The Raven Boys

“Is this how we make our way to death? Blue wondered. A stumbling fade-out instead of a self-aware finale?”

Blue watches Gansey’s spirit lumber through the churchyard on St. Mark’s Eve. This is the first time Blue has ever seen a spirit, and she is struck by how slow and uncertain Gansey seems to be. Blue’s thoughts offer two possibilities for the transition from life to death. Before this moment, she seemed to believe in a bold approach, as if viewing death as the next big adventure. Here, she wonders if death is more of a lackluster moment when an essence slips from one state of being to another. Gansey’s spirit suggests that death is a process of reluctance, but given this is the only spirit Blue’s ever seen, she has no proof all deaths are like this.

“‘Have you heard of the legends of sleeping kings? The legends that heroes like Llewellyn and Glendower and Arthur aren’t really dead, but are instead sleeping in tombs, waiting to be woken up?’

Ashley blinked vapidly, then said, ‘Sounds like a metaphor.’”

Gansey explains his theory about sleeping kings to the girlfriend of Ronan’s brother. This scene adds a new character to convey exposition and world-building facts to the reader. Gansey has often explained his theories to his friends, so it would have been redundant for him to do so again. By introducing Ashley, who only shows up one more time, Maggie Stiefvater uses Gansey to deliver information in a way that makes sense. The legend of sleeping kings, common across various myths and cultures, posits that a once great leader goes into a deep sleep to be awakened when they are again needed. Such kings include Arthur (Britain), Wenceslas (Bohemia), and Charlemagne (the Roman Empire). The mentioned Llewellyn is, like Glendower, from Welsh myth, and the use of two Welsh figures here hints to the reader that the story will focus on Welsh influence.

“He cast a quick, uneasy glance from the secretary to Whelk, and Whelk knew he was thinking about how much Whelk’s father had been worth, once upon a time, and how little he was worth now, long after the trials had left the front pages of the newspapers. All the junior faculty and the admin staff hated the Aglionby boys, hated them for what they had and what they stood for, and Whelk knew they were all secretly pleased that he had fallen down among their ranks.”

This passage comes from Whelk’s first point-of-view chapter. Seven years ago, Whelk’s father was exposed for several crimes, and his family lost everything, prompting Whelk to sacrifice Noah in his failed attempt to wake the ley line. Whelk’s presence as a teacher at Aglionby offers a glimpse of what the fallen elite looks like in the story world and makes Whelk more of a threat because he knows how most Aglionby boys think and is, therefore, a well-equipped adversary. Whelk’s position also lets the reader see Aglionby life from the administrative perspective. Whelk hates the current students because they represent what he once had, and the other administrators hate the students because they are arrogant and represent divides in American life that will never be narrowed as long as institutions like Aglionby exist to keep the rich in power.

“It was possible, Gansey thought, that he’d once again been oblivious about money. He hadn’t meant to be offensive but, in retrospect, it was possible he had been. This was going to eat at him all evening. He vowed, as he had a hundred times before, to consider his words better.”

Gansey’s offer to pay Blue for her time if she talks to Adam is offensive and highlights how out of touch money can make someone. As a member of the wealthy elite, Gansey lives a life few others will ever come close to experiencing. He has a completely different worldview, believing that money can get him anything he wants and that his presence is enough to change people’s minds. From spending time with Adam, Gansey has learned that not everyone thinks as he does, but the programming of his upbringing is not so easily undone. Throughout the book, Gansey struggles with understanding how his wealth makes his life so different from others, and he often does things (such as offering to pay Blue for her time) that might be acceptable in his family’s circle of elites but are unacceptable everywhere else.

“One day, she would live someplace where she could stand outside her house and see only stars, no streetlights, where she could feel as close as she ever got to sharing her mother’s gift. When she looked at the stars, something tugged at her, something that urged her to see more than stars, to make sense of the chaotic firmament, to pull an image from it. But it never made sense. She only ever saw Leo and Cepheus, Scorpio and Draco. Maybe she just needed more horizon and less city. The only thing was, she didn’t really want to see the future. What she wanted was to see something no one else could see or would see, and maybe that was asking for more magic than was in the world.”

