Inventing Elliot

“It's a question of putting your mind to it […] If you're serious about something, you put your mind to it, and if you put your mind to it, you get it done. That's the way—that's the only way.”

Elliot’s father used to say this often to Elliot and his mother, usually at the dinner table when taking about his new venture. The repetition of it was a running joke for the three of them, but his father believed in the message. Elliot thinks about this quote often as he sees that his father unable to recover, blaming his father for not following his own advice, not “putting his mind” to getting better.

“The person he wanted to die was the man who sat there and said and did nothing; the man who stared silently, blankly into space; the man who wasn't his dad, however much he might look like him.”

Elliot has the thoughts expressed in this quote—that he wishes his father was dead—several times throughout the book. Each time they fill Elliot with guilt, but the reader understands that this anger is Elliot expressing his grief over losing the father he had and loved. In the end, Elliot finally appreciates his reality for what it is and no longer feels anger towards his father.

“What are you so concerned about? A little voice hissed in his head. You didn’t do anything.”

Elliot has just watched Baker get humiliated and abused in the locker room. It is the first time Elliot witnesses an orchestrated humiliation as the “new Elliot” and his old self panics as a teacher enters the room. This quote is important because it is the first time the new Elliot’s cruel inner voice is heard. The “little voice” in his head becomes more prominent and persuasive over time as new Elliot tries to take over.

“Some kids waited for trouble. They weren’t noticed because of anything they did or said; they were noticed because they didn’t pretend to be anything other than what they were […] They waited for nature to take its course.”

These are Elliot’s thoughts as he listens to Richard explain that Baker had been “asking for trouble” (40). Elliot silently disagrees, thinking that no one “asks” to be bullied, they just haven’t managed to stop being “losers, victims, easy meat” (40). Elliot compares them to himself, who has successfully lied his way into the secret society of bullies and away from being the target. At this point Elliot is still determined not to let nature take its course—he will steer it the way he chooses.

“Elliot couldn't watch, but he had to. And as he watched, he couldn't hold down the past any longer. It reared again and struck, struck again, again, pounding him, ripping into him. Until he couldn't tell the difference between what was happening now and what was happening then.”

Elliot is watching the horrific “punishment” that Ben is being put through in the bathrooms. By now Elliot knows the Guardians are real and he is perfecting his new, hard personality. However, watching Ben go through exactly what he has been though himself triggers his trauma and he is unable to differentiate reality from vivid memories that crown his mind. As he watches, Elliot hates himself for having allowed such horrific things to happen to him and hates himself for allowing it to happen to someone else.

“He was ashamed of himself for watching, and for feeling only useless pity for whoever had been executed. But most of all, he was ashamed for not being able to stop himself from thinking, If it's someone else, at least it isn't me.”

This quote is Elliot trying to process what he had seen that day: Ben being humiliated in the toilets. Elliot is overwhelmed with feelings and disturbing memories, but this quote is important because it shows Elliot beginning to distance himself from thoughts of wanting to help or intervene, and—while feeling ashamed—acknowledging that his predominant reaction is that of relief that he isn’t the victim.

“Outside he was Elliot the indifferent, but inside he was a churning mass of violent emotions and sensations. He began to sleep badly again, waking up every few hours in a sweat of terror, torn out of dreams where past and present replayed themselves endlessly, over and over.”

This quote highlights the stress that maintaining a fake personality is putting Elliot through and the physiological effects it is causing. At this point in the book Elliot has seen what the Guardians do but does not yet know that he is safe from them, so he is living in fear of being their next victim. Elliot knows his safety depends on him perfecting new Elliot, whatever it takes.

“But they’ve got it wrong. I’m not like them. I’m nothing like them. Please, let me wake up from this now.”

These are the thoughts going through Elliot’s head as he realizes he has been chosen by Richard to be a Guardian. The three Guardians wait in anticipation for Elliot to accept and when he casually remains standing, silently, Richard interprets this as Elliot being super cool. He says in admiration “My, God, Elliot, look at you! Not a flicker’.”(82). In reality, Elliot is terrified and willing this all to just be a bad dream.

“My choice. Except it wasn't a choice. Not really. Not when you remembered the locker room, or the bathroom, or any of it. When you thought about those, it wasn't a choice at all.”

