attempts to uproot it, mirrors the show's belief in the stubborn resilience of identity.
The struggle between individual freedom and corporate control forms the series’ heart. Lumon seemingly tries to create perfect workers by splitting their consciousness, yet the innies develop their relationships and desires. Like thistles pushing through corporate infrastructure, human identity finds a way.
The Thistle That Refused to Die
When we pull all these threads together, the thistle emerges as the perfect symbol for Gemma’s journey. And, as we speculate about her future, the thistle offers several possibilities. Will she continue to defy attempts to control her? Will the black thistle's fate—crushed but remembered—foreshadow her ultimate destiny? Or will her story follow the thistle's regeneration cycle, finding new ways to bloom despite adversity?
In Tolstoy’s field and Lumon’s Testing Floor, the thistle is a testament to life’s tenacity when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. And isn't that, ultimately, what makes both great literature and great television? The ability to find ourselves in the struggle and recognize our capacity for resilience in the face of forces that would diminish us?