Blue doesn’t have words for the magic inherent in the world and the night sky. She feels something moving with the stars above, which suggests that there is enough magic in the world and foreshadows the magic she and the boys later find. Blue shrugs off her frustration at being different for most of the book, and this is one of the few places she’s honest about feeling left out. Even if she doesn’t want to see the future, she wants to be able to do something extraordinary like the rest of her family, and the fact that she can’t makes her feel like magic isn’t meant for her. Blue is at the beginning of her journey, and her desire to see something no one else has seen reveals her urge to feel special and to contribute to magic.

“‘But all it takes to wake Glendower is discovery. People have been walking all over the ley lines.’

‘Oh no, Mr. Gansey, that’s where you’re mistaken. The spirit roads are underground. Even if they weren’t always, they’re now covered by meters of dirt accumulated over the centuries,’ Malory said. ‘No one’s really touched them for hundreds of years. You and I, we don’t walk the lines. We just follow the echoes.’”

Gansey discusses Glendower and the ley lines with his professor friend. This is one of many times when Gansey learns his search for Glendower is more complex than he thought, and it reveals Gansey’s lack of understanding about how others live. Gansey believes anything is attainable if you name the right price, and he isn’t used to having to work for something because almost everything has simply been presented to him. In addition, these lines offer an idea of how myths get lost and distorted over time. The ley lines were once at the surface of the world, but after so much time, they are buried from the natural movement of the Earth. As a result, anything that was buried along the lines, such as Glendower, is now even more hidden and buried. Not only does Gansey need to awaken the ley line, but awakening Glendower is a completely separate process because of how time has changed where he is.

“It was possible, Blue thought after a long moment, that Maura meant Blue’s father. None of the awkward conversations Blue had attempted with her mother had ever gotten her any information about him, just nonsensical humorous replies (He is Santa Claus. He was a bank robber. He’s currently in orbit.) that changed every time she asked. In Blue’s head, he was a dashing heroic figure who’d had to vanish because of a tragic past. Possibly to a witness protection program. She liked to imagine him stealing a glimpse of her over the backyard fence, proudly watching his strange daughter daydream under the beech tree.

Blue was awfully fond of her father, considering she’d never met him.”

Blue overhears her mother and Neeve discussing an unnamed “he” and concludes that “he” is her father because she doesn’t know who else they would be discussing. Blue’s thoughts about her father are based on what she hopes is true, even if she doesn’t believe any of her stories are true. The potential realities Blue makes up for her father involve him loving and being proud of her, which lets her love him back. The mystery of Blue’s father is not concluded by the novel’s end, and this passage foreshadows that he possibly came from the ley line and that Blue may be a creature of magic.

“Ronan was head of class in Latin. He studied joylessly but relentlessly, as if his life depended on it. Directly behind him was Adam, Aglionby’s star pupil, otherwise at the top of every class that he took. Like Ronan, Adam studied relentlessly, because his future life did depend on it.”

This observation from Gansey shows the differences and similarities between Adam and Ronan, two characters who seem to have the least in common. Ronan is typically a terrible student—often skipping class and rarely studying or doing his work. The one exception is Latin, and though this is not confirmed, it seems this has to do with his father and his family’s ability to bring objects from their dreams. Thus, Ronan’s feverish dedication to Latin is the only thing left linking him to his father. When Gansey thinks Ronan studies as if his life depends on it, he’s speaking metaphorically. By contrast, Adam is a model student—top of the class in everything but Latin. Rather than a metaphor, Adam studying as if his life depends on it is literal because if he doesn’t do well and get away from his father, the man could unintentionally beat him to death.

“And this was an uneasy place to be, because Gansey knew it took a lot for Adam to accept his reasons for chasing Glendower. Adam had plenty of reasons to be indifferent about Gansey’s nebulous anxiety, his questioning of why the universe had chosen him to be born to affluent parents, wondering if there was some greater purpose that he was alive. Gansey knew he had to make a difference, had to make a bigger mark on the world because of the head start he’d been given, or he was the worst sort of person out there.”

This passage explains why Gansey searches for Glendower and offers some insight into the relationship between Adam and Gansey. Coming from poverty and a violent home, Adam views Gansey’s life as charmed because his family cares about him and he has enough money to do whatever he wishes, things Adam is understandably jealous of. Having become such good friends with Adam, Gansey has learned just how privileged he is, which lets him see how someone like Adam could view Gansey’s search for Glendower as the casual hobby of someone who’ll never have to worry about anything. While this might have been the case before Gansey miraculously survived being attacked by hornets, that incident means there is nothing casual about his search now. Gansey is desperate to do something extraordinary with his life and to change the world so his second chance at life—and his money and privilege—aren’t wasted. Compared to Adam’s home life, Gansey’s concerns feel so small, but just because they aren’t as serious as Adam’s doesn’t mean they don’t matter to Gansey.

“‘Thanks,’ Adam said. It wasn’t quite the right thing to say, but it wasn’t entirely wrong, either. Blue liked how polite he was. It seemed different than Gansey’s politeness. When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.”

This observation from Blue plays into The Delicate Balance of Power and shows how the same action from different people may be perceived in opposite ways. Blue notes that Adam gives power away when he thanks someone, which can be linked to Adam’s upbringing. Adam is used to feeling powerless and to offering thanks to his parents, even though his father mistreats him. For Adam, giving thanks means he is giving in and offering his appreciation when it isn’t necessarily deserved. By contrast, Gansey thanks people as a matter of course. He expects people to give him things, and thanking them makes them feel like they’ve accomplished something great simply by providing something to someone with so much power. This passage shows how giving and taking is a form of transitioning power.

“Gansey didn’t know how to describe how it felt, to see death crawling inches from him, to know that in a few seconds, he could have gone from ‘a promising student’ to ‘beyond saving.’”

These lines come as Gansey is focused on watching a hornet crawl along a window. He knows he should kill the hornet because one sting could be his end, but he can’t bring himself to do it because he’s enthralled by the possibility of death so near. This hints at the guilt Gansey carries for surviving when he shouldn’t have and for not having done something extraordinary yet with his life to make up for everything that was granted to him at his birth. This passage also shows the fragility of life and how narrow the line between life and death is. Gansey is perfectly healthy as he thinks this, but it would only take the movement of a tiny insect for this to change.

“All that had been on the conveyer belt was a tube of toothpaste and four cans of microwave ravioli—and the cashier had just told him there were insufficient funds in her bank account to cover the purchase. Though it was not his failing, there was something peculiarly humiliating and intimate about the moment, hunched at the head of a shopping line, turning out his pockets to pretend he might have the cash to cover instead. While he fumbled there, a shaved-headed boy at the next register moved swiftly through, swiping a credit card and collecting his things in only a few seconds.”

Adam’s thoughts illustrate how different he is from Gansey and Ronan, and they offer insight into his past and how he views the world. Though this incident wasn’t when Adam decided to get into a school like Aglionby, it was a turning point where he realized he wanted to change his life. Being unable to pay for so small a number of items left Adam embarrassed and angry at his situation. In contrast to Adam’s desperate search for a way to afford his items, the boy at the next aisle purchased his things with the unconcern air of someone who doesn’t have to ask how much things cost. Like Ronan and Gansey, that boy was born to a level of privilege that allowed him to be easy and carefree, something Adam pines for because he wants to be equal to his friends.

“‘I just know that the dead travel in straight lines,’ she said. ‘That they used to carry corpses in straight lines to churches to bury them. Along what you call the ley line. It was supposed to be really bad to take them any other route than the way they’d choose to travel as a spirit.’”

Blue, Gansey, and Adam are discussing ley lines. In the book, ley lines are synonymous with the corpse road, which has some basis in myth, and corpse roads were common in British history. Britain experienced an increase in churches in medieval times, but not all churches had burial rights. As a result, corpse roads were established for people to bring their dead to the church with burial rights for their area, sometimes a few miles away. Blue’s assertion that corpse roads had to be straight calls upon the idea that spirits became confused if they had to travel along crooked paths. In myth, taking corpses along a different route is bad luck.

“Then—it had to happen eventually—Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear.”

This passage shows how language fits each person differently and offers insight into Ronan’s character. For the most part, Ronan has jagged edges, a sharp contrast to Adam’s softness. As a result, Ronan’s use of curse words fits him because they seem like natural things for him to say. He has a regard for well-placed curses, and Adam likens it to dark poetry, showing how curse words only have as much weight or wrongness as we choose to give them. The description of Ronan’s swearing also shows that one doesn’t have to use complex or fancy words to make something beautiful. Ronan achieves the same effect with curse words that someone else might with multisyllabic words. The emotion behind words, rather than the words themselves, gives them power.