This quote captures Elliot’s thoughts during the slow-motion moments, right before he puts his hand on Gareth’s hand, signaling his acceptance into the Guardians. Part of him tells himself that he does have a choice and that he can walk away, but the frightened part of Elliot overrules, reminding him of the abuse that would await him if he does.

“He'd done it: He'd made himself fit in, gotten himself noticed in the right way. But in the process something terrible had happened—something he’d never asked for, didn't want, couldn't bear, but that also, in a horrible way, just about guaranteed his safety.”

This quote, taken from shortly after Elliot is recruited into the Guardians, illustrates how the best laid plans can have unforeseen and disastrous consequences. All Elliot is trying to do by reinventing himself is avoid being a target. The last thing he wants is to be the bully, but now he is in a no-win situation: Be the bully or get bullied. The person he created has put him in this terrible position.

“A few hours ago it had been impossible to imagine being allowed to be anything like this — anything normal. Now it was as if what had taken place in the woods was unreal, miles away, not important. It gave him a feeling he didn’t fully recognize, but that it was full of light and warmth and ease. It was a good feeling.”

Elliot has spent the morning with Ben developing films in Ben’s darkroom. The two boys bond and, after the pressure of pretending to be someone else for so long, this normal, enjoyable morning is a wonderful break for Elliot. It is diametrically opposed to the feelings Elliot has with the Guardians at their meeting wall (which is referred to in the quote as “the woods”), where nothing is light, warm, or full of ease. This quote is important because it shows the reader how starved Elliot is of true friendship—a feeling he doesn’t fully recognize—and affirms the genuine affection Elliot and Ben are developing for each other. The quote also alludes to the Guardians as being “not important,” which is something Elliot later comes to realize is true. The Guardians think they are important, but they are not.

“That's what it comes down to in the end, he thought. Acting in order to survive. He'd been given a part to play, and his survival depended on playing that part to the utmost of his ability. Refusal was not an option, not if he wanted to live.”

When Elliot is at school, he puts on his “cool” mask and acts the part. This quote sums up how Elliot foresees his entire remaining school life: He is unable to imagine standing up to the Guardians as his old self and is resigned to playing the new Elliot part indefinitely. This quote also implies that the old Elliot is still alive and well, and fully aware that new Elliot is just a part to be played rather than a personality to embrace as his own. These lines become blurred later in the book when new Elliot almost succeeds in taking over Elliot completely.

“Elliot felt a horrible, vaguely sensed truth coming out of the shadows—a brilliant, cold, and merciless enlightenment. And with the light, something inside him that really had died a long time ago, on the cold tiles of the locker room floor, died again. Why bother to resist it?”

Richard has just explained to Elliot that the Guardians show lesser people what they really are. That, as he interprets George Orwell’s 1984, once people learn to accept what they are everything is so much easier. As this quote illustrates, some part of this teaching resonates with Elliot, putting out the small flame of “resistance” that was still glowing within him.

“He wasn’t sure if the feeling was a type of fear—or something completely different.”

Elliot has fallen in love with Louise. However, Elliot is so used to being all consumed with fear, that he has a hard time attributing his feelings to anything other than fear. Fortunately, it doesn’t take Elliot long to realize his confusing feelings for Louise are those of love.

“The Elliots he had invented couldn’t just be left to their own devices—they demanded constant monitoring, maintenance, adjustment, refinement. If he didn’t pay continuous attention, he could, frighteningly easily, say the wrong thing, react inappropriately, get confused as to which one he was supposed to be.”

Elliot is unable to fully be himself with Louise because of the dilemma highlighted in this quote. Elliot wants to open up to Louise, to tear off his masks, but fear of accidentally letting the wrong mask slip at the wrong time keeps him bound and restrained, which irritates Louise.

“To keep other people from hurting you, you hurt them first. You don't let them affect you anymore. You are strong. You do not care. You make yourself so you do not care.”

This quote is new Elliot’s voice, trying to calm Elliot down as he is having a mental breakdown in the woods—hallucinating black and white images and hearing screaming while Ben is trying to talk to him. Unwittingly, Ben has triggered a panic attack in Elliot by bringing him to the Guardians’ wall to share his good news that he’s leaving Holminster. Ben has no idea why Elliot reacts in such a cruel way, and any chance that old Elliot has of apologizing and explaining everything to his friend is lost when new Elliot speaks the above quote. New Elliot is persuasive and heartless, which is exemplified here.

“Everything—the violence, the winners, the losers—­it's already here. We don't create, we reveal. Holminster created the Guardians, not the other way round.”

New Elliot is becoming more vocal in Elliot’s mind. In this quote, new Elliot is parroting back what Richard has preached to Elliot, about how people just need to learn their place and all that the Guardians are doing is teaching them. Elliot is struggling to choose a victim, which is why new Elliot is reassuring him that choosing someone won’t change anything—it will just reveal what is already known. It will also ensure his safety as a fully-fledged member of the Guardians.

“He'd never felt so alone. If he could share his misery with someone—if there was someone who would listen and not judge him while he poured out all the foulness inside him—it would be more bearable. But there was no one.”

Elliot has two weeks to come up with his choice of victim for Richard and is fully invested in being new Elliot. He has isolated himself from his mother and, because he is now a member of the Guardians, he can’t share his dilemma with Louise or Ben. This quote neatly summarizes Elliot’s loneliness and isolation, brought on by fear: the fear of being found out as a fraud by the Guardians and the fear of being hated and rejected by his friends and family because of what he is becoming. At this point Elliot does not see an easy way out of his misery.

“And now I suppose to make up for it you'll spread the word among all your friends that I'm a lesbian, or frigid, or something equally complimentary.”

Here, Louise is talking to Elliot moments after he let his hand drift down her back after the movie. It is the first time that Louise shows insecurity, which in this situation is a normal teenage reaction but it stuns Elliot. He always assumes that he is never the person in control of a social situation—never the one with power­­—so Louise’s concern that he might spread rumors about her gives him a “jolt of shock” (155). This quote also exposes Louise’s “normal” teenage side, adding another dimension to her otherwise academic and slightly haughty character.

“He'd allowed the old Elliot to reassert control. He'd come a heartbeat away from undoing everything. He couldn't afford to let it happen again. He had to kill the old Elliot, once and for all.”

Elliot returns home from his disastrous movie evening with Louise and is thinking about what went wrong. New Elliot is convincingly arguing that Elliot is letting his masks slip, that he is being too vulnerable with Louise, and that he risks exposing everything. Therefore, old Elliot must be destroyed. This quote leads the reader to believe that Elliot has made up his mind to commit fully to being new Elliot, but before he drifts off to sleep old Elliot argues back, leaving the battle between Elliot’s multiple personalities unresolved.

“I’m whatever kind of person you want me to be, he thought. Anything at all. Give me the mask and I can wear it.”

Elliot’s thoughts are frantic as he listens to Louise explain why she thought and hoped he was different from the other boys. His desperation comes through in this quote, along with his misguided belief that acting a part prescribed by Louise will fix things between them. Elliot is still unable to understand that being himself, with no mask, is all that Louise wants.

“For a moment, Elliot felt nothing. Then something inside him shifted. Suddenly, terrifyingly, like nothing he’d felt before, white hot rage erupted. It consumed him, uncontrollable, an exploding firestorm, lunatic fury.”

This quote describes the emotions that rip through Elliot when he is pushed past the point of submission while being bullied. It is the only time he fights back and it results in him nearly getting killed. Not wanting to repeat that experience—not wanting to be a target for bullies—is the primary factor behind his decision to reinvent himself. Fighting back did not work, so he tries becoming someone else. This quote also shows the depth of feeling and emotion that Elliot has buried inside himself.

“He knew he possessed strength of a kind, the strength that had enabled him to become—almost—a Guardian. For better or worse it was part of him. But it wasn’t the kind of strength he needed now. Now he needed a strength that would enable him to forfeit the first kind of strength.”

Elliot is at the crossroads of a critical decision: Go through with what old Elliot, his true self, is urging him to do (expose the Guardians), or become new Elliot and stay safe but potentially lose his soul. This quote is important because the language Gardener uses subtly changes; “fear” is still abundant, but now “strength” is coming to the forefront. Elliot is realizing that he can draw on his inner strength as well as his fear to make the right decisions.