Analysis 3: The Beauty of Blanks in Avatar: The Last Airbender

Art gains its power as much from what is said, as what is unsaid. Usually, the more powerful is ironically the unsaid, the things only alluded to, the subtext that let’s the reader become the writer and share in the power of creation. This is something agreed upon by all the reader-response theorists to a greater or lesser extent, but only Iser goes right to work in breaking down how this comes about.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that the more exemplary examples of the power of subtext in art can be found in stories for children, stories that must often approach things more indirectly for the sake of their audience. And yet, this isn’t to say they lose their power – in fact, they often gain all the more for it. One such example is the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender, a show that never talks down to its audience, is always suggesting the serious and full implications of its themes just out of sight, even in plain sight, always strengthening its messages by letting its story continue and play off itself in its blank spaces.

Avatar’s blank spaces work, as Iser says, by “the threads of the plot [being] suddenly broken off…these sudden changes are often denoted by new chapters and so are clearly distinguished; the object of this distinction, however, is not separation so much as a tacit invitation to find the missing link” (1528). The clear distinction in this case is usually created by a scene change, in which characters are juxtaposed against each other. The missing link that connects the characters in this blank is often an incredibly powerful and surprising similarity between them – usually between characters who are often viewed as antitheses.

The show uses this technique to achieve incredibly powerful effects in many of its episodes. One of its most quintessential and masterful ones, The Storm, is a prime example. In this episode, the two main heroes, Aang and Zuko, are compared and contrasted – through various flashbacks, we learn more about these two characters’ pasts than in any previous episode, discovering the things that have made them who they are in the present day of the story.

Aang and Zuko, in the present day of The Storm.

Aang and Zuko, although ultimately both heroes by the show’s end, are presented for the majority of the series, especially here in the first season, as adversaries. Aang is the naïve and reluctant hero who, as the Avatar, must help bring peace back to a world that has been at war for one hundred years. (In the world of Avatar, humans can manipulate, or “bend,” various elements – water, earth, fire, or air, depending on their nationality. The Avatar alone can control all four, and thus has always been the one to help keep a balance between all nations of the world.) At the beginning of the series, Aang has just woken up from a hundred years sleep trapped in an iceberg to find the world in its current state of war. Zuko is the antagonist, heir to the throne of the Fire Nation, the nation who began and continues to wage this one hundred year war against the other nations of the world. Zuko has up to this point in the series been attempting to capture Aang in order to stop him from achieving his mission of ending the war.

And here is where this episode, The Storm, comes in, making the audience question its assumptions and look at how these two characters actually relate much more than they differ. What makes this episode so powerful is the way it tells the stories of Aang and Zuko’s pasts in parallel, revealing surprising connections between the two of them. These connections are established through the blanks that occur whenever there is a scene change between Aang telling his story and Iroh, Zuko’s uncle, telling his nephew’s.

In the first set of scenes juxtaposed back-to-back, we are first presented with Aang, telling the story of how he learns, from the airbender monks who were his teachers (this all takes place one hundred years prior to the present day), that he is the Avatar, and that a war may be approaching…

“Normally, we would have told you of your identity when you turned 16, but there are troubling signs…storm clouds are gathering…
I fear that war may be upon us, young Avatar.
We need you, Aang.”

The scene then changes to Iroh telling Zuko’s story of how, three years previously, Zuko speaks out of turn in a war meeting against a heartless plan of attack, requiring the sacrifice of a group of inexperienced soldiers…

“The Earth Kingdom defenses are concentrated here…a dangerous battalion of their strongest earthbenders and fiercest warriors. So I am recommending the 41st division.”

“But the 41st is entirely new recruits. How do you expect them to defeat a powerful Earth Kingdom battalion?”
“I don't. They'll be used as a distraction while we mount an attack from the rear. What better to use as bait then fresh meat?”

“You can't sacrifice an entire division like that! Those soldiers love and defend our nation! How can you betray them?”

These first two flashback scenes already suggest a connection to us, “prompt [an act] of ideation on [our] part” (Iser 1527), the full implications of which become clearer as the story progresses. What is set up by this particular blank space between these scenes, or more precisely these two “segments of textual perspectives” (Iser 1528), that is, the switch in perspective between Aang and Zuko that our “wandering viewpoint” follows (Iser 1528), is a shared theme of loss of innocence. For both Aang and Zuko, these are specific moments in their pasts when their lives began to abruptly change, and as we hear their stories we follow this shared theme and see that the two characters we once presumed to be quite different are anything but.


This theme of loss of innocence, moreover a theme of coming of age for these two adolescents, continues throughout the episode and moreover the entire series. In the case of The Storm, it comes to culmination in a final set of flashback scenes, again beginning with Aang’s story. We learn that eventually Aang runs away, overcome by the pressure and responsibility that has begun to make his childhood a thing of the past. This results in his one hundred year imprisonment in the iceberg, leading him to where he is in the present day: facing a world in which he must accept the realities of war and his responsibility to help make change.

“I was afraid and confused. I didn't know what to do.”

Next, we discover the culmination of Zuko’s story: as punishment for speaking out in the war meeting, Zuko’s father forces his son to fight him in an “Agni Kai” – a firebending duel. When Zuko ultimately refuses to fight, his father inflicts upon him two merciless punishments: he scars the left side of his face, and banishes Zuko from his home, allowing him only to return once he has captured the Avatar.

“Please, father, I only had the Fire Nation's best interest at heart! I'm sorry I spoke out of turn!”

“You will fight for your honor.”
“I meant you no disrespect. I am your loyal son.”

“Rise and fight, Prince Zuko!”

“I won't fight you.”

“You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.”

As we witness this, not only do we discover that Zuko’s motivations for wanting to capture Aang are ultimately much more complicated than we previously presumed, but moreover, we make a thematic connection. This connection is what ultimately makes The Storm one of the most powerful episodes of the series, by “building up the aesthetic object” (Iser 1529) that is Avatar: The Last Airbender on the whole. The way in which Aang and Zuko’s stories are paralleled creates what Iser calls a vacancy, which “ultimately transforms the textual perspectives, through a whole range of alternating themes and background relationships” (1529) to relate to us a story of two adolescents, both equally struggling with the unfairness and indifference they find in the world. This “vacancy” allows us as the audience to make these thematic connections and realize just how shockingly similar Aang and Zuko are without it ever needing to be stated. This builds up the overall “aesthetic object” of the series by presenting a theme continued throughout the show: that of putting aside differences for a common good and finding connection with one another across boundaries – national, cultural, ideological. Aang is from the Air Nomad culture, Zuko from the Fire Nation, and yet by the end of the series they learn to work together. In this way, the show uses its blanks to skillfully support its overall theme.


By using these blanks and vacancies, The Storm only suggests these connections by showing the stories of each character next to each other, letting us discover for ourselves the ways in which they blur. Thus, this final moment in the episode where Aang and Zuko catch a glimpse of each other again in the present day…

…is all the more powerful, as there is that completely unspoken connection that has now been made between them. It is a “blank” in that it remains unstated, never spelled out by the text – the two characters themselves have not even had any actual interaction prior to this moment in the episode whatsoever – but for the audience, their newfound connection couldn’t be more clearly understood. Thus, Aang and Zuko are from now on irrevocably “linked together,” in the minds of the audience, and thus “the blanks ‘disappear’” (Iser 1527).



Works Cited

Iser, Wolfgang. “Interaction between Text and Reader.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. 1524-32. Print.

“The Storm.” Avatar: The Last Airbender. Writ. Aaron Ehasz. Dir. Lauren MacMullen. Prod. Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Nickelodeon, 2005.