66 pages • 2-hour read
Immortal Consequences
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of illness and death, child death, substance use, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and cursing.
Adolescent Rule-Breaking as a Transition into the Adult World
The novel explores the adolescent urge to transgress imposed rules, framing this as part of the natural transition from the tightly regulated sphere of childhood into the self-determined adult world. In doing so, the narrative follows the conventions of young adult literature, which cathartically rehearses the liminal concerns and experiences of adolescents, often through allegorical parallels. Immortal Consequences’ fantasy setting of adolescent rebellion within a morally ambiguous universal power structure helps to frame these transgressions as a rite of passage into ethical self-determinism. The “transitory nature of purgatory” is an allegory for the transitional experience of young adulthood.
The novel presents continual examples of adolescent transgression and rebellion, including cursing, breaking curfew and trespassing, alcohol consumption, forbidden spells, and misappropriation. While providing entertainment and thrill for the reader, the main narrative purpose of rebelliousness is to underpin a willingness to challenge arbitrary authority. The theme is established immediately, when the students’ first action is to break curfew in order to satisfy their “curiosity” about Louise’s arrival, in Chapters 1-4. As this is the first situation in which the six main characters are seen together, this theme is also used to link them, prefiguring their status as surviving nominees and key characteristics—curiosity, courage, independent thought, and initiative—which enable them to overcome the trials.
The high-stakes fantasy framing of the Decennial creates an environment that often justifies moral transgression, allowing readers to cathartically explore the nature and consequences of rule-breaking. For characters like Irene Bamford, the fear of oblivion makes rule-breaking a logical necessity. Her ambition drives her to cheat by stealing exam details from a Housemaster’s office and even to consider joining the Demien Order, a cult that promises power in exchange for one’s humanity. Within the context of nominee selection, Irene’s actions are a survival mechanism that supersedes the conventional morality of school life. When Blackwood Academy and Headmaster Silas are exposed as part of a system of profound corruption, this central betrayal shatters the students’ trust in authority and forces them to question the moral framework they have been taught to accept. In this way, the novel increasingly dismantles a straightforward dichotomy between rule-keeping and rule-breaking, instead moving the characters into a more adult world, where correct behaviors are determined by internal moral judgment instead of externally-imposed regulations. Through this development, the novel suggests that ethical maturity is built on the curiosity and courage to interrogate and challenge existing rules.
Memory as the Essence of Human Experience
In Immortal Consequences, memory is presented as a vital essence of humanity, with its loss representing a fate worse than physical death. As dead souls, the Blackwood students have their memories of the mortal lives, as well as their memories since dying. The narrative presents the loss of memory—both others’ memories of an individual and their own memories—as a form of human experience which extends past mortal life or death. Within this structure, personal existence and intrinsic value is defined not by one’s present state but by the accumulation of experiences, relationships, and emotions that constitute a person’s sense of self and their connections to others’ selves. In this way, the loss of memory, formalized by the novel as “the Forgetting,” becomes an existential form of annihilation more total than mortal death.
The threat of the Forgetting is therefore the central challenge driving the students. This looming oblivion transforms the Decennial competition into the “only escape from their inevitable end,” forcing them into compliance with the trials (13). The novel explores this theme especially through the character of Olivier Dupont who, as a longstanding student, is most at risk of the Forgetting. Consumed by a growing panic as his own memories begin to “blur” and “disappear completely,” Olivier demonstrates increasing desperation to win the Decennial and halt the erasure of his identity (63). His struggle makes explicit that the fear is not of death, which has already occurred to all the characters, but of a complete erasure any evidence of the self across time.
The novel further develops this theme by suggesting that even painful memories are preferable to the void of amnesia. Wren Loughty tells August that painful memories “can’t be worse than” the alternative of forgetting completely (13), reinforcing the idea that a full human identity, including its painful aspects, is more valuable than oblivion. This concept is weaponized by Headmaster Silas, who uses psyche magic to erase the memories of eliminated nominees from the minds of the remaining students. By framing memory as both the foundation of the self and a fragile entity that can be corrupted or erased, the novel explores existential questions of what it is to be human, what makes us each who we are, and what may survive us after death.
The Tension between Collaboration and Competition
Immortal Consequences models the positive forces of teamwork and mutuality for its young adult readers, creating a narrative trajectory in which the central characters must overcome negative pressures to compete at all costs, learning instead that they are stronger together. Within the Dark Academia context, this theme helps the novel explore how young people may manage the demands placed on them, including pressure to “be the best,” without isolating themselves from others.
This theme is underpinned by the cruelty and corruption of the forces that continually seek to divide the students, personified by Headmaster Silas who makes repeated bargains with the students, asking them to spy on each other. The Decennial structure also seeks to divide them by making them compete, first—as they believe—for a single place in the trial and then to be the only survivor. The narrative shows that this sense of competition is often a false construct, created in an attempt to break the strength of the team: Silas’s initial lie that there is only one nominee is of this sort, as is his final encouragement for the fourth trial “to feel free to eliminate your competition” (457). This is juxtaposed with Wren’s feeling that “she didn’t want to save herself if it meant losing everybody else,” a sentiment that is heroized by her status as protagonist and acts as the theme’s central argument. (459)
Despite the attempts of the novel’s antagonistic forces to breed competitiveness and division, the narrative shows that the six nominees survive by becoming closer and pooling resources. As the trials progress, the novel repeatedly shows that they are more likely to succeed and survive when they work together, whether inside the trials or when researching the wider secrets of Blackwood. At first framed as “competitive arseholes” and then “reluctant acquaintances,” by the end of the novel, the characters have learned this lesson, making allegiances and even making willing sacrifices for each other, such as Olivier staying with the wounded Emilio or Wren going with Edith to save August. The dynamic arc between Wren and August is central to this theme, moving them from the “infuriatingly competitive” barbed relationship of Chapter 1, to intensely romantic feelings and the literalization of their “soul-mate” status by the sharing of August’s soul.
The novel’s shared-perspective structure is key to this theme, allowing the reader insights into the minds of all six main characters, enacting their balance as a team of collaborators, even when they are separated from each other, as in the conclusion. By creating this six-part network of viewpoints and connections, the novel is able to sustain their bonds of loyalty and friendship through physical trials and distances. In doing so, it posits that the team will be able to work to their common goals as the series continues, widening their mutual influence into the realms outside Blackwood itself.
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