'Maybe the bird is just black; it doesn't mean anything.' The critique of symbolism and allegory, specifically, the reading into it when it isn't there, is something I've heard bandied about pretty much since I was old enough to have to take an English class and learn about things like foils and character arcs and, yes, symbolism and allegory. Just what was that lighthouse in Great Gatsby all about, anyway? And were a bunch of barnyard animals really standing in for Soviet Russia or were they just a bunch of barnyard animals in a completely apolitical narrative existing only within itself? Something, something, death of the author, there's no such thing as authorial intent unless the author says so explicitly in one of those little interviews at the back of the book. Or on twitter. Whichever.

And there's something to be said of perhaps overzealous readers trying to force a square peg into a circular hole, but we can't pretend that stories exist in a vacuum either. Any author's work is going to be influenced by their life experiences, their bank of knowledge, their age, their socioeconomic status, their sexuality, their race, their nationality... the list goes on an on. And all of this in turn influences a person's biases and belief system.

Arguably, a good writer is a writer who is aware of all of this and is able to consciously harness certain pieces of their identity and life experience in their work or, conversely, to use writing as a means of examining their beliefs or the beliefs of the society in which they live. In either case, a good writer has to be introspective, otherwise they risk the unpleasant surprise of their work being pulled apart by savvy media analysts and having their unconscious self held up for scrutiny by said media analyst's hundreds of thousands of followers.

Such was the case for the infamous writer of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling. In an incredibly astute video essay=, Youtuber Shaun breaks down the ethics of the Harry Potter universe within the death of the author framework and relying solely on textual evidence from the series. You should absolutely go and watch it if you have an interest in either Harry Potter and/or what functions as an introduction to textual analysis, and so I won't go into his arguments here, in a review (eventually) of a completely different book.

However, one of the points he mentions in the video essay is that analysis of YA fiction like Harry Potter is often brushed aside by the sentiment: 'oh, c'mon -- this is for kids; don't take it so seriously.' As though the ethics presented in fiction for kids is completely unimportant. It's not like a person's childhood is formative in any way, right?

The fact of the matter is, whether a person buys that YA should be held to a higher standard than adult fiction or not, it's undeniable that it isn't apolitical or amoral. We live in a society, and fiction is a product of that because authors are a product of that. And if you aren't taught how to break down the messages/biases in the fiction you consume when the stakes are fairly low, how can you be expected to know how to break down the messages/biases in the nonfiction and the news media you consume? For this reason, the sort of anti-intellectualism promoted by the 'maybe the bird's just black' crowd is...troubling

All of this to preface, in an incredibly long-winded way, my love of Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy.

In a Publisher's Weekly interview back in 2008, Stroud says: "We grow up being told about great figures in our society, and as you get older you have to question the stories you’ve been told and decide if these great figures are indeed as great as you’ve been told."

While it's always interesting from the perspective of a reader to get that kind of direct insight into authorial intent from an author of a work you admire, their work should speak for itself. And his trilogy certainly does, starting with 'The Amulet of Samarkand.'

The Bartimaeus trilogy is undeniably political and has a crystal clear moral compass that remains consistent and laser-focused throughout the series, with groundwork laid for the hubris serving as the climax of book three all the way back at the beginning.

No need for ret-conning or post-publication insistence that subtext that wasn't there was there all along, actually.

The Bartimaeus trilogy is a critique of many things, but broadly, it's a critique of power, class essentialism, and of ‘great men.’

In the world of Bartimaeus, the magicians are the ruling class, not because they have innate magical abilities, but because they horde the knowledge of how to enslave beings from another world that do. And they keep this fact a secret from the 'commoners', who are led to believe that some people simply are magicians, and some simply are not.

Without too much effort, one can see the parallels to the British class system in our real world. There is nothing inherent about class anymore than there's anything inherent about being a magician. Class is simply a signifier determined by the circumstances of your birth that lead to advantages or disadvantages, and so on.

Demystification and critique of class essentialism from this angle has been undertaken many, many times before, and Stroud does retread some of this ground. Not only is magicianhood in his world not an inherited trait, it isn't about blood at all. In his world, magicians adopt children sold by 'commoners' and raise and train them to be magicians as well. Thus, he is able to underscore that class status is not ‘nature’; it’s just the product of randomness and luck; something altogether much less glamorous.

