Hi Maggie, I'd Really Like To Hear You Say A Bit More About Why You Wrote Adam Trying To Repair The Relationship

Hi Maggie, I'd really like to hear you say a bit more about why you wrote Adam trying to repair the relationship with his abusive parents in the Raven King. What is the merit in salvaging a relationship such as that, and do you think it is possible for Adam's parents to truly redeem themselves? P.S. Can't wait for Call Down The Hawk, hopefully by the time it comes out I'll quit accidentally calling it Call The Hawk Down (every time I do that I'm like SHIT...was that it? That wasn't it...)

Dear courageofhorses,

I have also seen CALM DOWN THE HAWK which is a perfectly appropriate title.

Following is spoilers for TRK

spoilers

spoilers

no seriously

spoilers

CAVEAT: I’m going to answer this with how I interpret Adam’s character, but in the end, the books live without me, so it’s what makes it on the page and into your interpretation that counts.

THAT SAID. I’m not sure I would call Adam’s final move in The Raven King an attempt to repair the relationship, because it’s not about his parents, it’s about him. It’s about what he needs to say and do in order to feel he has the moral high ground; it’s what he personally requires to allow himself freedom.

By the time we get to that final scene of his in TRK, he’s been living on his own for quite awhile, a high school senior who fled his childhood home under duress. In that time, he’s lived through a helluva lot of traumatic and brilliant events. He’s seen his mentor die, he’s fallen in love, he’s dreaded his best friend’s death, he’s learned that he can be a good friend. 

The only time he’s seen his father in that time is when he comes busting through the door of his apartment with violence and Cabeswater intervenes. 

Otherwise, it has been only Adam and his memories of his parents, and if there is anything Adam doesn’t trust throughout the series, it’s his own interpretation of events. He’s been trained his entire childhood to doubt himself. 

So him returning to TRK isn’t about him genuinely trying to repair a relationship, to accept his parents back into his life despite all the’ve done to him. Instead, it’s about him — for the first time, ever — walking back to the trailer he grew up in without fear. He’s just come from graduation, and he’s closing the books behind him. He’s choosing to be blunt with his parents, without fear, older, wiser, more powerful. He knows he can trust whatever he sees as he walks back through that door under his own steam. It will be the truth, not what his battered emotional thoughts whispered to him for 800 pages.

Adam returns to see if, now that he knows himself, these people he saw as monsters still look like monsters. He wants to see if he becomes monstrous in their presence. He wants to feel for the first time in his life the glorious glow of the absolutely certain high ground while looking at his father. 

He wants to exorcise the memory of a fearful man who controlled his life for 17 years by instead facing him with the full knowledge that he has no control over Adam whatsoever. 

And as to the rest: shit, man. Even if your parents beat the crap out of you, it can be hard to make the decision to walk away completely. The voices whisper that maybe it wasn’t that bad –

But Adam says what he came to say.

He came to see if he ever had parents. If, once he didn’t hate himself, they might be different. And guess what: he’s the only thing that changed. They didn’t. 

He fled that trailer last time he left. Like the scared kid he was. But now he just walks out, like the man he became.

So to me, that scene is about Adam coming back to the trailer to realize this about his past:

And this about his future:

And walking out as Adam Parrish, son of no one, only himself.

tl;dr: abuse is a complicated creature with many different roads to closure. Is what Adam does right? I can’t say that. Is what I think Adam did in that scene what you think he did in that scene? I can’t say that either.

But I reckon that’s what I was thinking when I walked him out that door for the last time.

urs,

Stiefvater