An Academy for Liars

“Intervention was exactly what she wanted. A sign, a symbol, the grasping hand of some meddling but benevolent god who would reach down through a break in the clouds and shake her senseless, until she was forced to believe—really and truly—that her life had meaning and that she was destined for something more than mediocrity.”

Upon seeing Wyatt and Sophia being intimate, Lennon hopes for an indication that there is more to her life than her current rudderless existence. Lennon fears mediocrity, but she seeks meaning from an external power rather than seeking it for herself. This is illustrated by the allusion to divine intervention and the image of the “grasping hand” that will “shake her” into believing she has worth. At this point in the novel, Lennon is a passive character convinced of her helplessness.

“Unlike his peers, he wore no uniform. His shirt—several sizes too large—looked moth-eaten, and his feet were bare.”

William Irvine sticks out in the photograph because of his bedraggled appearance, alluding to the fact that Drayton’s polished exterior hides its exploitation of those it depends on most. The moth is a recurring symbol of both power and vulnerability in the novel, and the moth’s association with the image of William Irvine highlights that he possesses both.

“Had she caught it, or had he?”

This moment blurs the boundaries between Lennon and Dante and is an early indicator of their complicated relationship. Lennon cannot initially tell where her power ends and where Dante’s begins, foreshadowing their eventual psychic and emotional connection.

“Persuasion is the ability to project one’s own will onto a being, object, or entity […]. There is not a living being in the world that lacks the ability to persuade. It is a gift inherent to all of us.”

Dante attempts to illustrate the ubiquitous nature of persuasion to his class. By stating that all living things can persuade, Dante frames the power as ordinary rather than a supernatural force. In this way, he attempts to assuage Lennon’s ethical concerns about the practice of persuasion.

“The boy gave her his gift: a brown moth with tattered wings. It twitched in the flat of her palm.”

The boy is later revealed to be William Irvine. When he gives Lennon the moth, the gesture is symbolic of him giving her his power, setting her up as his successor who will raise Drayton’s gates again. The tattered wings represent the damaged, fragile nature of this legacy.

“‘Is that a threat?’ ‘Yes,’ said Dante. ‘But not one from me.’”

Dante hints at the threats lurking at Drayton. Lennon is in danger, but Dante is being honest when he says that he does not pose a threat to her. Eventually, he risks his own life for her safety, though at this stage in the novel, he comes across as mysterious and morally ambiguous.

“It’s not. But you most certainly are, and the elevator is you.”

When Lennon asks if the elevator is sentient, Dante explains that it is an extension of her. The personification of the elevator emphasizes that Lennon’s power is an inherent part of her.

“What she hated even more was that the pot had been half-emptied, and all the ants and their precious eggs boiled alive, by the time she’d worked up the courage to intervene.”

Lennon’s childhood memory illustrates her frustration with her hesitation and lack of courage. The boiled ants and “their precious eggs” symbolize the consequences of passivity, setting up Lennon’s later decisions to act compulsively under duress.

“It wasn’t uncommon to see Blaine dining with the members of Logos House, who seemed almost eerily drawn to her, like moths to a light in the night.”

The moth imagery in this context highlights Blaine’s charm and power of persuasion, which draws other students to her. However, Blaine also spends much of the narrative persuaded into silence, unable to tell Lennon the truth. Thus, the moth symbol also represents her vulnerability to the power used upon her.

“There’s a saying on campus: Good lies are rewarded with belief. Great lies are rewarded with conviction. In my experience, persuasion is a great lie, well told.”

Dante equates persuasion with deception, which is a contrast to how he initially portrayed persuasion as a benign, universal power. This foreshadows his own dishonesty in his relationship with Lennon.

“Every one of us harbors a facet of ourselves that wants, desperately, to destroy us. A part of us that longs for our own annihilation.”

Dante tries to explain to Lennon what their aberrations are—he links the darker sides of themselves to internalized self-destruction awakened by use of persuasion. Lennon’s self-destructive tendencies stem from the breadth of her power, which vitalizes her aberration. This emphasizes the theme of The Psychological Cost of Influence.

“As a rule, she had always despised the feeling of falling in love. Her experience with Dante was no exception to this, but her resentment toward him—a feeling so strong it could almost be called hatred—was an anomaly and she felt so stupid for allowing him to occupy so much of her headspace, especially now that it was so painfully obvious just how little she mattered to him.”

Lennon resentment stems from Dante’s secrecy and the power imbalance in their relationship, emphasizing the theme of The Ethics and Complexities of Mentor-Student Relationships. Lennon’s feelings about falling in love—stating “she had always despised” it—reflects her dislike of putting herself in a position of vulnerability.

