52 pages • 1 hour read
Dhonielle ClaytonThe Marvellers
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “The Ace of Anarchy”
Part 4, Chapters 24-27 Summary
This summary section includes “The Highest High Walker of them All,” Chapter 24: “The Pocket-Box,” Chapter 25: “The Commedia Close,” Chapter 26: “The Canal of Mirrors,” and Chapter 27: “The Grandest Illusion.”
Gia arranges a meeting with Ella’s father since, as the Grand High Walker, he commands the Underworld. She offers him a large sum of money to raise her dead daughter’s spirit. Sebastien insists that Gia’s daughter must still be alive because she can’t be found in his domain, but Gia doesn’t believe him.
Back at the Arcanum, Ella’s still reeling from the accusations that the Headmarvellers leveled at her. She finds Jason and Brigit in the menagerie and tells them the whole story. Jason’s animal friends report that the police have been secretly searching rooms for a pocket-box. Brigit thinks they must be looking for hers. As she rummages through it, she realizes that it contains a skeleton key like the one she knitted in the picture of Masterji. The three friends make a more thorough search of her pocket-box and find a flyer from a circus and an even more disturbing image—a photograph of the Aces and Gia Trivelino: “Ella gulp[s], staring at the waving image of a young Indian man. ‘And there’s Masterji Thakur right beside her. Well, a young version of him’” (337-38). Ella realizes that Masterji was one of the five Aces.
Concluding that Gia might be holding Masterji captive, the three friends decide they must go to the circus in the city to rescue him. The trio sneaks out in the dead of night and journeys to Betelmore. They find their way to Low Street, where the Commedia Close is located. Brigit uses the skeleton key to gain access to the abandoned property. Once inside, the derelict location magically transforms into an active circus: “Ella watche[s] as the once ugly Close transform[s]: the faded red, black, and white diamonds now saturated with bright color, the cobblestones perfectly in place, a ticket booth reassembled, and the start of a strange pier” (351).
The children walk to the end of the pier and climb into a boat. It leads them through a frightening canal of mirrors where they become disoriented and almost lose one another. At the end of the ride, they scramble to dry land, and Brigit uses her knitting needles to punch a hole in the spell that keeps them trapped: “‘It’s an illusion. She’s undoing it.’ Ella’s heart pound[s] as the entire room change[s] from the belly of a circus to a laboratory” (358).
Part 4, Chapters 28-29 Summary
This summary section includes Chapter 28: “Marvel Light,” and Chapter 29: “To Be a Marveller…or not to Be?”
Inside the laboratory, Ella sees Masterji, the Ace of Hearts, trapped in a cage while Gia works with a mixture of elixirs, observing that
the woman ha[s] blond hair the same shade as Brigit’s and a mouth so red you’d think it was coated with blood. A shiver [shoots] through Ella. The woman [is] terrifying. More than the news-boxes could’ve ever captured (359).
Gia announces that she intends to concoct an elixir that can steal marvels: “With more than one marvel, I can harness all the light. I will be the most powerful Marveller in the world. No one will be able to take anything from me again” (365).
Gia immediately recognizes Brigit as her missing daughter, whom she thought was dead. However, this reunion doesn’t prevent her from pursuing her dangerous scheme. To stop Gia, Ella uses her Conjuror abilities to control the poisonous red Quassia and command it to twine around Gia. Meanwhile, Jason picks the lock on Masterji’s cage, and Brigit drinks all the elixir that Gia intended to use. As a result, the girl loses her marvel. By now, police have started to arrive on the scene, but Gia stops time long enough to slip through a portal and escape.
Back at school, the three students are proclaimed heroes for rescuing Masterji and temporarily foiling Gia’s scheme. In the infirmary, the doctors tell Brigit that her marvel can be restored surgically. Ella comes to visit her and thinks about what it would mean to lose her magic. She asks Brigit, “‘Do you feel different?’ Ella always wondered how Fewel people felt. Empty? Confused? Dulled? A world without conjure felt so sad to her. Would that happen to Brigit?” (370).
Part 4, Chapters 30-31 Summary
This summary section includes Chapter 30: “The Discipline Board,” “Mrs. Victoria Baudelaire’s Perfume Atelier,” and Chapter 31: “The Marvel Examination.”
The following morning, Ella attends her disciplinary hearing with her parents, who arrive to support her. Countering the Lumen family’s accusations, Ella’s friends vouch for her good character. Further, Masterji says that he was with Ella at the time of the supposed attack. He lectures the Marveller ruling body about its prejudiced views:
We placed Ella Durand under a microscope. She had to be perfect, and even then, she was not accepted. Our society has always struggled as new people joined, but the way we’ve treated the Conjure folk of the world is abhorrent (380-81).
Masterji then says that he took Ella to the forbidden Founder’s Room to show her the blueprints that had been created by a Conjuror. This revelation throws the entire proceeding into a temporary uproar. When order is restored, Clare Lumen’s real assailant proves to be one of Ella’s teachers, Dr. Winchester, who wanted to stir up trouble because he believes Conjurors have no place among Marvellers. He fabricated an illusion to implicate Ella. The governing board has him arrested and carted away. All charges against Ella are dropped. Later, Ella takes her exams and passes all her classes with flying colors.
