Chapter 6: Manifestation

Summary

El and Orion continue to spend time together as friends. Aadhya tells El that she should use her friendship with Orion to obtain status and secure a position in one of the enclaves, but El wants to be accepted for her own powers. Aadhya tells El, “you feel like it’s going to rain,” meaning that El gives off a sense of bad luck. 

El shows Orion a desk that she has found in the library, hidden deep in the aisles of books. Although the library is the safest place in the school, maleficaria can still find ways in. Its large, comfortable reading rooms are always claimed by the students from the top enclaves. El and Orion argue about how often students are attacked. Orion doesn’t want to believe that El was attacked several times a week before they started hanging out. El points out that he and the other New York kids get attacked far less, due to their alliances and their additional resources, such as Orion’s magical watch, which tells him when the New York enclave kids are in trouble. When Orion suddenly jumps from his seat and runs down the nearest aisle, El realizes that he must be going to save the New York kids from danger, and that this may be an opportunity for her to show her powers. 

While El chases Orion, the library itself tries to slow her down. The aisles become longer, and a golden book appears on one of the shelves. El stows the book in her bag but continues toward the reading rooms, where she can hear fighting. There are at least four maleficaria fighting Orion and the other New York kids—a perfect opportunity for El to impress. El realizes that the golden book was an excellent prize and figures out that the library is trying to stop her from noticing something. El turns and sees a maw-mouth, one of the most dangerous monsters known to wizards and nearly impossible to kill. El’s father was killed by a maw-mouth, saving El’s mother during their graduation. Instead of attacking her, this maw-mouth turns toward the freshman living quarters. Passing up the opportunity to impress everyone by saving the New York enclave kids, El chases the maw-mouth, knowing that no one will witness her potential death or success. 

El shields herself with magic and lets the maw-mouth consume her. Once inside, she cast every murder spell she knows and destroys the monster from the inside. Unaware of El’s heroic actions, Orion shows up shortly after, relieved that she escaped the library.

Analysis

The setting of Chapter 6, the library, brings the theme of privilege into sharp focus. Although the library is the safest place in the Scholomance, it is still dangerous, and groups of students leverage their social standing to stake out the best-situated tables and sections. Just as there is not enough space in the world’s enclaves for all wizards and their children to grow up in relative safety, the library’s reading room cannot hold all the students. As in the outside world, the best and safest areas are claimed by groups of the most privileged enclavers. Independent students like El can only work at the less safe study carrels in the stacks. El and Orion are an example of the stark differences between privileged enclavers and independent students. Orion, unused to being attacked in the library and protected by his affinity, obliviously forgets to check for mals when he sits down with El at her usual table. The Scholomance’s autonomy over its shape and size symbolizes privilege in that its motivations reflect the intentions of the enclavers who created it. El realizes with horror that the Scholomance’s motivation in allowing her to obtain a rare book and reach the reading room are deliberate acts meant to protect the privileged enclavers by offering up a feast of freshmen students to a maw-mouth. 

El’s desire to choose goodness over her natural affinity for evil is tested when she realizes the maw-mouth is headed toward the freshmen dormitory. El respects and admires her father’s long-ago act of sacrificing himself to save her mother (who was pregnant with El at the time), but she struggles with the decision to sacrifice herself in a similar way. The maw-mouth represents a daunting challenge, as facing it will likely lead not only to death, but a particularly tortuous one. While El suspects that the school’s attempts to distract her mean it thinks she can defeat the maw-mouth, she also knows when she attacks it that she will be sacrificing her stored mana, her opportunity to show her power by saving the enclavers in the reading room, and possibly also her life. Her decision to destroy the maw-mouth is evidence that El’s desire to choose good is consistently stronger than her natural affinity toward evil.