Anabel Rivera: "Dear Chuck Wendig: _Among Others_ and the Coming of Age Story"

Dear Chuck Wendig: Among Others and the Coming of Age Story

By

Anabel Rivera

Lately, I’ve been watching lots of coming of age movies. I like them because I know exactly what I’m getting: a protagonist who has to overcome issues involving discontent with their family or their dysfunctional peer group or the world in general. They’re sometimes mundane and sometimes petty; the repetitiveness can be lulling. The characters’ issues and the path they must take to solve them are clear.

But what happens when you take the standard coming of age story and add witches and wizards to the mix? You might end up with something like Harry Potter, Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle, or Jo Walton’s Among Others. All have teenaged protagonists (for the most part…) that need to find their place in the world—with all the assistance and hindrance that can come with magic. Magic adds another dimension that would not be possible in your standard coming of age film. It delivers ambiguity and a necessity to step back from the organization of the world into another that can be completely nonsensical.

I took an immediate liking to Among Others, which follows the life of a fifteen year old daughter of an evil witch and a dysfunctional father named Morwenna Phelps through her life at a boarding school. She’s feels terribly lost without her dead twin sister Morganna, who was killed by their crazy mom. Mor (they’re both Mor, but I mean Morwenna) uses magic only when necessary to help herself, and the lonely book-lover conjures up a group of people of her own, a karass, to talk about her passion for books. However, because the magic in Mor’s world is extremely subtle and very hard to justify, she has trouble believing in her own magical power at first. She claims that most magic can be rationalized with coincidences, explaining that the summoning of a rose from midair could have just been dropped from an airplane into your hand at just the right moment. Crazy, huh?

Yet, I find myself thinking in a similar manner. I like order. I’m hard-wired to observe, analyze, and predict patterns. Ideas and thoughts need to be categorized, and all options should be considered. Always. I can take a small happening in my life and overthink it to the point where it blows completely out of proportion. Uncertainty troubles me more than anything; I fear the future and its ambiguity. That fear seems to be the essence of the coming of age story.

I like Mor because we can see her come to terms with herself and her place in the world. Although the argument can be made that Among Others doesn’t follow the typical path of a coming of age story, it seems more like a formality of the definition, as we still see her going through many teenager-y things, like being excluded from groups at school and falling in love. Yet, the magic in her life adds a unique layer of uncertainty—not reassurance. She denies that her karass actually likes her, and seems to claim that her aunts are witches to explain her father’s drunkenness and manipulability.

While Mor goes through all of these troubles and the painful, awkward process of growing-up, she experiences what many of us long for in our day-to-day lives: adventure. She gets that not from her magic, which is what we might have expected, but from the books she reads. The fantastical worlds of books from The Lord of the Rings to The Wizard of Earthsea, and the creations of Zelazny and Tiptree. She finds solace in the books’ ability to explain things in her world that doesn’t make much sense, even less so than our world, due to the addition of inexplicable magic.

The comforting part of fiction, specifically sf, is that it can disguise a message within the context of a great world or plot line. A message hidden well within the intricacies of the story isn’t at all like forcing cough syrup down your throat.

I had an English teacher who claimed that “books were practice for life.” But it’s too overarching to say that it’s their sole purpose is merely practical. Books are meant to educate, entertain, and comfort. Fiction can blend that sense of adventure and novelty with a reassuring pat on the back that says, “See? Look how crazy this world was and how the character was able to overcome their troubles. For you, for sure, everything will be alright, too.”