“Blue clutched her backpack straps. Her mother and her friends were strange, yes, but they knew they were strange. They knew when they were saying something weird. Neeve didn’t seem to have that filter.”

These lines come after Neeve hints that she knows Blue and the boys are searching for Glendower. Blue is nervous because Neeve knows what’s happening, and it’s easy for her to see things associated with death. This passage serves as foreshadowing for Neeve trying to harness the power of the ley line later on and also offers insight into how Neeve is different from the rest of Blue’s family. Blue’s mother, Persephone, and Calla are comfortable with their strangeness, and thus, the strange things they do don’t seem too uncomfortable. By contrast, Neeve is hiding something, and even if she isn’t consciously uncomfortable with doing so, hints of her secret slip out in her actions and how she seems perfectly comfortable with things that make the rest of Blue’s family nervous.

“‘This place is Gansey’s. Everything in it is Gansey’s. I need to be an equal, and I can’t be, living here.’

‘Where do you live?’

Adam’s mouth was very set. ‘A place made for leaving.’

‘That’s not really an answer.’

‘It’s not really a place.’”

Blue and Adam talk when Blue visits Gansey’s apartment for the first time. Gansey is out, but Adam is there, and after Blue asks if Adam also lives there, Adam says no because he would have no chance to be an equal if he moved in with Gansey. These lines call to The Delicate Balance of Power and Finding Where We Belong. The power dynamic between Adam and Gansey leaves Adam feeling like he’s somehow less of a person because he comes from a life that’s so far beneath where Gansey lives. To cope with this, Adam thinks of his parents’ home as less of a real place and more of a stepping stone on his way to somewhere else. Adam doesn’t feel as though he belongs there, and he also doesn’t feel like he belongs at the apartment. In both cases, Adam chooses not to let himself belong.

“The conversation with Pinter gnawed at Gansey. Bribery. So that’s what it had come to. He thought this feeling inside him was shame. No matter how hard he tried, he kept becoming a Gansey.”

Gansey has just called the Aglionby Academy guidance counselor to argue for Ronan not to be expelled. Gansey does this because Ronan can’t access his inheritance without completing high school, but he also does it for himself because Ronan is part of his collection of people, and Gansey needs him in the search for Glendower. Gansey feels guilty about the last part, and after the phone call, he feels shame. Gansey has worked hard not to live the life he was born into, wanting to make a meaningful contribution to the world. However, at this moment, he feels more like his father than he has at any point in the story, and though it got what he wanted—a final chance for Ronan—this passage shows that getting what we want means less if we have to break our principles to get it.

“Adam hadn’t let himself dwell on that possibility. Every time his thoughts came close to touching on the near miss, it opened up something dark and sharp edged inside him. It was hard to remember what life at Aglionby had been like before Gansey. The distant memories seemed difficult, lonely, more populated with late nights where Adam sat on the steps of the double-wide, blinking tears out of his eyes and wondering why he bothered. He’d been younger then, only a little more than a year ago.”

Adam thinks this after Whelk almost kills Gansey. Adam and Ronan sit in Ronan’s car outside Adam’s home, and Adam avoids going inside because he can see his agitated father in the window. He thinks about what his life was like at Aglionby before Gansey, realizing it feels like much longer ago than it was. These lines show how people can have a profound impact on our lives and how lots of changes in a short time can make us age rapidly. Adam admits that his life was worse before he met Gansey, but even so, he still refuses to move out of his parents’ home, showing that Gansey does help Adam and that Adam has a limit to how much help he’ll allow. Second, Adam thinks he was much younger a year ago, revealing how much Adam has grown and changed under Gansey’s influence.

“She tried to imagine being Gansey, seeing the warehouse for the first time, deciding it would be a great place to live, but she couldn’t picture it. No more than she could imagine looking at the Pig and deciding it was a great car to drive, or Ronan and thinking he was a good friend to have.”

Blue arrives at the apartment after Adam’s fight with his father. The apartment is a renovated warehouse, and Blue tries to understand Gansey’s motivation for living there, something she’s unable to do. This is partly because the warehouse doesn’t strike her as a place to live and partly because she can’t reconcile someone with Gansey’s resources living in such a run-down place. This leads her to also think about how Gansey’s car isn’t great and how Ronan doesn’t come across as a good friend. Gansey isn’t afraid to make bold choices and sees the good in things in a way that others don’t right away, as shown by how the warehouse is the perfect apartment for him, his broken-down car fits his personality, and Ronan turns out to be the best kind of friend.

