A Deadly Education by Naomi Novak Book Analysis (Free Essay Sample)

In the novel: A Deadly Education written by Naomi Novak, the reader is able to witness the life of teenage sorcerer, Galadriel “El” Higgins. Novik gives the readers a hard to like antagonist, and contrasts this with an enjoyable main character: Orion. The opposing lifestyles provide the main themes of the novel. These themes include privilege, discrimination, and class. The interactions and backstories of each character make said themes evident to the reader.

The theme of privilege is observed through the interactions between different enclaves. In the beginning of the novel it is even mentioned that the bigger, more popular enclaves get the better seating in the cafeteria. El explains that Orion killing the Soul-Eater in her room got her closer to the sunlamps, near the New-York enclave. Orion is seen as a popular, white hero from the New York enclave. The narrator even states “Everyone wants to believe he’s a magnificent hero who’s going to save them all.”(p.23) This shows that he has privilege because of what he has done for the other students and the enclave he comes from. Orion is from the New York enclave, the biggest enclave in the world and his mother is soon to be the leader of it. The other  students all attempt to “suck up” to people in great enclaves such as Orion. They do this in hopes of being invited into the enclaves. El on the other hand lacks friends, though she gained more privileges at dinner because of who she was associated with earlier that day; Orion. Who the characters are related to and where they come from are what grant them certain privileges, it is not often that it is by their own doing. 

Discrimination occurs within different categories in the novel. The readers are able to see racial discrimination and also power discrimination in this story. El is mixed, her mother is Welsh, and her father was Indian. When her mother took El to stay with her father’s parents, they did not fully accept her. Part of this is because she was not full Indian, she was white. She explains “But when we got there,my great grandmother took one look at me and fell down in a visionary fit and said I was a burdened soul and would bring death and destruction to all the enclaves in the world if I wasn’t stopped.”(p.14) This is not referring to her ethnicity though, this scenario is referring to mal and mana. The different ways the sorcerer's gain energy and power. The ones who draw their power from mal are referred to as Maleficers. Often associated with darker magic, this is why El’s grandparents claimed that she would destroy every enclave. El, amongst others are discriminated against for using mal. El never uses it, but many people believe she does. Orion even believes she does, but later discovers it was Jack using it in an attempt to attack El. She recalls “I didn’t get past Oh, though, because it wasn’t Orion: it was Jack, smeared with a handful of the octopus thing’s guts for the smell-clever of him- and he shoved a sharpened table knife right into my gut.”(p.61) El was underestimated and discriminated against because she was believed to be a Maleficer.  She is not necessarily ever racially discriminated against, but El was never able to connect with her father’s family or her Indian heritage.