The Magicians

“This is impossible, he thought lucidly; he thought the words in his mind, but they got no purchase on the world around him. He felt like he was having a not-unpleasant drug experience. The tiles were intricately carved with a pattern of twiny vines, or possibly elaborately calligraphic words that had been worn away into illegibility. Little notes and seeds drifted around in the sunlight. If this is a hallucination, he thought it’s pretty damn hi-res.” 

Quentin has found his way into Brakebills. Though it is November, it is summer weather on campus. Eliot has just taken him through the maze and across the great expanse of lush green grass. In the quote, Quentin is responding to what he sees. To Quentin it seems impossible to be real. This quote illustrates the flipside of the banality Quentin encounters in the real world; his first moments at Brakebills seem to align with what he’d hoped to find in the Fillory books, when he was younger. 

“In Brooklyn reality had been empty and meaningless—whatever inferior stuff it was made of, meaning had refused to adhere to it. Brakebills was different. It mattered. Meaning—is that what magic was?—was everywhere here.”

Quentin is now studying magic at Brakebills, and he is contrasting the world of magic with the outside world. To Quentin, the world of his parents and the world he grew up in just doesn’t measure up in comparison to what he is experiencing at Brakebills. Quentin doesn’t turn to Brakebills solely for escape; rather, he turns to the fantastic in order to give his life meaning.

“The study of magic is not a science, is not an art, and it is not a religion. Magic is a craft. When we do magic, we do not wish and we do not pray. We rely upon our will and our knowledge and our skill to make a specific change to the world.” 

Here, Professor March gives a lecture about magic. He contends that magic is something that has to be built up through knowledge, skill, and determination. The fabric of magic already exists, and is not something you create out of nothing. It is also not a belief or part of physical reality, though it can manipulate physical reality. Time and again, Quentin will learn how much work goes into crafting magic.

“Quentin let the chatter wash over him. Eating a sophisticated meal, alone in their own private dining room, felt very adult. This was it, he thought. He had been an outsider before, but now he had entered into the inner life of the school. This was the real Brakebills.” 

Quentin has just joined the Physical Kids and finally feels that he is a part of something important. Here, we see Quentin derive pleasure from adult things, showing that as he verges on adulthood, he is ready for more independence in his life. 

“The entire time he’d been at Brakebills, through first year, exams, the whole disaster with Penny, right up until the night he joined the Physical Kids, Quentin had been holding his breath without knowing it. He realized only now that he’d been waiting for Brakebills to vanish around him like a daydream.” 

While Quentin relishes the freedom and magic of Brakebills, he also often struggles to live in the moments he has there. This inability to live in the moment is recurring character trait.

“Quentin felt only good things. He felt relieved to be alive. Disaster had been averted. He had made a terrible mistake, but everything was all right now.”

This quotes comes after Quentin unintentionally unleashes the Beast in Professor March’s classroom. Quentin does not yet know that Amanda Orloff is dead. If in other moments we see Quentin wanting to grow, mature, and appreciate adult things, here we see how much naivete he retains.

“Now there was a rip in the corner of his perfect world, and fear and sadness were pouring in like freezing filthy water through a busted dam. Brakebills felt less like a secret garden and more like a fortified encampment. He wasn’t in a safe little story where wrongs were automatically righted; he was still in the real world, where bad, bitter things happen for no reason, and people paid for things that weren’t their fault.”

Quentin has now found out that Amanda Orloff was killed by the Beast. He has also been told that the Beast is very dangerous and that the students have been lucky to escape with their lives. Quentin feels guilty for causing the death of Amanda Orloff and for putting everyone else’s lives in jeopardy. The empty melancholy feeling he had in the outside world has resurfaced at Brakebills. He no longer feels safe, and he no longer sees the college as something special and immune from the uncertainty and dangers that afflict the real world. 

