100 pages • 3 hours read
Soman ChainaniThe School For Good and Evil
Fiction | Novel | Middle GradeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Swan
On the crest of the School for Good and Evil is a black and a white swan. The black swan represents the School for Evil, and the white swan represents the School for Good. Together, they intertwine to form the crest of the school. Each student has a silver swan on their uniform identifying them as a student. They can’t get rid of the swan:
Sophie watched students on both sides trying to cover the glittering silver swans on their uniforms. Mimicking them, she folded the droopy collar of her tunic to obscure her own swan—instantly the crest vanished off the robe and appeared on her chest. Stunned, she ran her finger over the swan, but it was embedded in her skin like a tattoo (87).
Although the School for Good and Evil separates its students, the silver swan on their uniforms marks them as united. Unbeknownst to them, the swan is a symbol of the good that is in each student. This is made clear at the end of the book when the swans come off each student’s uniform and coalesce into the Good brother.
Professor Sader writes in his history book about the brother who died in the Great War and how he protected the balance of Good and Evil: “For the dying brother used his final embers of magic to create a last spell against his twin: a way to prove Good and Evil still equal” (215). It isn’t until later that readers learn the Evil Brother won the Great War, so the Good Brother cast a spell to protect the balance for Good and Evil: the swans on the uniform that protect each student and prove that nobody is all Good or all Evil, because everyone has some of each quality inside them. These swans come to life at the end of the novel and form the Good brother’s spirit who defeats his brother. Each student, despite being a Never or an Ever, was united by the swan on their chest as a symbol of unity and a representation of the good and evil in everyone.
The Storian
The Storian is the magical pen that records fairy tales. It is a magical object that acts of its own accord and decides which fairy tales to write. It is protected by the School Master but has a will of its own. It symbolizes a person’s fate. The characters revere the Storian because it records fairy tales; once a character is chosen, they must live out their fairy tale until its conclusion. However, within the tale, the person has free will to make choices and choose how their fairy tale ends. The Storian records and foreshadows, but it doesn’t decide the ending. The character makes that choice. The School Master says, “Once the Storian begins your story, then I’m afraid we must follow it wherever it takes you” (174). The School Master makes it sound as though the Storian controls Sophie and Agatha’s fate. However, it can only record what they do and what it thinks is going to happen. The Storian can’t make the endings happen.
When Sophie sees Evil losing the battle she started, she realizes that she must write her own story to be happy. She scales the tower to try and gain control of the Storian because she thinks that it controls her fate. Inside the tower, she finds out the Storian doesn’t control it; Sophie controls her own story, because her actions make her destiny. When the School Master uses the Storian as a weapon to kill Agatha but kills Sophie instead, the Storian is the tool of the killing but not the one who chose it. The Storian is wielded by its teller. Once the girls realize this, they take control of their story and go home together, as they wanted.
Mirrors
Mirrors are a symbol of accepting who one is in the story. In the School for Evil, there are no mirrors because beauty is discouraged. Only in ugliness will a person find true freedom, Professor Manley tells Sophie. In contrast, there are mirrors everywhere in the School for Good to remind students of their beauty. There are so many mirrors that Agatha plots her path through the school to avoid them. Agatha removes the mirror from her room because she doesn’t want to look at herself and gives it to Sophie, who is obsessed with mirrors and her reflection. Agatha’s refusal to look in mirrors is symbolic of her refusal to accept who she is. Professor Dovey forces Agatha to confront her fear of mirrors and the idea that she isn’t beautiful, so she must be Evil. After Professor Dovey pretends to give Agatha a makeover, leading her to think of herself as blonde and beautiful, Agatha seeks out a mirror. Instead of seeing Sophie’s beauty looking back at her, she sees herself and realizes she was beautiful all along. The mirror symbolizes Agatha’s accepting her beauty. Agatha has to accept her beauty in the mirror, while Sophie has to let go of her ideas of goodness as inherently connected to beauty in order to grow. After Sophie tries to kill Agatha and Tedros, she sees her reflection changed to ugly because of the evil inside her: “As Sophie looked into her mirror, panic slowly melted away and her face twisted with a strange relief as if at last she could see beyond her reflection to what lay inside” (439). Sophie’s beauty held her back and deceived her. After she became evil, she realized it wasn’t her looks that made her good; it was her character. Sophie and Agatha’s opposing journeys with mirrors represent their coming-of-age journeys and acceptance of who they are inside.
