The Changeling: A Novel

“A household like that will either break you or toughen you up. Maybe both. What was waiting on a woman to forgive you compared with having your father beat you up and steal your first paycheck?”

This passage characterizes Brian West as a man who grew up in an abusive household. While Brian’s later disappearance remains a mystery for most of the novel, this character detail raises the question of whether Brian will repeat or disrupt the abusive patterns that occurred during his childhood. This foreshadows the same question being asked of Apollo when he becomes a father.

“How could a man who held on to all these things just abandon his wife and child?”

Apollo’s early life is defined by the question of why his father abandoned him and his mother. Brian’s disappearance is complicated by the sudden arrival of the Improbabilia box, which contains artifacts of the romance that led to Apollo’s existence. Apollo cannot reconcile how Brian could hold on to those artifacts but abandon the people he loved.

“Mr. and Mrs. D’Agostino had been up to some wild stuff, it seemed, but the two of them had been on their occult adventure together. The handwriting in the margins, two different styles, suggested husband and wife both spent time studying these tomes, exchanging marginalia, an ongoing conversation that spanned decades. Apollo suddenly understood all these books as more than just an excellent payday. They were the evidence of two lives intertwined.”

Apollo discovers the romance between an elderly couple in the marginalia of a book collection he goes through at an estate sale. Although Apollo had gone into book collecting to chase the excitement of uncovering artifacts related to writers, this marks the first time he learns more about the readers just by looking through their books. This event triggers his desire to start a family, since he suddenly yearns for people he can connect with and share his love for books with other, on the lines of the D’Agostinos’ connection.

“The point was just that Emma Valentine had done it. You see? She has always been like that, ever since she was a girl. If she sets her will on something it is going to happen, believe me. You like to think you chose to wait for her at the airport when her plane arrived late, but I’m telling you different. She was on that plane, like, willing you not to leave. You couldn’t have gone home if you tried.”

Emma’s childhood friend, Nichelle, gives Apollo some insight into Emma’s character. She claims that Emma has a preternatural gift for willing things into existence. This once again deploys the subtle fantastical elements that set The Changeling apart from other fantasy novels, grounding The Magic That Underlies Everyday Existence into otherwise realist story elements.

“In the kitchen Apollo found the breakfast dishes they’d left before going out for work on Friday morning. He’d been expecting to wash them after dinner with Nichelle. They’d been a family of two just that recently. He already had a hard time remembering that ancient age, Before Brian.”

This passage comments on the way the birth of a child radically alters one’s experience of the world. Apollo had lived through the day of Brian’s birth not expecting the way his life would change by the end of it. He thus barely recognizes the recency of domestic concerns like the breakfast dishes left unwashed from that same day. Apollo compares the difference between life before and after a child is born to the periodization of history.

“‘I always wondered why he did it. Why’d he leave the box and then disappear again?’

[…]

‘Now that you’re in my life, I understand. He wanted me to know how much I’d meant to him. He didn’t want me to go my whole life thinking I just didn’t matter. I don’t know what kind of situation he was in at the time, I don’t even know if the man is still alive, but I don’t think he could have been all that different from me. And I’m so happy with you already, little man. If I was trapped on Saturn, I’d still find a way to send a message and let you know you were loved.’”

After Brian is born, Apollo finds a tentative answer to the question he’s been asking himself since childhood. Through his love for baby Brian, he concludes that his father had wanted to leave him a sign of his love. While this is pure conjecture on Apollo’s part, the story he creates around Brian West is enough to convince himself that he was loved by his father.

“Apollo had become one of those men. The New Dads. So much better than the Old Dads of the past. New Dads wear their children. New Dads change the baby’s diaper three times a night. New Dads do the dishes and the laundry. New Dads cook the meals. New Dads read the infant development books and do more research online. New Dads apply coconut oil to the baby’s crotch to avoid diaper rash. New Dads bake sweet potatoes, then grind them in the blender once the baby is old enough for solid foods. New Dads carry the diaper bag—really a big old purse—without awareness of shame. New Dads are emotionally available. New Dads do half the housework (really more like 35 percent, but that’s still so much better than zero). New Dads fix all the mistakes the Old Dads made. New Dads are the future, or at least they plan to be, but since they’re making all this shit up as they go along, New Dads are also scared as hell.”

In this passage, LaValle characterizes Apollo as part of an emerging sociocultural trend called “New Dads.” While this trend is an invention of LaValle’s, it drives a critique of new parenting trends that mirror the generational shift from Brian and Lillian’s generation to Apollo’s and speaks to The Challenges of Modern Parenting. Many of the fathers who identify as New Dads likely come from similar backgrounds as Apollo, having either experienced abuse or neglect by their fathers, and they seek to rectify these past wrongs by being more involved fathers. However, since they lack role models, they are “scared as hell,” which causes them to overcompensate and make unwise decisions, like Apollo does by posting too much on social media.

