54 pages • 1-hour read
The Library at Mount Char
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Human Capacity for Cruelty, Compassion, and Change
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of rape, mental illness, child abuse, child sexual abuse, child death, death by suicide, animal cruelty and death, graphic violence, death, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.
In The Library at Mount Char, author Scott Hawkins creates a world in which the characters, particularly Father and his librarians, all seem capable of monstrous acts. In Chapter 10, Carolyn tells Steve that demons don’t exist, negating the possibility that Father and the librarians are themselves demons, a tempting interpretation of the cruelty and detachment from human concerns that they display. As the narrative continues, it confirms that Father and the Pelapi are, in fact, human. Their godlike powers come from knowledge, gained over thousands of years, starting with the secret of living long enough to gather it all. With both their existence and their actions, Hawkins uses both their existence and their actions to explore what it means to be human—the cruelty, compassion, corruption, and transcendence demonstrated in the narrative serve as a reflection on the human condition.
David, Carolyn, and Erwin and the government all offer examples of the human capacity for cruelty. David’s role in developing this idea is straightforward. He rapes, murders, and tortures for gain and sport, with neither mercy nor remorse. Unlike David, Carolyn isn’t typically cruel, but merely self-serving and oblivious to the needs of others. Her choices regarding David’s eternal suffering, however, show her dark side: When she suspends him just before death, she reflects, “I’m pretty sure that it’s the worst thing that ever happened to anyone, anywhere. Ever. I think it’s […] the theoretical upper limit of suffering. Despair and agony […] Absolute. Unending” (279). The suffering David inflicted on her accounts for her desire to treat him with cruelty but doesn’t negate the savageness of the act. In the Epilogue, Erwin admits to destroying Father’s house with bombs that created a mushroom cloud visible two states away, paralleling the overkill of the government’s attack on “Adoption Day,” when they killed the inhabitants of an entire neighborhood in an attempt to kill one man. This scale of violence and destruction is portrayed as an example of human brutality, and it underscores the fact that the librarians are not the only humans capable of such acts.
Steve’s character, on the other hand, exemplifies the human capacity for compassion. Despite his traumas—his parents’ death, his abusive aunt, and his friend’s death by suicide—he takes accountability for his flaws and aspires to show compassion to others. Through self-immolation, he makes the ultimate sacrifice to draw Carolyn’s attention to suffering and injustice: His act inspires her to alleviate humanity’s suffering when nothing else he did got through to her. Despite her stubbornness, Steve made the effort to understand her rather than condemn her, and she credits his compassionate friendship with saving humanity.
Carolyn’s character arc illustrates the drastic ways that abuse and trauma can change people but also highlights the human capacity for change. To cope emotionally and even to survive, she must suppress anything that makes her vulnerable, like empathy and altruism. Stifling her most humanizing traits, however, comes at great cost. Over the course of the novel, she eventually gains insight into the parts of herself that she’s lost to trauma. These insights lead Carolyn to transformation, revealing the human capacity to change for the better. Though she fixes all the catastrophes on Earth, her decision to let David die best represents how she’s changed. The rising of the new sun and the moon of kindled hope serve as symbolic evidence of her new path. With her and Steve’s examples, Hawkins offers hope; he highlights that although humans are capable of monstrous acts, as illustrated by many others in the text, they are also capable of change and great compassion.
The Succession Conflict and Parallels to Greek Mythology
The succession conflict is an archetype that features power struggles over an inheritable position of authority and often explores themes of ambition and betrayal. Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones are examples of this archetype in modern literature, but it is actually rooted in ancient mythologies. The Greek succession myth tells of the Titans—the 12 children of Uranus and Gaia, who created the cosmos—seizing power and ruling as gods until they, in turn, are overthrown by Zeus and the Olympian gods. The Library at Mount Char’s plot and mythology emulate this. Father overthrows the Emperor just as the Titan Cronus overthrows Uranus. Carolyn overthrows Father just as Zeus overthrows Cronus. The battle for the Library depicts immense, godlike power, world-altering stakes, oppressive rule, and parallels between Carolyn and the tyrant she’s fought to overthrow. Together, these elements support the interpretation of The Library at Mount Char as an adaptation of the Greek succession myth.
In mythology, the succession conflict depicts great power and high stakes that go beyond similar earthly conflicts. Though Father is technically human, the knowledge he’s acquired has made the scale of his powers godlike. The librarians are his disciples, akin to mythological demigods. Carolyn tells a story about a game they played as kids, trying to stump Father by giving him an impossible task. None of the librarians ever succeeded, illustrating the magnitude of Father’s power. He can control the weather, the movements of the planets, and time itself. As Carolyn tells Steve: “For all intents and purposes, the power of the Library is infinite. Tonight we’re going to settle who inherits control of reality” (243). The immensity of Father’s power increases the stakes of who will succeed him beyond normal human concerns to a nearly godlike realm.
