64 pages • 2 hours read
Rainbow RowellCarry On: The Rise and Fall of Simon Snow
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Fate Versus Free Will
Simon’s role as the Chosen One pits him and those close to him in a struggle between fate and free will. Simon’s magic is stronger than that of anyone in history, and he believes that he is meant to save the world. However, he feels trapped rather than empowered by his destiny. In Chapter 62, he tells Baz, “I just do what’s expected of me. […] I don’t get to choose or plan. I just take it as it comes. And someday, something will catch me unawares or be too big to fight, but I’ll fight anyway” (355). This passage illustrates Simon’s lack of agency. He sees his life as a series of dangers and disasters that will soon come to a brutal end. Baz also feels caged by fate and expects to die an early death. The Mage seeks to strip the Old Families of their power, with a particular vendetta against the Pitches, who are “the nearest thing [mages] have to a royal family” (82). As the last heir of the House of Pitch, Baz considers it his destiny to give his life defending his family from the Mage’s ultimate weapon, Simon: “This is my world, the World of Mages. I have to do my part to fight for it. Even if I know I’m going to lose” (181). For over seven years, Simon and Baz’s grim destinies make them rivals at best and sworn nemeses at worst.
When Agatha rejects her predestined place in the narrative, she gives Simon and Baz a chance to change their fates, too. On paper, the beautiful, elegant girl seems like the perfect love interest for the Chosen One, but she isn’t in love with Simon. In Chapter 26, she breaks up with him: “I want to be someone’s right now, Simon, not their happily ever after. I don’t want to be the prize at the end. The thing you get if you beat all the bosses” (141). She refuses to let anyone else decide her fate. Instead of being reduced to an objectified reward or collateral damage in someone else’s story, she chooses to follow her own hopes and desires. Eventually, this leads Agatha to leave the magical world entirely and begin a new life as a Normal in California. After Agatha breaks up with him, Simon is free to pursue a relationship with Baz. When the boys share their first kiss, Simon realizes that Baz is “not a monster” or “a villain” as he believed for years but “just a boy” (343)—seeing through the veneer of stereotype and expectation for the first time. He may never have achieved this realization if Agatha hadn’t defied destiny first. Fate threatened to divide Simon and Baz by labeling one as a hero and the other as a villain. After casting off these roles, they save their world by stopping the Mage, healing the Humdrum, and preventing the Old Families from declaring civil war.
The Mage also plays an important part in the theme of Fate Versus Free Will. The antagonist tries to force prophecies to come true instead of waiting for the Chosen One to appear. Ultimately, however, his attempts to control destiny backfire when Simon does not become the pliable weapon that the Mage was expecting. When he realizes that Simon has huge reserves of magic but cannot control them, the Mage treats Simon like a vessel for power rather than a person with his own will, or a son; instead, he considers the boy “cracked” and “compromised” (123) due to his inability to control his overwhelming magic. In fact, the Mage’s rituals give Simon so much power that he inadvertently creates the Humdrum and nearly dooms the world the Mage purports to protect. Simon stops the Humdrum by giving up his magic, a sacrifice that marks the end of his time as the Chosen One. In exchange, Simon receives a chance to create a life of his own choosing. Through the rise and fall of Simon Snow, Rowell demonstrates that free will is stronger than fate and that no one has the right to decide another’s destiny.
Discovering Love and Identity
Young adult literature often explores the themes of romance and self-discovery. Rowell combines these two themes by creating a protagonist whose search for love is interwoven with his identity. Simon’s desire for love and his uncertainty about who he is both trace back to his lonely early years in children’s homes. As a young child, Simon consoles himself with daydreams in which his father is a professional athlete, his mother is a model, and they take him to live with them in a mansion: “‘[W]e always missed you, Simon,’ they’d say. ‘We’ve been looking for you’” (8). In actuality, Simon does have a mother who misses him deeply, the late Lucy Salisbury. She crosses the Veil to tell her son that she loves him and “never would have left” him (490), but the novel ends with Simon still unaware of his parentage.