“She missed her son.

The feeling, nearly like grief, forced her to stop at one corner and lean on a mailbox […]. She sobbed softly and felt the distance from her child as surely as the ache in a phantom limb.”

This passage portrays Emma’s sadness when she has to return to work and be away from her child. It critiques the short maternal leave that mothers get in the United States and highlights The Challenges of Modern Parenting. Two similes emphasize Emma’s experience. The first one, which describes her feeling as being “like grief,” relates her feeling to the sadness that comes after losing someone to death. The second simile describes the distance between Emma and Brian as though she were feeling “the ache in a phantom limb.” Emma is so deeply connected to her son that she feels as though she has lost a part of herself by being away from him.

“And when you were a baby, your mother and father were taken from you. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you might start to worry that you’re going to lose the person you love most in the whole world.”

This passage hints at the motivations that drive Emma to suspect and later kill the changeling that has been used to replace baby Brian. Emma’s sister Kim closes the revelation around their mother’s attempt to kill them by expressing her understanding that this event has deeply influenced Emma’s relationship with her son. Just like Apollo, Emma deeply fears losing Brian.

“He existed in a state of suspended animation. A body compelled to move here or there, eat on schedule, shower once a day, but there was nothing more to him. Apollo became convinced his heart had failed, or been removed, when he’d been in surgery for his eye. It made sense that he felt no fear in jail because he wasn’t actually alive. He died when Brian died.”

Apollo’s grief over losing Brian is characterized by the loss of his will to live. This is emphasized by describing Apollo’s body as being dead. His intense grief and trauma feel like an inability to perceive sensations or react emotionally to the world around him.

“Once he would’ve passed this off as the normal way of life. People tell little lies to get by. That goes for marriage and friendships, too. But now Apollo couldn’t brush off these untruths as benign. If our relationships are made of many small lies, they become something larger, a prison of falsehoods.”

One of the consequences of Apollo’s grief and his understanding that Emma had killed Brian is that he becomes cynical about romantic relationships. He previously excused white lies as being a natural part of any relationship, but now cannot help judging them, even in the relationship of his best friends, Patrice and Dana.

“Apollo thought giving Patrice and Dana the book had been a selfless gesture, but it’s possible he couldn’t be trusted to understand himself right now. What would he have done if Lillian hadn’t been here? He didn’t know, and that surprised him. Who was he now? What might he become? He’d always been so sure—a book man, a husband, a father—but now none of those roles seemed his to fill.”

Apollo’s cynicism is momentarily quelled by the realization that his friends are looking out for him. This foreshadows his openness to change and acceptance, which Apollo was previously closed off from because of his grief. He begins to reflect on how his post-family life might take shape since his old life and identity has completely changed.

“His mind returned, of all places, to the night Emma had given birth to Brian on the A train. Not to the dinner with Nichelle, nor to the bargaining with the dancers, but to the moment when his son’s head—still protected by the amniotic sac—had pressed against Apollo’s open palm. That moment just before his son slipped out and the sac burst all over his hands and the dirty floor. That slow time when their child had existed in two worlds at once—reality and eternity—and because Apollo and Emma were both in contact with the boy right then, they too, in a sense, had slipped between the two. The entire family had been Here and There. Together. A fairy tale moment, the old kind, when such stories were meant for adults, not kids.”

Right before this passage, Apollo returns to Brian’s room for the first time since his death. Apollo’s interiority draws a link between the start of their family life with Brian and the end of the same life. He also alludes to the distinction between deep and meaningful fairy tales and The Shortcomings of Simplistic, Moralizing Stories, which will become more significant as Apollo goes on his journey to find Emma.

“I was one of the last waves of men who thought all you had to do was work, work, work and that made you a great dad. Provide. Provide. Provide.

But you know what happens when you do it like that? You look up after twenty or twenty-five years, and your wife doesn’t know you. Your kids might respect you—might—but that other thing, the happiness, you aren’t close enough with them to share it. You understand? Your wife doesn’t know you, and neither do your kids.”

William describes his disillusionment with older approaches to parenting in this passage. His argument appeals to Apollo because it reflects the validation of his personal parenting style over that of his father’s generation. Because of this, Apollo feels he can empathize with William and perceive him as an ally.

“Vampires can’t come into your house unless you invite them. Posting online is like leaving your front door open and telling any creature of the night it can enter.”

LaValle uses this passage to discuss The Challenges of Modern Parenting as a theme. He draws an indirect comparison between the folkloric beliefs around vampires and posting personal details online, arguing that posting online is more dangerous than dealing with a vampire because it automatically invites in unwanted viewers.

“A bad fairy tale has some simple goddamn moral. A great fairy tale tells the truth.”

