A hero’s journey that has meant a lot to me is the main character’s development in Museum of Thieves, one of my favorite books of all time. The book details the emotional journey of Golden Roth, from a nervous, repressed child under an oppressive regime to a vigilante bringing freedom and free will to her people – yet amazingly, it manages to be realistic and incorporate actual emotional stakes, rather than becoming bland or run-of-the-mill. It’s been one of my favorite books since I was in elementary school, and it occupies that enigmatic genre where it can be read at pretty much any age and enjoyed.
The book blends a hero’s journey with a coming-of-age story in a uniquely heartwarming way. Goldie, the book’s heroine, begins in her journey as a child in the city of Jewel, where children are kept under lock and key for protection. Jewel is run by Guardians, who maintain the standards laid down for the protection of the citizens (no animals, no hills, no vacant lots, no running, and no children to get underfoot). It’s structured like a child’s nightmare, a world where their parents’ restrictions have become the entirety of the law. Goldie, like those around her, accepts the tyrannical rule in return for safety and stability, but secretly, she dreams of more. She looks forward to the day of Separation, when she and her classmates will be released from chains and allowed to travel without an adult – the day she knows will be the threshold to a life of adventure she feels calling her. But on the day of Separation, bound to her mother by nothing but a ceremonial ribbon, a bomb explodes on the edge of town. The ceremony is instantly canceled and Goldie will be placed back into her life of restrictions.
At that moment, Goldie feels the call to adventure. “Something wild took hold of Goldie then. She didn’t wantto be safe. She wanted to be free. The silk ribbon seemed to tighten around her wrist. The high glass dome of the Great Hall pressed down on her so that she felt as if she might suffocate.” After a life of accepting regulations and rules and restrictions, she wants out! Within a single page, Goldie goes through both a refusal of the call and a crossing of the threshold. Desperately, she debates with herself whether she can bear to leave behind her parents and friends, before snatching the scissors from the table, cutting herself free, and running, the shards of her life in her wake.
She takes refuge in a museum on the outskirts of society, the place where everything the perfect city of Jewel doesn’t want to acknowledge is hidden. The rooms are filled with dirt, grime, danger, and a life that Goldie has never experienced before. There she meets mentors in the curators, allies in a fellow runaway and several presumed-mythical creatures, and begins to learn of a different kind of life than the sheltered one she’s always known. As Olga, the curator says, “[children] must be allowed to find their courage and their wisdom, and learn when to stand and when to run away. After all, if they are not permitted to climb the trees, how will they ever see the great and wonderful world that lies before them?”
Her story begins changing into that of a hero, when she realizes that not only are there ways of living entirely different from what she and her family experience, but that the Guardians are actively trying to suppress them. After gaining a renewed control over Jewel in the aftermath of the bomb, the Guardians begin trying to catalog the museum, placing it, just like the city, within their clearly labeled confines and strictures. But the museum, like Goldie, isn’t interested in submitting meekly anymore, and Goldie becomes the equivalent of a vigilante. And while I won’t spoil Goldie’s trials, eventual inmost cave, and ordeal (trust me, it’s really well done), I will touch on the journey home, where other demons pop up to hurt her. After she defeats the Guardians’ leader, her own actions unleash even worse chaos on the city – the city where her family still lives. And it’s then you see how much she truly has grown, as she runs into the turmoil-stricken city to find and help people evacuate – people who are simply cowering in their homes, too long oppressed by an overly paternalistic regime to even try to save themselves. But in the aftermath of the destruction, destruction brought by someone who has grown beyond the Guardian’s strictures, Jewel is rebuilt a new city, one with freedom and fresh air and children’s laughter.
In case you can’t tell, I really love this book.
You might have noticed, in my no-doubt overlong summary, that this book is pretty much a textbook hero’s journey – and you would be totally right. Funnily enough, as a kid, I’d never really thought of Goldie as a heroic character – I saw her character development, but didn’t link that to a heroic arc. She remains frank and stubborn and flawed in her own way, throughout the book and she doesn’t feel like an instance of a hero archetype, even though her story checks off every box.
That said, I still think that the book(s) have had an impression on me and how I see the world around me. The book boils down to making a choice between complacency and opportunity, safety and freedom. Goldie is a really fun children’s heroine because she’s basically a walking personification of impudence and obstreperousness in the face of a paternalistic regime – and that is just funto read about as a kid.
The world she lives in is honestly, sort of terrifying. It’s all about training yourself to be numb, allowing caution and fear to rule your life, and the society built by the Guardians transcends caution and goes into paranoia. It’s a self-imposed police state, and very quickly, the book shows how those lives, ruled by fear and incuriosity, can be very quickly corrupted, no one capable of fighting back to save their own lives. It’s only the misfits & the thieves, the ones willing to step outside those strictures who step into the fight. Her desperate desire to be free from the pressure cooker she lives in finally comes to fruition, when she saves the day by releasing a serious danger into the city, one the people are totally unequipped to deal with. She takes a risk and it works.
Basically it’s a really fun story with a hero’s journey and a coming-of-age allegory cranked up to eleven, and everyone should read it.
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