Meanwhile, in Paris, Gia enters the shop of a parfumier who also happens to be a Marveller and a former Ace. The shop owner claims that she can mix perfumes to recall memories: “Scent delivers a memory to the mind that isn’t impaired by time. You can go back to places you want to visit. You can recapture things that are lost. You can even open worlds … if one is clever enough” (389). Dropping her disguise, Gia abducts the shop owner, intending to use her for the next phase of her attack.
Back at the Arcanum, Masterji shows Ella a copy of the original blueprints for the academy, which was built almost 300 years earlier. Ella opens the secret Conjuror signature attached to the document. Much to her surprise, she discovers that one of her ancestors was the original architect and resolves to learn all she can about his involvement in founding the school.
The school year culminates with a Marvel examination in which each Level One student is classified according to their special gifts. Ella will finally know where she belongs. She discovers that she possesses “a Paragon of Vision with a Cartomanic marvel” (400-01). This means she has the gift of foresight and can read divination cards. Although happy to have this information, Ella comes to an even more important realization: “She’d thought this moment would feel different, like a puzzle piece finally getting its place. But she realize[s] after everything she’[s] been through and everything Masterji Thakur ha[s] shown her…she already belong[s] here” (401).
Part 4 Analysis
In the novel’s final segment, Clayton circles back to one of the novel’s central themes: Navigating Questions of Identity. Throughout the story, many of the characters feel the need to assume personas that don’t represent their authentic selves. The book’s last chapters expose long-hidden truths that impact how many of the characters view themselves and their world. For example, Clayton contrasts the extreme ways that Gia has been vilified by the magical world with the reveal of her many associations with highly respected members of both the Marveller and Conjuror communities, complicating the good versus evil binary perpetuated by Marveller culture. Gia reveals that she and Ella’s father have known each other for years and the Aces did favors for the Grand High Walker, saying:
We’ve supplied you with information all these years to help you achieve the Conjure Edict. We’ve blackmailed and disposed of things that needed to disappear. Brought things to light to sway hearts and minds when together we should’ve burned these cities to the ground. We helped you play your game (331).
Masterji’s commitment to revealing the truth and pursuing justice despite the risks to his safety, reputation, and livelihood provides a model for Ella and her friends of the power inherent in embracing one’s authentic self. pocket-box reveals a picture of the Aces that includes a very young Masterji and the three friends learn that he was once the Ace of Hearts, though he rejects the violence and vengeance that Gia has since embraced. Masterji speaks out in Ella’s defense at her disciplinary hearing, providing an alibi for the time that Clare was attacked. He also denounces the efforts of the Marveller ruling class to suppress the truth that the original architect of the Arcanum Institute was a Conjuror—a revelation that causes the entire administration to question the school’s history as a Conjuror-free zone. Masterji also shows Ella the Conjuror signature on the school’s blueprints, proving that one of her own ancestors was the Arcanum architect.
The risk Masterji takes speaking for Ella at her hearing not only exonerates Ella but also allows the real culprit to be exposed, suggesting that truth begets truth. Dr. Winchester, who resorted to illusions to frame Ella for the assault on Clare in an attempt to see all Conjurors removed from the Arcanum, remains for his actions, underscoring The Inherent Injustice of Segregation, saying, “Conjurors will be the end of us. I’ve seen it. The eye is wise! I tried to stop it. You’ll thank me one day!” (385).
Brigit’s temporary loss of her magical abilities provides a turning point in Ella’s arc, causing her to realize how deeply connected to her conjure magic she feels. At the start of her arc, Ella wanted nothing more than to assimilate into the Arcanum and be accepted by the Marvellers. When Brigit drinks Gia’s marvel-stealing potion, she temporarily loses her abilities, inspiring Ella to reckon with the importance of her own gifts and background, and how much of herself she’d be giving up if she were exactly like the Marvellers:
A prickle of sadness rushed through Ella. Who would Brigit be without her knitting needles? It made Ella think about who she would be without conjure. What would she feel like if she couldn’t feel the tingle of it in her bones (371-72).
In the novel’s conclusion, Ella’s internal journey toward self-acceptance allows her to see The Challenges of Integration from a new perspective: She’s spent much of the story fixated on discovering her Paragon, hoping it will reveal itself and validate her magical abilities, only to discover—when her Paragon is finally revealed—that her identity questions have already been answered: “[Ella] realized after everything she’d been through and everything Masterji Thakur had shown her … she already belonged here” (401).
In crafting Ella’s arc, Clayton employs many elements of a traditional hero’s journey, overcoming significant external obstacles and experiencing a significant internal transformation. Over the course of the novel, Ella proves herself to be magically adept and resourceful. She rescues her kidnapped teacher and foils a powerful antagonist. Guided by a mentor, she learns that a Conjuror ancestor designed the Arcanum, and formed strong friendships with allies that help her along the way.
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By Dhonielle Clayton