When Simon is 11, the Mage gives him a new identity by telling him that he is the Chosen One. However, the Mage conceals the truth that he is Simon’s father, and he doesn’t offer the boy the affection he needs, so the protagonist’s search for love continues. Even though Simon and Agatha are unhappy together and she’s not in love with him, he clings to their relationship because he believes it defines him. Looking at a picture of the two of them at the winter solstice, Simon thinks, “Standing next to Agatha, wearing a suit her father lent me…I actually look like I’m who I’m supposed to be” (57). Simon equates his happily ever with Agatha to his future survival, so he feels lost when she breaks up with him.
After the breakup, Simon finds love with the last person he expected. While Simon actively seeks love, Baz hides his feelings. He believes that his identity as the Pitch heir demands that he oppose the Mage’s Chosen One, and that being a vampire means he doesn’t deserve to live. However, that changes when Simon saves his life with a kiss. Simon’s love helps Baz realize that his vampirism doesn’t define him or make him a monster. Likewise, Baz helps when Simon becomes convinced that he’s a supervillain. During the Epilogue, Simon says that he’s no longer the Chosen One. Baz retorts, “Simon Snow, I choose you” (507). Thus, Baz grants Simon an identity born out of love and free will rather than imposed from outside. Later in the Epilogue, Baz offers a reinterpretation of the prophecies about the Chosen One. By his logic, love is the “greatest power of powers” (321). Although Simon still has questions about his identity at the end of the novel, he finds a happy ending with someone who loves him “even if it isn’t the ending [he] ever would have dreamt for [himself], or hoped for” (518). Simon’s journey shows that love helps people discover who they want to be.
The Purpose of Power
In addition to being a magical love story, Carry On is a reflection on the purpose of power. Rowell carefully constructs a cast of characters with contrasting motives in order to examine the uses and dangers of power. For example, the Petty twins are born with stronger magic than any known mage besides Simon, but they have starkly different goals. Not content with his immense power, Nicodemus craves immortality and chooses to become a vampire. As punishment, the mages break his wand and remove his fangs, rendering him weak by both magical and vampiric standards. His twin sister, Ebb, on the other hand, chooses a peaceful life. Natasha Pitch teaches Ebb, “You were born with [power], but it doesn’t have to be your destiny” (284). Ebb holds fast to these words, herds goats instead of hoarding power, and watches over Watford. One of her final acts is saving Agatha from the Mage, who only manages to kill Ebb because she is unaccustomed to using her power to fight.
Unlike Ebb, the Mage is obsessed with power, and hers is not the only life he sacrifices to his megalomania. During his childhood, Davy demonstrates a strong sense of justice and equality that is at odds with the elitism of the magical world. He is “the first [in his family] with enough power to get past the trials” and enroll at Watford (68). Davy criticizes the school for “keeping knowledge in the hands of the rich” and argues that it would be “more important to teach the least powerful” (69). After the Coven, the magical world’s ruling body, dismisses his ideas, however, he slowly abandons his call to social justice and instead becomes obsessed with prophecies about the Chosen One. He uses Lucy, the woman who loves him, to give birth to the most powerful mage in history into the world, little concerned that she dies as a result. As demonstrated by Lucy’s death, the Mage’s efforts to amass power often have unintended consequences. For example, he didn’t expect that the vampires he hired to attack Watford would kill Natasha Pitch, but he still takes her place as headmaster and uses the position to advance his reforms. The Mage’s methods grow increasingly militaristic and brutal up to the novel’s climax, when he murders Ebb to steal her magic. While the Mage originally intended to use his power for the greater good, his descent into power hunger proves that having good intentions doesn’t justify the means—unlike Baz, the novel’s other vampiric character, who drains animals of blood rather than harm people, the Mage thinks nothing of draining the power of those around him. In stark contrast to the Mage’s actions, Simon saves the world by giving his power to the Humdrum. In addition, the Epilogue establishes that the magical world is at peace without a single leader who rules over everyone else. The novel’s climax and resolution reveal a truth that the Mage once understood—the purpose of power is to be shared.
Related Titles
By Rainbow Rowell