“Of the three, Carly was the most difficult to compel—perhaps because she’d wised up, after Lennon had persuaded her that first time. It took several grueling tries before Lennon was able to settle her, somewhat comfortably, on the couch next to their parents. All of them together there formed the scene of a family, made perfect by the fact that Lennon was not a part of it.”

Lennon creates a facsimile of a “perfect” family when she leaves on Christmas Day, exacerbating her feeling of being an outsider in her family. By using her persuasive powers on them, she distances herself emotionally and ethically, underscoring the theme of The Corrupting Nature of Power.

“I’m not afraid. And I don’t judge you. I just…I just want to understand where you’re coming from, you know? And tonight, I feel like I do.”

Lennon seeks to better understand Blaine, and after discovering how Blaine came to Drayton, Lennon realizes that Blaine thought she was something to be feared. Relationships at Drayton struggle because of secrecy, fear, and paranoia, but this moment of honesty breaks down these barriers, allowing Blaine and Lennon to forge a genuine friendship.

“She could’ve sworn the moths tattooed on the backs of his hands beat their wings.”

This moment occurs when Lennon tells Dante about killing Ian. The fluttering moths symbolize a reawakening of Dante’s power, pointing to his protective feelings for Lennon. The surreal detail emphasizes the supernatural nature of this power.

“This isn’t the first time a student has died on Drayton’s campus at the hands of a peer. It won’t be the last either. You’re not special in that respect, you’re just indispensable and lucky because of it.”

Dante foreshadows the revelation of his own violent past with August. Though his words to Lennon sound harsh, his attempts to trivialize Ian’s death stem from his desire to both protect Lennon from pain as her romantic interest and push her to dive deeper into her power as her mentor, illustrating the complexity of their student-mentor relationship.

“She had come to Drayton looking for a savior, and now she had the chance to become one. And if she did, perhaps it would be some small way to atone for what she’d done to Ian. To cement herself as something more than a killer and a coward. A chance to redeem herself.”

Lennon is riddled with guilt over Ian’s death, and she views saving Drayton as a way to make amends and to redeem her own perception of herself. Lennon frequently refers to herself as a murderous and cowardly person, illustrating the continued weight of her insecurities on her self-perception. These are insecurities she will push past by the novel’s conclusion.

“When his gaze fell to Lennon, she was staggered by the force of his will. If she hadn’t known he was Dante’s son from first appearance, she would have sensed it the moment his searching mind made contact with hers […]. In the wake of him, Lennon felt like a nesting rabbit in the path of a lawn mower.”

Lennon’s immediate realization about Dante’s son stems not only from his looks but also from his power. The son of two skilled persuasionists, Oliver seems destined for greatness. Lennon’s use of a violent simile to describe his power, comparing it to a lawn mower eviscerating a rabbit, further illustrates the dangerous nature of persuasion.

“Walking through Savannah, Lennon found that she no longer knew how to make her way through the world. She’d forgotten simple things, things she would’ve thought indelible, like how to move with a crowd of people, how to blend in.”

Lennon’s sense of alienation from the normal world illustrates how secluded Drayton is behind its gates. It also demonstrates Lennon’s continued struggle to cultivate a sense of belonging as she experiences the isolating effects of her power.

“She had fallen apart, lost her mind very nearly, after killing Ian. But this felt different…expected almost. As if a part of her—a part that she had denied and reviled—had finally surfaced fully.”

Unlike her response to Ian’s death, Lennon begins to accept herself after she kills Benedict. She realizes that part of her identity is linked to the violence of her power. This acceptance allows her to later work collaboratively with her aberration, as she’s accepted even the darkest parts of herself.

“It was the power of compulsive creation. The power of gods.”

Lennon fully grasps the breadth of Dante’s power after he explains how he brought the aberration to life. Her deification of Dante’s power positions him as a powerful, mythic creator. This complicates their romantic relationship, as the existing power imbalance shifts even more in Dante’s favor.

“Someone, some gatekeeper, had to be alive to keep the gates around the school raised. And here he was—a shell of a man, his bones breaking under the power of his own will—the engine that kept the school running.”

Drayton’s dehumanization of its gatekeepers is illustrated not only in Eileen’s treatment of Lennon, but also in the school’s treatment of William Irvine. Irvine is kept inhumanely alive as an “engine”—an object—to preserve the school, much like Eileen sought to use Lennon as a tool to raise the gates. The grotesque descriptions highlight the human cost of this endeavor.

“Lennon tried. She tried as hard as she ever had. As the campus fell through space and time, she gritted her teeth—jaw locked, a molar at the back cracking with a burst of pain so intense she almost fell to her knees.”

Lennon loses a tooth during her physical fight with Ian, and she once again breaks a tooth as she struggles to raise the gates around Drayton. The loss of teeth is symbolic of the sacrifices that Lennon makes for her persuasive power, with parts of her body becoming the price for success.