The House in the Cerulean Sea

The theme of prejudice is openly and thoroughly discussed throughout the novel. The universe Klune has developed allows him a ready and powerful allegory for religious, ethnic, and racial discrimination in our own world. Strong ties to mainstream Western culture are established through references to George Orwell’s 1984 and the mirroring of the US Department of Homeland Security’s anti-terrorism campaign slogans. The position of the “other” is frequently discussed in literary criticism; the “other” is a person or group of people who are identified or marked different in some way. In this text, those markers are magical gifts or physical appearances that differ from the human norm, such as Talia’s beard, Phee’s wings, and Theodore and Chauncey’s obviously non-human bodies. Othering is frequently used politically and socially to dehumanize and oppress people or groups whose existence, beliefs, or culture are feared by the mainstream or majority groups.

Klune highlights many of the techniques used to other people or groups. The posters, for example, overtly warn the nonmagical that magical youth and adults are something to be noticed, registered, and monitored. This campaign marks the magical not only as different, but also as lesser than, and as requiring supervision. The segregation of magical children from nonmagical children works to dehumanize and to strip the perception of innocence. Studies have shown, for example, that people in American society attribute the label of “child” to White children for years longer than they do children of color. The depiction of young children and adolescents as being capable of adult-level violence is a powerful mechanism for oppression and the justification of abuse. In his meeting with EUM, Linus has to emphasize that Lucy remains a child despite his astounding abilities: “He dreams of death and fire and destruction, and it tears at him. But do you know what I found? I found a boy, a six-year-old boy who loves going on adventures” (358).

More than revealing the tools and techniques used to draft social fears and prejudice, Klune’s novel reveals the insidious effects it has. When a group of people are othered, dehumanized, and marginalized, they are stripped both of the power to defend their own rights and of access to justice when they are wronged. Norman’s refusal to serve the children in the ice cream parlor may be seen as a parallel to businesses that deny service to people based on race, ethnicity, or sexuality. In the abstract, such a denial may seem like a political slight, but Klune’s depiction reveals how painful, personal, and humiliating the experience is. The novel is a particularly fruitful text through which to critique patterns and forms of discrimination and prejudice in both the historical and contemporary framework.