The Dangers of Obsession

All throughout the novel, the author highlights the suffering the Hinterland causes to show how dangerous obsession can be. All of the refugees and Finch suffer because of their fixation on the fairy tales of the Hinterlands. Only by taming this passion are they able to find happiness.

The most obvious example of this theme is Ellery Finch. The reader knows from the beginning of the novel that he is obsessed with Althea’s novel Tales from the Hinterlands. When Alice asks him why he likes novel so much, he says “It was perfect. There are no lessons in it. There's just this harsh, horrible world touched with beautiful magic, where shitty things happen. And they don’t happen for a reason, or in threes, or in a way that looks like justice” (111). Finch is a teenager who has suffered since the death...