Young Adult Fantasy and Mental Health: My Book’s Moral Theme
How My Debut Young Adult Fantasy Novel Addresses Mental Health
About My Book, The Beauty of Dawn
An overview: The Beauty of Dawn is an epic YA fantasy adventure about a mistrustful thief who relies on his dark power instead of his friends as he embarks on a dangerous quest to restore the sunlight to his realm.
The premise is quite simple and screams fantasy. I had a lot of fun writing it, because I got to create a whole new world from scratch. But underneath all that fantastical worldbuilding, (and intertwined into much of it), is a moral lesson that people of all ages can identify with.
This is what I love about YA fantasy. The unique world and premise draws the reader in, and unbeknownst to them, as they follow along with the story, they are being taught something. Some of my own personal favourite books that practice this kind of storytelling are The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, Fahrenheit 451, and A Wrinkle in Time by Madison L’Engle.
The Beauty of Dawn’s Moral Theme
(Spoiler Warning)
First things first: a reader is free to take whatever moral theme they feel is appropriate from a book. There are many aspects about my book that someone could potentially create their own moral theme from, which is both wonderful and encouraged. But when I was writing it — there was something I wanted to say.
Nathaniel (my main character) is imbued with a dark power that hurts both him and his friends whenever he uses it. He has relied on it his whole life, as it was what kept him alive when he lived on the streets as a beggar. When first faced with kindness and acceptance from others, this is generally his internal response:
No, he didn’t need anyone. Because in the end, it was only him and the streets. Him and the pipes. Nathaniel and the darkness.
But as Nathaniel begins to grow and change, as he creates new meaningful connections, he starts to both resent and fear his connection to this dark power. He hates that it exists, and yet, he can’t imagine life without it:
Who was he without the darkness? He had spent the past fifteen years shrouded in it, relying on its power. It was a part of him. Right now, it was all he had left. Losing it would be worse than missing a limb; Vitaus would tear it from his body, and he would be left crippled, with no structure inside to hold him upright.
What am I trying to say here? Well, when someone has lived in darkness for such a long time, they tend to get comfortable inside of it. When someone has experienced a deep trauma, and has lived in that trauma for many years, the moment they try to seek out an alternative life — it’s scary. Because that trauma has become them. Has built them into the person that they are.
Imagine you have been walking with a boulder chained to your back for the past several years. Then, someone comes along and unlocks the chains. Sure, you could just drop the boulder. But what would happen to your body? How much would be left of you? Would you ever be able to stand up straight again after the damage that boulder caused?
The idea of removing that trauma, of just letting it go, is such an insane and terrifying idea to someone like Nathaniel:
The darkness was a part of him now; to kill it would probably tear him apart from the inside.
So how does Nathaniel overcome the darkness? How does he get rid of it? Well, the answer is he doesn’t.
The Darkness — this fantastical entity — must mutually agree with Nathaniel to leave the past behind. Nathaniel can’t just decide to get rid of it. He must grow with the darkness, slowly chipping away at that boulder piece by piece, his friends helping him straighten his back with every inch.
If they shared one body, could they see his own tragedy? Could they feel his hatred and understand his resentment?
And was that all the darkness could see? Or could it see the good things, too? Cassidy, Audric, and Peter. The melting of cooked carrot soup in his mouth. The gentle soul that slept peacefully inside him.
Nathaniel willed the Shadows of Twilight to see these things, to know him so personally, so intricately, that they would become one being.
Nathaniel and the darkness, his trauma, become one person in his mind. He gives himself entirely to his dark power, once again allowing it to possess his body and control him. But it’s different this time, because Nathaniel has grown as a person, and the darkness can feel that.
In other words, Nathaniel revisits his trauma as someone who has learned to rely on his friends instead of the darkness inside of him, and so he is able to see that trauma from a new perspective:
Nathaniel and the Shadows of Twilight could feel the dull pang of the darkness, could feel its pressure, could sense the connection they shared. They were the anchor keeping the darkness in Ealidor; it was nothing without their misery.
Through both Nathaniel’s eyes, and the Shadows of Twilight’s eyes, he is able to finally understand what it means to create meaningful relationships and rely on an external support system:
They stood with them now, despite everything that they were and everything they did. They were there for them in ways the darkness could never be.
And so the final chip of the boulder falls off on its own. Nathaniel is able to stand up straight, holding the hands of the people who matter most to him:
Staring at the sunlight, Nathaniel wondered how they had survived this long without it. He realized when you were surrounded by the people you cared about, the people you loved, the world became a whole lot brighter.
Conclusion
If I were to sum it all up in one sentence, I would say that The Beauty of Dawn’s moral theme is learning to let go of what hurts you, although it is far more complicated than that. Because we can’t just let those things go. We have to face them head on, come to terms with them, and grow through them. We become shaped by them, like a tree from a rock, all twisted and gnarled. Then, once we realize we no longer have to fight to survive, we have to go out of our way to reach for new things to live for.
W.D. Seitz is the author of the dark epic YA fantasy, The Beauty of Dawn.
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