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A Witch’s Guide to Escape
A witch’s Guide to escape is a story about a witch who also works as a librarian. The Witch often notices unhappy people in her library but struggles if she can help them, especially since there are rules created by earlier witches against the use of magical information to help others. This particular story is about an African-American boy who also happens to be a foster kid. The narrator has us believing that he is troubled and happens to be in search of magic in this world and a link to another. The librarian would often lead him into picking fantasy books instead of those that he needs. Thus breeding a lot of conflicting thoughts; does she break traditions and help him or not?. In the course of the story, several themes arise, including the use of magic in terms of compassion and empathy, far from the common thought that magic is impure.
Compassion and empathy are generally a term that are not associated with witches. However, in the librarian who also happens to be a witch shows concern for the kid who appears to be neglected and probably lonely. The Witch would try and direct the kid to books which might offer a sense of comfort the boy. This shows concern for the boy especially since witches are bound by earlier rules that does not permit them to use magical information in service to others. The idea that a witch could offer the sentiment of compassion to this troubled young boy helps build the character of the Witch as a person who eventually acts upon their feelings and helps another who is distressed. When the boy would often borrow the same book over and over until when the limit has been reached, which the narrator observes has been reread at least four times due to the oily nature of the pages, the Witch would use magical powers to lead the boy to books that will quench his thirst for magical knowledge. The Witch often suggested to the boy books even though their branch director was a staunch Baptist who believed that selling fantasy books to children teaches them about devil worship. Other co-workers such as fellow librarian Agnes did not also approve of the idea of her helping the young boy select fantasy books using her magic.
The show of empathy is also representation to the uncommon idea that not all witches are inherently evil and the portrayal of a librarian witch who is conflicted about having to know of people’s problems but not being able to help because of traditional bounds created by earlier witches. Though it may be a bit of a stretch to assume that witches in the current time are probably less evil than earlier ones, we can confirm that indeed the librarian is not a bad person and simply believes it may be her duty as a person with the ability to help others to do so. There also happens to be a description of the amount of work that went into hiding individual books so as not to be accessible to everyone in places such as secret rooms, bookcases which were accessed by opening in a specified way. Most of the hidden books as the author explains is hidden from ‘desperate high-school kids with red backpacks’ with the schoolmistress claiming that they were “preserving the hallowed and hidden arts of our foremothers from mundane eyes” (Harrow, 2018). By going through all that trouble to help the young boy and to put a little smile on his face, this kind of compassion is not easy to perform even in the real world.
The use of magical powers to determine what kind of a book somebody needs as performed by the librarian is hazardous if one is caught. The narrator explains to us what could happen if she was to be caught in the act of handing out books for free such as being renounced and worse being stripped of her title, being banned from every library for eternity. At one point when it was time to close the library, and the young boy seemed not to be satisfied and wanted to remain during the night. The librarian would be conflicted with the consequences of leaving a minor overnight in the library, but eventually ended up locking up behind her leaving the young boy locked inside probably because in her mind she felt that if the young boy as running away from home by remembering her own experiences as a young teenager. The extent of her compassion was also when she came in thirty minutes earlier before Alice arrived just so that she could delete the automated messages that are supposed to report a missing minor, which unfortunately was not there as a result of poor foster services. Was it a good idea to leave a minor alone at night without any supervision? Probably not. But in her mind, she was showing a level of understanding to a special young boy who was still on the verge of discovering certain information about fantasy worlds that not everybody understood including his foster mother who would often suggest that he should focus on the real world.
From the actions of the librarian, it was evident that she was more concerned with the young boy’s mental stability than anything else. She was worried about his account which showed a lot of the books he had borrowed were overdue, and he had not bothered to renew it, but she could not do anything to help as the books were from her library. The stares and non-verbal cues from her co-worker Alice seem to expose her disappointment of how to assist the young man. I want to assume that had Alice not been monitoring her, she would have probably done something illegal and helped the young boy clear his overdue books or even renew his account because the narrator tells us that she is not a natural rule-follower and would often break the law such as going through stop signs and such.
The actions of the librarian, especially considering her witch background, helps to improve the perception of witches as not just using their magical powers for evil but also good. All through we not only learn of how she used her powers to help others such as the lady who was probably pregnant and maybe scared by feeding her with books of empowerment and defying odds. She also helped the boy by remembering her job of when she helped Edmond form making a colossal mistake and pledged that if the boy came back, she would give him the book he needs most. She had gotten rid of the doubt. She laments by saying that should she get caught, she would explain to the mistress that it was they who lost their purpose: “to give patrons the books they need most. And oh, how they need it. How they will always need” (Harrow). Each librarian tackles handling patrons in their way, but one thing is for sure, she would never again lose sight of how important her role is in life. As long as she had too many doubts, she will end up not helping people who need her help.
Works Cited
Harrow, Alix. “A Witch’S Guide To Escape: A Practical Compendium Of Portal Fantasies”. Apex Magazine, 2018, https://www.apex-magazine.com/a-witchs-guide-to-escape-a-practical-compendium-of-portal-fantasies/.