This passage is centered around the theme of The Shortcomings of Simplistic, Moralizing Stories. Cal makes the crucial distinction between the popular mode of fairy tales, which prioritizes moral instruction, and the classical mode of fairy tales, which prioritizes problematization. This becomes part of LaValle’s concern in writing the novel, ensuring that he can provide a resolution that does not necessarily teach readers how to become a good parent, but how to ask the questions that will lead them there.

“Hundreds of years ago German peasants were asking one another this question. But rather than frame it as a question they turned it into a story that embodied the concern. How do we protect our children? It’s 2015, and we’re still trying to find an answer. The new fears are the old fears, and the old fears are ancient.”

As a corollary to the previous passage, this passage emphasizes that stories retain relevance by asking questions that resonate with audiences across different eras of history. Essentially, LaValle suggests that the best stories are timeless not because they try to breach new ideas, but because they investigate humankind’s greatest concerns in new, compelling ways.

“‘My wife,’ he repeated to himself, trying out the term. Had she killed their son? Or was their son still alive? Cal told him he’d crossed the waters into a land of witches and monsters. Could there be hope here, too? Such a thing seemed more improbable than magic.”

As Apollo spends more time on North Brother Island, he begins to doubt his initial assessment of his wife’s actions. He asks himself questions whose answers seem improbable, but because of the magical nature of the island, he can invite the possibility that those improbable things may be true. This resonates with the theme of The Magic That Underlies Everyday Existence.

“‘People call us witches,’ Cal said quickly. She grabbed Apollo’s hand. ‘But maybe what they’re really saying is that we were women who did things that seemed impossible. You remember those old stories about mothers who could lift cars when their kids were trapped underneath? I think of it like that. When you have to save the one you love, you will become someone else, something else. You will transform. The only real magic is the things we’ll do for the ones we love.’”

In this passage, Cal outlines the particular quality of the magic that characterizes LaValle’s novel, intertwining fantasy with reality. From the author’s perspective, magic occurs in the real world when people tap into love and harness it to do extraordinary things. This once again stresses The Magic That Underlies Everyday Existence as a theme.

“Apollo felt a kind of calm that might also be called certainty. The magic of the world had been revealed. All the deceptions were gone. To believe in only the practical, the rational, the realistic was a kind of glamour as well. But he couldn’t enjoy the illusion of order anymore. Monsters aren’t real until you meet one.”

The discovery of the changeling in Brian’s grave is a significant turning point for Apollo’s character. He comes to accept the fantastical nature of his world, having seen through the illusory façade of grounded reality. From this point on, he no longer questions the magical elements of the story while also accepting the true moral alignments of the people around him, like Emma and Kinder Garten.

“And you, I know you. One of these special new fathers. You’re going to document every moment, every breath of your child’s life. You take videos of them while they’re sleeping and slap them on the computer before the baby wakes up. You think you’re being so loving. You’ll be a better father than the one who raised you! Or the one who was never there at all. But let me tell you what I see instead. The neediness of it. The begging to be applauded. As if the praise of a thousand strangers would ever make up for the fact that you didn’t feel loved enough as a child. Oh, you poor thing. You were begging to be devoured. Maybe it’s you your child needed to be protected from. You leave a trail of breadcrumbs any wolf could follow, then act shocked when the wolf is outside your door. So concerned about being the perfect father, you don’t even notice your child has been snatched away! Replaced in the night by the offspring of a troll, a changeling whose beauty is only a projection of your own vanity.”

In this passage, Jorgen levels his critique of the “New Dad” trend. This exposes Apollo’s fatal flaw of pride as a father, wanting to prove that he can transcend his father by showing the world how well he is doing with Brian. The antagonists exploit this flaw to fulfill their agenda.

“He felt as if he was finally burying what had been haunting him since he was a child. A funeral not for his father but his fatherlessness. Let that monster rest.”

This passage represents the emotional resolution of Apollo’s trauma. Across his character arc, Apollo has told himself one story to sustain that trauma, believing that his father loved him and meant to take him with him. After he defeats the troll, he no longer feels that he must rely on that story to define his approach to fatherhood. He replaces the bad story with a good one.

“Apollo saw the days and months and years to come playing against the screen of his eyelids. He saw Apollo and Emma wrangling Brian into learning how to use the potty; waking often each night, for many nights, when it was time for him to graduate to sleeping without a diaper; sneaking vegetables into his diet and coaxing him to kindergarten; the tedium of doing homework with him; the intimidation when his homework became too complicated for them to understand; cleaning him up after his first real fight; the first time he stole money from them; the first time they noticed; the faults the boy would find with each of them; the age when he learned to think of his father as a failure; the age when he told his father so; all this—and worse—was going to happen in the years to come, and thank God, thank God, thank God.”

The resolution of Apollo’s character arc is demonstrated by this passage, which shows Apollo imagining a vision of his life with Brian. In this vision, Apollo accepts that the tensions between father and son are a natural, inevitable part of fatherhood. Rather than reject that tension for fear of being labeled a bad father, he feels grateful for it, knowing that he will still get to be with his son.