“Logically, Adam knew that he had nothing to miss, that he effectively had Stockholm syndrome, identifying with his captors, considering it a kindness when his father didn’t hit him. Objectively, he knew that he was abused. He knew the damage went deeper than any bruise he’d ever worn to school. He could endlessly dissect his reactions, doubt his emotions, wonder if he, too, would grow up to hit his own kid.

But lying in the black of the night, all he could think was, My mother will never speak to me again. I’m homeless.”

These lines from Adam’s thoughts show the toll abuse takes on the mind and also shed light on why someone continues to return to their abuser. Adam understands his mental state, but understanding and acknowledging are two different things. He knows he shouldn’t feel glad when his father doesn’t hit him and should be concerned that he’ll visit similar abuse upon his own children, but these things feel far away compared to the idea of leaving his mother behind. He hates that his father’s abuse has gotten in the way of his relationship with his mother, and the fact that his first thought is that she won’t speak to him shows how much he clings to his parents. He isn’t concerned for her safety and doesn’t even consider that she’d be glad Adam isn’t being abused anymore, which shows that Adam’s relationship with his mother, though she is not physically abusive, is just as poor as the one with his father.

“Do you know, it’s really hard to be a parent. I blame it on Santa Claus. You spend so long making sure your kid doesn’t know he’s fake that you can’t tell when you’re supposed to stop.”

Blue’s mother says this to Blue shortly before telling her about her father. Blue’s mother has lied about Blue’s father for Blue’s entire life, likening this to maintaining the myth of Santa Claus. As with Blue’s father, Santa is a lie parents tell their children to keep the magic of their childhoods alive, and when the lie ends, a child changes, whether or not they realize it. Blue found her mother wrapping Santa’s presents when she was six, but if she hadn’t, her mother, like many parents, would have struggled with when to end the lie. She’s done something similar with Blue’s father—lying about him for so long that she never found a good time to tell the truth because it was easier to keep it secret.

“‘It must be a personal sacrifice. Killing me wouldn’t accomplish that. I’m nothing to you.’

‘But I’m nothing to you,’ Whelk said.

‘But killing is,’ she replied. ‘I’ve never killed anyone. I give up my innocence if I kill you. That is an incredible sacrifice.’”

During the book’s climax, Neeve and Whelk are inside the pentagram in the ley line forest, and Whelk prepares to sacrifice Neeve to claim the ley line’s power. Neeve’s argument here establishes how sacrifices work in the novel’s world. Rather than giving up anything, sacrifices must mean something, which is why Whelk’s sacrifice of Noah didn’t work seven years ago. Whelk never really cared about Noah, and though Whelk hadn’t killed before, he had abused others, which suggests killing wasn’t giving up enough of himself for the sacrifice to work. By contrast, Neeve holds killing someone in high regard, and for her, it is giving up something great, thus giving her sacrificed innocence more power. This also supports the idea that Adam sacrificing his free will is a huge thing for him, supported by the idea that he’s been so adamant about being his own person and making his own choices.

“‘He was just alive,’ he said helplessly. ‘He just taught us four irregular verbs last week. And you killed him.’

‘Stop saying that. I didn’t save him. Stop telling me what I should believe is wrong or right!’”

This exchange between Gansey and Adam comes after the rampaging beasts kill Whelk. Gansey feels helpless at the sight of Whelk’s body, and he blames Adam for killing Whelk because Adam didn’t stop it from happening. Adam’s response illustrates the power of intention. Adam believes Whelk deserved to die, but Adam didn’t deliver the killing blow. He just didn’t stop something else from killing Whelk. While this may be a technicality, it is meaningful in terms of how sacrifices work in the story world. Adam doesn’t believe he killed Whelk, meaning he hasn’t given up that part of himself. Adam’s argument also gets to the heart of his interpersonal conflict with Gansey. Adam has striven to maintain his autonomy from Gansey the entire novel, and he hates the idea of Gansey telling him how to feel and think because it’s too close to letting Gansey control him.