A Deadly Education

The novel makes a distinction between the production of mana by the independent students and the vast reservoirs of power stored and shared by the enclave students. Throughout the novel, El has to perform tedious and time-consuming physical labor to build mana to make even the simplest of spells work. One of the first examples of this is when El is working to repair her door after Orion saves her from the soul-sucker. El describes the process of repairing the door:

I laboriously drilled holes in one piece of scrap and wired it in place over the hole he had left in the door, securing it thoroughly. I then sat there and wove some of the thinner wire around four thick strands to make a wider band, and I used it to wire the dented remains of my doorknob and lock roughly back in place. Then I pulled the door shut and did the same on the inside with a second piece of scrap (34).

Orion, an enclave kid, watches this with some confusion: ‘“Why don’t you just use the mending charm?’ Orion ventured tentatively, about halfway through the agonizingly boring process, after he looked round to see what was taking me so long.” Later that evening, El spends a half-hour doing sit-ups to generate enough mana to cast a shielding spell around her bed so she can sleep through the night. She notes she “can’t afford to do it every night” (40).

Orion is astounded that El does not simply pull small amounts of mana from the inanimate objects around her, as he’s accustomed to a plentiful supply and easy access to power whenever he needs it. El does not have this reservoir, so she must carefully build and ration her mana. She is fortunate to have her mother’s crystals as a power storage device, but the process of filling them still requires physical and mental effort. This parallels the inequality between lower socio-economic groups and those who benefit from generational wealth. Orion is able to pull mana from mals, which is a unique talent, but his access to the power-sharing network is limited due to his lack of control. Chloe provides a better contrast to El in this sense, as she routinely uses the power-sharer. El notes: “Of course they did power-sharing, and of course they had their own power sink to boot, like my crystals, except some enormous one that every student from New York had been feeding into for the last century” (57). El gets a better understanding of this wealth of mana when she is given a power-sharer for the graduation hall repairs. She describes “a line of mana that felt roughly like a hose being fed by the Atlantic,” and notes, “I’d already known that the enclaves had access to gobs of mana, loads more than the rest of us, but I hadn’t realized how much more. I could’ve razed a city or two without even making a dent” (454).

The use of power-sharers, the cost of mana, and the realities of how it is produced and distributed add dimension to the social critique of the novel. El explicitly discusses the ways in which the enclave kids experience—and take for granted—the privilege and resources they are given both within and outside the school. Power-sharers and the reservoir of mana upon which the enclave students can draw function as a symbol and critique of generational wealth in contemporary society. Though El critiques the system itself, she is mostly exasperated with the enclave students who benefit from it without stopping to think about how it works.