confessional memoir". Fitz finds some of his recollections painful and imagines "the hurt of a boy" spilling into the ink; along with this self-commentary, the story is "rich" with implicit clues that "most effectively" uncover Fitz's character, according to Mandala. For instance, Fitz describes his immediate family in the same terms as the strangers he meets: his grandfather becomes "the tall man", and his mother is "a voice" that is distant and unfamiliar, signifying his emotional distance from them. Fitz is on occasion an unreliable narrator who distrusts his own memories. The novels contain short memoirs prefacing each chapter that narrate a fictional history of the setting: these excerpts are also unreliable narratives, relaying "recollection and gossip". Themes Through its fantasy elements, the Farseer trilogy explores themes of otherness. As a practitioner of the Wit, a form of magic described as a connection to all living things, Fitz bonds and shares senses with the wolf Nighteyes. Their relationship is shaped by their contrasting perceptions of the world: the wolf lives "in the now" and unlike Fitz, lingers less on memories and on plans for the distant future. More broadly, the wolf symbolizes nature in Western literature, and the werewolf denotes "slippages between" nature and culture, according to scholar Lenise Prater. The Wit also makes Fitz aware of an interconnectedness between living creatures; by severing such connections, the Raiders turn people into the animalistic Forged. Thereby, Prater argues, Hobb is suggesting that the self is entirely dependent on others, and cannot live autonomously. Scholar Mariah Larsson similarly writes that the depiction of the Wit contains an ecocritical element, highlighting the relevance of non-human life forms and thereby challenging anthropocentrism. Fitz's internal conflicts in the seriesin particular, the sense of shame and trauma that result from his being Wittedhave been described by scholars as an allegory for queerness. In the world of the Six Duchies, the Wit is seen as an unnatural inclination and its practitioners are persecuted and may be publicly hanged or forced into hiding. Early in the series, Fitz's guardian Burrich punishes him when he tries to use the Wit, viewing it as emasculating and shameful; this is despite Burrich being Witted himself. Burrich rarely speaks of his Wit, having suppressed it for most of his life; he sees the Witted as worse even than the Forged, who have lost their humanity. Scholars regard this as akin to internalized