"None Who Enter Will Leave Unchanged": Hybridity, Anthropocentrism and Human-Nonhuman Relationships in Brandon Mull's Fablehaven

Abstract

Within the fields of posthumanism and critical animal studies, children’s fantasy literature has been recognized as a genre rife with subversive potential. Children’s fantasy fiction frequently breaks the binaries of human/animal or human/nonhuman, presenting the reader with characters who bend our definitions of what is human and what is not. These hybrid beings challenge human-centric conventions both by their very existence as well as through interspecies cooperation with stereotypical human characters. Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven not only demonstrates a profound subversion of anthropocentrism and the human/nonhuman binary; the novel also explicitly discusses mass extinction and the rights of nonhuman species. This thesis analyses the topics of hybridity, anthropocentrism and human-nonhuman relationships within Fablehaven and utilizes scholarship from the fields of posthumanist literary theory, critical animal studies and ecocriticism to support an environmentalist reading of Fablehaven. The analysis indicates that Fablehaven’s hybrid magical beings resist categories and hierarchies alike, and even the conventional humanity of the novel’s human characters is undermined through both ideological and physical transformations. The narrative shows that actions based on an anthropocentric premise result in disaster, and the only way to remedy the catastrophic consequences of human folly is to decentralize humanity and cooperate with nonhuman beings. Hybridizing transformations allow Fablehaven’s human characters to experience the perspective of nonhumans, and even the conceptual hybridity of the novel’s child characters as a bridge between the human and the animal facilitate empathy and respect for nonhuman beings through mutual experiences. Fablehaven takes a radical stance against human hegemony by emphasizing the rights of nonhuman species and suggesting that the lives of endangered species should be prioritized over the lives of humans who would pose a threat to these species. Mass extinction, symbolized within the narrative by a powerful and malevolent demon, can be averted if humanity abandons its notions of human superiority and begins to live in symbiosis with the biosphere.