The similarities between Father and Carolyn’s characters and conquests emphasize the pattern of a successor usurping power rather than waiting to inherit it, further developing the novel’s resemblance to the Greek succession myth. Father is an oppressive ruler who goes to great lengths to centralize and maintain absolute power. He prevents anyone else from gaining enough strength to overthrow him by rigidly controlling access to knowledge. Learning anything outside the librarians’ individual catalogs is the one thing that’s forbidden. When David teaches Margaret a skill from his catalog for diminishing her pain, Father punishes him by burning him alive. Carolyn’s method of mimicking and then usurping Father illustrates the similarities between these two characters, as do the repeated phrases and invocations that both use. In one example, Carolyn suspends David outside of time using the same word that Father spoke to Mithraganhi when he called up the dawn of the fourth age. In another example, both Father and Carolyn use the same phrase—“In the service of my will, I have emptied myself” (376)—to describe what the pursuit of power cost them. Like the gods of Greek mythology, Father and Carolyn are incredibly powerful and incredibly flawed beings. This combination inevitably results in chaos and destruction unless they learn wisdom and compassion from the smaller creatures of the world. Hawkins draws parallels between these characters and follows the archetypal mythological succession structure to create a story that mimics Greek mythology on many levels.
The Emotional Toll of Wearing a Mask
Carolyn is largely defined by the contrasts between her inner self and the person she pretends to be. By teasing and then slowly revealing her ulterior motives and hidden agenda, the narrator ascribes thematic significance to this contrast. Erwin and Father’s characters also wear masks, creating parallels to Carolyn that develop and complicate the message that wearing a figurative mask can have benefits, like enabling her to seize power, but there are significant costs, and if taken too far, it threatens to make her someone she no longer recognizes.
Carolyn believes that overthrowing Father is the only way to end her suffering; as she puts it, “only real escape from hell is to conquer it” (240). Her plot against Father, the text’s central conflict, creates an internal conflict for Carolyn, and maintaining it is crucial to her plan’s success. She must keep her facade and her true self separate, repressing her real thoughts, feelings, and intentions so effectively that even Father’s telepathy can’t detect them. When her thoughts and feelings are visible to Father and the other librarians, they are carefully crafted to reflect concern for them, eagerness to please, and a desire to help achieve shared goals. The truth, buried deep down, is that she hates them intensely. Carolyn believes genuine emotion is “the very essence of self” and can’t be ignored for long (23), but she feels that hiding it is different. Her arc suggests she’s only partly right: She hasn’t forgotten her hate for Father and David or her love for Steve, but she doesn’t realize that stifling her truth for so long will change the very essence of who she is.
Over time, the emotional toll of dissimulation builds as Carolyn’s true self becomes entangled with her persona. She focuses on the risk this poses of revealing the truth to her enemies but overlooks the possibility of mistaking the persona’s traits for her own. She doesn’t realize that eventually, the persona may replace her real self. Carolyn’s fingertips often tremble now, a sign that years of constant vigilance and control of her mind, countenance, words, and actions have exhausted her. After finally overthrowing Father, she begins to recognize the extent of the burden she’s borne: “It’s just…I always had to hide what I was thinking, planning. I had to hide everything, even from myself. Always. Do you understand?” (313). The syntax of this quote imbues it with pathos, revealing more of its emotional weight than the words alone denote.
Like Carolyn, Erwin also puts on a facade. Meeting with the president and other high-ranking officials, he relishes using the phrase, “like we was morons” (170). The subtext of these scenes reveals that the main reason he pretends to be unintelligent is strategic. It causes people to underestimate him, giving him an advantage. For Erwin, like Carolyn, everyone is a potential enemy, and every situation is a potential conflict. Father, it turns out, has worn a mask far longer than Carolyn. He hides his displeasure at hurting David and Carolyn and pretends to enjoy their pain. Father believes they can only become as strong as they need to be if they have a monster to oppose, so he presents himself as that monster. Her realization of what Father has done sparks a revelation for Carolyn; she is reminded of her qualities that she’s lost sight of, like compassion. This epiphany leads her to salvage what’s left of her sense of self and reclaim her identity. The fact that Carolyn and Father are both able to reclaim their former selves and banish their personas reflects the novel’s message that such change is possible, offering a hopeful ending for both characters in which they reestablish their authentic selves.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence