49 pages • 1 hour read
Rick RiordanThe Maze of Bones
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2008A 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
Competing Definitions of Family
The importance and nature of family are key concerns from the novel’s opening pages. That Amy and Dan are orphans immediately introduces an element of ambiguity to the novel’s depiction of family; as children without parents, they are outside the nuclear ideal, implying that the novel’s definition of family may similarly depart from societal norms. At the same time, the circumstances surrounding Grace’s death reinforce a very traditional understanding of what family means. From Grace’s perspective, family seems to be defined in a legalistic and historical way: by lineages and blood. She divides her estate between her descendants and gives them all equal access to the first clue, whether they are nakedly greedy, like the Holts, or personally connected to Grace, like Amy and Dan. The greater structure of the Cahill family presents yet another vision of what family could be. The Cahills function like a massive global syndicate, sporting multiple branches with unique identities and individual loyalties. The family’s involvement in high echelons of business, government, and culture has led to substantial infighting between familial lines, but they all pride themselves on belonging to this elite clan. Against this context, Dan and Amy must figure out what family means to them.
The competing teams and individuals largely operate as familial units, but they all approach family in different ways, contributing to the conflict between them. The buff, army-like Holts represent conformity and hierarchy: Family members are expected to stay in line. Reagan’s small act of rebellion is not tolerated, and her individuality and morality are suppressed. The glamorous, jet-setting Kabras represent a kind of capitalistic competitiveness, as they wield extraordinary wealth but compete with each other for dominance. Ultimately their inability to work well together creates openings for their opposition to get away. The Starlings hold each other to exacting standards. Alistair Oh seeks alliances but double-crosses his relatives whenever it serves him. Irina eschews any sort of connection, preferring to work alone. All of these families function as counterpoints to the affable and loving relationship between Amy and Dan. Though they bicker and occasionally find each other annoying, Amy and Dan look out for each other and sacrifice for each other’s benefit.
While Dan and Amy share a close blood relationship, it is therefore neither genetics nor any abstract sense of family loyalty or pride that makes them “family”; rather, it is their love and respect for one another. This allows them to form familial bonds with people they are not related to—for example, their au pair, Nellie. At the beginning of the story, the siblings like Nellie but don’t know her particularly well. Nellie still answers somewhat to Aunt Beatrice and expects the normal payment that comes with being an au pair. By the end, the siblings’ relationship with Nellie has grown much deeper, as they have come to know her better and defend her against their relatives. Nellie makes sacrifices for the siblings and joins them in the clue quest to protect them. She behaves in a warmer and more familial way than any of the siblings’ blood relatives and reinforces the idea that found family can be as strong as or even stronger than biological ties.
Reckoning with Past Trauma
Both Amy and Dan carry significant trauma from the loss of their parents and the subsequent instability in their home life. After their parents died in a terrible fire, Amy and Dan entered the care of their rich yet miserly aunt Beatrice, who deputizes various au pairs to look after them. The siblings thus lack a parental relationship with anyone they can trust or rely upon. They have to be responsible and independent, making big decisions on their own and handling the administrative challenges of managing their own lives. As a result, both children have developed strategies to distance themselves from their trauma in order to remain functional.
Amy’s coping mechanism is to retreat into herself, staying away from people and pouring her attention into books. Her reading allows her to escape the day-to-day realities of her life, but this disengagement has a cost: Amy struggles in social situations and constantly fights a desire to run and hide. By contrast, Dan copes by forcibly suppressing his emotions whenever they begin to surface. He pours himself into his passion for various collectables, though the possession he values above all others is the picture of his parents that he keeps in his backpack.
Both Amy and Dan have to grapple with the ways their trauma has shaped them as they take on the enormous challenge of the clue hunt. Amy finally has to learn to face situations head-on instead of hiding in her books, while Dan has to allow himself to grieve instead of letting his emotions build up inside. Grace’s death catalyzes not only the clue hunt, but an emotional journey in which the siblings begin to truly process their feelings about losing their parents. For example, nearly losing his life in an attempt to recover his prized photo forces Dan to recognize and let go of his denial surrounding his parents’ deaths.
Amy and Dan’s personal arc parallels a developing story involving the greater Cahill family. As demonstrated by the mural the siblings discover in the Catacombs, the original siblings themselves experienced some kind of fire that planted the seeds of conflict between the four branches of the family. Much of the conflict in the story therefore comes from grievances that go back for generations without resolution. As Amy and Dan have to grapple with their pasts, so too do all the Cahills, as many years of pain and wrongdoing manifest in each new generation.
The Damaging Power of Greed
Most of the antagonists in The Maze of Bones are motivated by some kind of greed. The story meditates on the different ways geed can manifest and the way it destroys the Cahill family from within.
The central conceit of the story lends itself well to this investigation. Grace’s will encourages her descendants to gamble, dangling a seemingly priceless prize in front of them if they sacrifice a guaranteed inheritance of $1 million. This creates incentives that reinforce class dynamics; the wealthy relatives who already have millions of dollars can afford to take the risk, while the less-resourced relatives choose the safer option. In bucking this trend, Amy and Dan establish their uniquely pure motivations; though under-resourced themselves, they feel a personal connection with Grace and take on the challenge to make their late parents and grandmother proud rather than to profit personally.
By contrast, most of the other family members who take the challenge are overtly greedy. Before learning about the clue quest, the Holts brag about how they will inherit all of Grace’s money. The Kabras belittle Dan and Amy for their poverty and talk about how easy it will be to find the clues given their resources. Jonah likewise boasts about how easy life is when one has the kind of power and celebrity he has.
Through these characters, Rick Riordan explores different manifestations of greed beyond simply the desire for money. For example, Jonah reveals to Amy and Dan that he seeks fame and influence and implies he feels constant pressure to maintain that celebrity. The novel implies that this is a misguided and self-destructive goal, as nobody can stay on top of the celebrity ladder forever. The Holts embody a form of greed centered on a hunger for respect. Eisenhower Holt still resents how people laughed at him when he flunked out of West Point and failed the FBI entrance exam. He fears that others think he is unintelligent and craves respect, which he believes he will earn by winning the clue quest. He projects his desire onto his family by imposing his will on them and demanding total obedience—a kind of supercharged respect. The cracks in their family structure begin to show when Reagan expresses misgivings about killing other family members. Eisenhower’s greed is too powerful to validate or acknowledge his daughter’s opinion, and he responds by letting the family devolve into violence. Whatever form greed takes, the novel suggests, its end result is harm.
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