“Even as his physical strength faded he leaned on the iron magical vigor that his sojourn under Professor Mayakovsky had given him. It no longer felt like a fluke when he worked magic successfully. The worlds of magical and physical reality felt equally real and present to him. He summoned simple spells into being without conscious thought. He reached for the magical force within him as naturally as he would reach for the salt on the dinner table.”

Quentin has been training intensely under Professor Mayakovsky and learned how to make magic a part of him, as well as how to express it as pure presence and by the mere effort of his will. While at times Quentin’s ability to conjure magic may seem or feel effortless, it arrives in such a manner through long periods of hard work. 

“As the evening wore on, the sounds of adolescent bonding could be heard. It became apparent to Quentin and Alice that they were relics of an earlier era that had worn out its welcome. They had come full circle. They were outsiders again.”

After Eliot, Janet, and Josh graduate, Quentin and Alice feel alone again. They have each other, but feel no connection to the younger Physical Kids. They rarely interact with other students on campus, and in a lot of ways do not identify with the interests of other students. Without Eliot, Janet, and Josh, they feel marooned. 

“It was like he’d been wending his way through a vast glittering city, zig-zagging through side streets and wandering through buildings and haunted de Chirico arcades and little hidden piazzas, the whole time thinking that he’d barely scratched the surface, that he was seeing just a tiny sliver of one little neighborhood. And then suddenly he turned a corner and it turned out he’d been through the whole city, it was all behind him, and all that was left was one short street leading straight out of town.”

Graduation day approaches. Quentin realizes that his time at Brakebills is almost up and that he has hardly experienced the full depth of what a school for magic can offer. The opportunity has since passed him by and he is now heading in a different direction, unable to turn back, and unable to recapture the magic he once felt when he first came to Brakebills.

“Sometimes I wonder if man was really meant to discover magic […] It doesn’t really make sense. It’s a little too perfect […] If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it.”

Professor Fogg takes the graduates down into a chamber beneath the school and talks to them about the dangers of magic and the fact that performing magic does not always get you what you want. Magic may feel perfect and create perfect moments, but there are always unexpected consequences that chip away at those perfect moments and leave one wondering whether it was all worthwhile.

“Who would ever have thought he could do and have and be all those things and still feel nothing at all? What was he missing? Or was it him? If he wasn’t happy even here, even now, did the flaw lie in him? As soon as he seized happiness it dispersed and reappeared somewhere else. Like Fillory, like everything good, it never lasted.”

Quentin has officially graduated. He has accomplished much and he has experienced more than most people ever will in their lifetime, yet he still feels there is something missing. This search for happiness and seemingly perpetual disappointment in being unable to locate it will follow him back to the real world, where he will use alcohol and drugs to mask his sadness. 

“It was only two months since graduation, but already Brakebills seemed like a lifetime ago—yet another lifetime, Quentin thought reflecting world-wearily that at the age of twenty-one he was already on his third or fourth lifetime.”

Quentin is in Manhattan, living in an apartment with Alice. They are in the real world now, and the magic world of Brakebills feels like it happened ages ago. In part, this feeling reflects how Quentin has struggled to cope with being back in the real world, and how he seems lost and easily distracted by alcohol, drugs, and partying.

“It was unbelievable. The most naïve, most blissfully happy-sappy dreams of his childhood was true. God, he’d been so wrong about everything.”

Quentin has just discovered that Fillory is real. The fantasyland that gave him so much pleasure and that allowed him to escape the melancholy of the real world is now something he gets to experience firsthand, and Quentin is overjoyed.

“But this, this was everything. Now the present had a purpose, and the future had a purpose, and even the past, their whole lives, retroactively, had meaning.”

Quentin and the others are underway with preparations to teleport to the Neitherlands and from there to Fillory. It’s assumed by Quentin and the others that going to Fillory will restore their faith and give meaning to their lives. This shows a sort of naïve, collective idealism among the group of young adults—that the single voyage will counteract and/or dispel all past and future moments of malaise. 