Moreover, he makes a convincing argument that it isn’t just its artifice that makes the ruling class ‘bad’, which would imply that giving ‘commoners’ access to the same knowledge they have would solve the problem by turning an aristocracy into a meritocracy. Stroud argues that the artifice may be what allows an overclass to perpetuate without pushback, but that it only exists as long as there’s an underclass to (secretly) exploit. In other words: power structures are bad to the bone, and institutions that rely on power structures can’t be fixed; they have to be dismantled. There are no good actors because the system itself can’t ethically exist.

This is made obvious by Stroud who makes basically every magician we meet in the story unlikable, including our protagonist and POV human character, Nathanial.

Hilariously, one of the main negatives cited in 1 and 2 star reviews of ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ is exactly this: ‘how am I supposed to root for Nathanial when he’s so obnoxious and entitled and arrogant?’
You’re not. That’s the point.

We first meet Nathanial as a young, unformed child, who gradually succumbs to the rottenness of the system he’s raised within. We listen to him parrot his master’s bigotry towards their magical slaves as well as the ‘commoners’ with the only pushback coming from his ‘commoner’ art instructor and his own slave, the titular Bartimaeus.
In many of the instances where Nathanial tries to ‘do the right thing,’ the system punishes him for it. Namely, in trying to come to the defence of his master against the story’s antagonist, Nathanial very nearly loses everything, including, potentially, his privileged status as a magician. And he only gets that status back because he has a talented slave to help him – even with all his cleverness, he couldn’t have accomplished this on his own. And then he lies about it (to Bartimaeus’s irritation, but not surprise).

Thus ends book one: Nathanial, through luck and help, ends up with even more power than he started with, despite his ineptitude getting several innocent people killed at the end of act 2.

Nathanial is at the foreground of the critique of the ‘great men’ myth: he’s clever, but only clever in the sense that the combination of intellectual curiosity and privilege allows him to know how to get a stronger entity to do what he wants. And none of his ideas are good ideas, by the way.
In the background, we have the fictional prime minister, Rupert Devereux, who is presented as not very powerful by many of the ministers he manages, and whose primary appeal is that he’s handsome and charismatic.

I like the inclusion of this angle because there’s not only the obvious parallel of slave owners getting the credit for the labor of their slaves that got touted (and sadly sometimes still does) in places like the slave plantation-era South in the United States or in the mythos of Ancient Egypt. This works as a critique of the myth of ‘great men’ in general, and points out that we often place people in positions of leadership on pedestals that they don’t fully deserve. Being an effective manager is important, but that alone oughtn’t be the grounds for making them a superhero.

Take Elon Musk. He’s not an engineer or a rocket scientist; he’s never designed anything himself. He does, however, act as the facilitator for scores of engineers and rocket scientists who do build his Teslas and his rockets (though whether they’re actually very good is another discussion). Yet, many people just sort of attribute all of that ingenuity to him as though without exactly him, none of that would exist. Even if that were true, would that be enough to make him ‘great?’ A system under a pyramid power structure would say ‘hell yes.’ Someone critical of that system might ask: ‘why do we even need ‘great’ figures; why can’t we celebrate collective accomplishment instead?’

Now, while Stroud is deeply invested in saying ‘thing bad’ in this book, he doesn’t go so far as to suggest what the ‘bad thing’ should be replaced with. This is territory he goes more deeply into later in the series, though without fully crossing the finish line. One could argue that the lack of this answer weakens the entire critique, but considering that this series is aimed at younger readers with those famously rich imaginations, perhaps the question of ‘what now?’ is one he lays at their feet.

To bring this discussion full circle, part of why I will continue to promote this series is that I largely agree with its politics and enjoy the story Stroud created around its messaging. But I also, separately, applaud his thoughtfulness in putting his arguments together so that the events chronicled in the series follow a logical path to a logical conclusion; the bird isn't, in fact, just black, and the magicians aren't in charge just because creating a magical world with magicians in it is neat-- it means something.

Authors: I promise that being introspective when reviewing your work will make it better and keep you safe from video essayists on Youtube.

Readers: please read ‘The Bartimaeus Trilogy’ because it quietly set the bar for YA and just general contemporary fantasy back in 2003, and it’s really, really good. If for no other reason, read it because Stroud writing as Bartimaeus is incredibly funny.