The Last Graduate

El dramatically evolves in these chapters by stepping into a leadership role, confronting both the physical dangers and the political and ethical challenges that come with this position. As she accepts the fact that it is no longer enough to be a lone student whose primary aim is to ensure her own survival, she begins to question the school’s dog-eat-dog culture and realizes that there is more strength in the collective. The crux of her realization lies with the fact that she and the others are Coming of Age Without Adults, for without the guiding presence of fully mature wizards,  El must learn to act more responsibly, and her experiences with her friends, allies, and rivals speed her along the difficult journey of becoming an effective leader. For example, she puts a stop to the deadly contest between New York and Shanghai in the gym by threatening to deploy a powerful spell, and this experience teaches her that part of being powerful is showing a willingness to use that power to quell violence and to ensure that everyone’s welfare is protected.

El’s interactions with friends and allies also change her perspective on life in general, as when Aadhya’s story about losing her sister forces El to mature by recognizing that she cannot put her life on hold just because the threat of death is hanging over her. Like Aadhya, El must make peace with the possibility of dying. Similarly, she shows new maturation when she finally accepts that she must rely upon the informed assistance of others in order to implement her plans and achieve her goals, and it is only through her friendship with Aadhya, who is always willing to tell El the unvarnished truth, that she learns this vital life lesson.

Notably, this section reveals one of the greatest reversals in the novel when the school begins to function as an ally and even as a parental figure. For example, it teaches El harsh lessons by presenting challenges like the Himalayas and making the course impossible to conquer without wholesale cooperation amongst the student body. These experiences are specifically designed to guide El toward making wiser decisions in order to enact her plan to save everyone. With her friends and the school itself consistently challenging her, El learns that part of maturing is to accept help from others. Likewise, when she gains skill in making life-and-death choices for other people, this shift becomes an even stronger sign that she is transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. Forced to cope with the realities of Coming of Age Without Adults, El leads her fellow students to develop a new ethical stance that is not based upon power and privilege; she therefore seeks to create a more equitable system that protects everyone.

The connection between power and privilege shifts substantially in these chapters, mostly as a result of El’s reexamination of The Moral Implications of Survival Tactics. Specifically, El begins to question whether the ends justify the means of survival. For example, when Liesel insists on making plans to leave people behind, El refuses to do so because she knows that sacrificing even a few people—including the recalcitrant Shanghai enclavers—would be a violation of her new ethical stance.

Even so, El frequently finds herself making calculations that depend on balancing ends and means, and she faces a considerable ethical challenges when she realizes that the graduation hall is empty of mals. If she were to withhold this information, she could manipulate people in order to save the senior class alone. However, she chooses the more ethical route of telling everyone about the empty hall, even if this means that she will risk losing the support she needs to save the entire student body. In this way, El chooses a method based upon the principle of balance in magic.

Making moral decisions in the context of the Scholomance requires both an openness toward self-sacrifice and an eye toward pragmatism. The risk of failing to be pragmatic is apparent in the Shanghai enclave’s attack on Orion and El. Although it is in their best interests to join with El, they initially choose to eliminate threats rather than joining forces, and their unwillingness to work with El is the reason for the attack in the gym. They are so bound by the geopolitics beyond the school that they fail to accept the reality of their situation within the Scholomance, and only by taking the morally ambiguous step of threatening to kill everyone can El force them to accept the new order, which demands collective action for the purposes of survival.

El’s plan to save everyone therefore causes a shift in The Tension Between Individualism and Collectivism. For example, El is strong enough that she alone can wield certain powerful spells, but Aadhya reminds her that even the most powerful spells are not proof against death if El chooses to work alone. As a result, El decides to accept the necessity of the mega-team, embracing collective action to ensure the survival of the students. Ironically, the habitually collectivist enclavers struggle the most to accept this new order, for they have become so accustomed to the privilege that their factions provide that they fail to see the benefits of joining an even larger collective. 

The nuances of this battle between individualism and collectivism are also reflected in the very design of the Scholomance itself. Because it was originally constructed by powerful enclavers, the school reflects the broader societal divisions that still exist beyond its borders. Like the outside world, the Scholomance contains both privileged elites and the independent wizards who lack the resources of those elites. Just as the enclavers inside the school resist changes to the status quo, the Western enclaves resist the rising power and resources of the Asian enclaves, even when collaboration might result in better odds of survival for wizard children. When Zixuan asserts that El’s plan is simply a power-grab that will have an impact outside the school, this accusation reflects the reality that existing power structures in the world threaten to disrupt collective action inside the school.

Despite the many challenges to the organization of collective action as a survival strategy, the general trend is toward collectivism, and the school plays a role in this shift. When it insists that El and the other students help it to fulfill its mission of providing sanctuary for wizard children, the school itself is evolving to embrace a more collectivist ethos. In this endeavor, El’s actions become a crucial focal point, and her decision to help the school to fulfill its mission is the ultimate determining factor in fueling the shift from individualism to collectivism.