A Ladder to the Sky

John Boyne’s novel positions its protagonist, Maurice Swift, within a literary tradition of charming and ruthless antiheroes, most notably Tom Ripley from Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 thriller, The Talented Mr. Ripley. The novel’s own front matter invites this comparison, with one critic from Vulture describing Maurice as “Tom Ripley as literary climber” (v). Highsmith’s Ripley is a handsome, intelligent young man who uses his charisma to murder a wealthy acquaintance and steal his identity. This character provides a clear blueprint for understanding Maurice’s amoral ambition. While Maurice does not commit murder in the same way, he builds his entire career on a form of intellectual and emotional vampirism, preying on others to steal the one thing they value most: their stories.

This is vividly illustrated when Maurice co-opts Erich Ackermann’s traumatic wartime past to launch his own career, a theft that ultimately destroys Erich. Similarly, he later steals the complete manuscript of a novel from his own wife, Edith. This act directly parallels Ripley’s appropriation of Dickie Greenleaf’s life and status. By invoking this literary archetype, Boyne explores whether intellectual theft is as destructive as physical violence, examining, as one review from the Minneapolis Star Tribune notes, “artistic endeavor, creative ambition, and ‘whether our stories belong to us at all’” (vi).