“Looking back […] it occurred to Quentin that he’d always thought this would be a happy day, the happiest day of his life. Funny how life had its little ways of surprising you.”

Quentin and the others are about to depart for Fillory. Alice has slept with Penny the evening before, and even though Quentin is about to begin his biggest adventure yet, it’s been soured by the prior night’s tryst. 

“Against all his own wishes and instincts he got down on his knees and put his head in his hands and pushed his face into the cold leaves. A sob clawed its way out of him. For a minute he lost himself. Somebody, he would never know, not Alice, put their hand on his shoulder. This was the place. He would be picked up, cleaned off, and made to feel safe and happy and whole again here.”

Quentin and the others are in Fillory. Quentin’s realization that he has finally made it has just dawned on him. It overwhelms him emotionally, because now is where he needs to be. Fillory is the one place that he believes can make him happy and that can heal him.

“Fillory had yet to give Quentin the surcease from unhappiness he was counting on, and he was damned if he was leaving before he got what he wanted.”

Quentin and Richard are debating about whether they should talk to anyone in Fillory. Richard doesn’t think they should, and that they should be careful. Quentin is impatient to find his happiness as soon as possible. As far as Quentin is concerned, he’s come to the one place in the whole universe where he believes he can finally be happy, and he’s going to make sure he attains this happiness. His adamancy in locating joy makes him upset, the irony of which is lost on him in the moment. 

“Our people have been slaughtering and betraying one another for centuries […] How can you be any worse? The rule of the Chatwins is the last peaceful time anyone can remember. You don’t know anyone here; you have no history, no scores to settle. You belong to no faction.”

Quentin is talking to Fen about why the inhabitants of Fillory want somebody from another world, somebody they don’t even know, to rule over them. Fen explains it’s the law of the land. More importantly, however, humans have no connections or interests in Fillory. They are outsiders who are able to rule without serving vested interests. This is why they’re a better choice to be the kings and queens of Fillory.

“He only had time to feel all the tenderness he had ever felt for her surge up in one infinitely concentrated instant—and to be surprised that it was all still there, moist and intact beneath the unsightly scorched layer of his anger.” 

Quentin sees an elf advancing towards Alice with a knife in his hand and Alice kneel and prepare to release her Demon. Seeing her look so defenseless overcomes all the anger that Quentin has built up toward her. He suddenly remembers how they were together, about how he felt about her, and he is surprised to find that it has not left him—that he still loves her.

“They fell silent. It was like the words spun off into some void for they had no meaning. They’ve lost any connection with the world; or maybe it was the world that had peeled away from the words. Elliott passed him a flask with something strong in it, and he drank and passed it back. It seemed to restore some link between him and his body.”

Quentin and Eliot are leaning against a wall. Fen has just been killed and they don’t know where any of the others are. They are tired and know there is nothing they need to say. For a moment, the need to find Ember’s Tomb is not a pressing matter. The only thing that matters is their need to find their strength, and their need to be away from the world of Fillory and all its weighty concerns.

“Kings and queens, Quentin thought. Kings and queens, Glory has its price. Did you know that?” 

Quentin and the others endure an intense battle to get to Ember’s Tomb. They are doing this to restore order to Fillory and take their place as kings and queens of the land. Quentin notes they’ve been paying a price to get to so lofty a place, and that there will likely be more hardship ahead.

“It was all he had left, and it would have to be enough. As a magician he had been among the world’s silent royalty, but he had abdicated his throne. He had doffed his crown and left it lying there for the next sucker to put on.”

After the events of Fillory, the death of Alice, and the injuries to Penny and himself, Quentin has lost his taste for magic. He no longer seeks adventure and he no longer wants to breathe such rarefied air. His will to persevere has waned and his strength to endure has disappeared. Quentin has lost that spark of hope and the feeling that there is a better world out there for him, if only he could find it.