86 pages • 2 hours read
Max the Mighty
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Themes
Doing the Right Thing Instead of the Safe Thing
Max hates to see people cruelly treated, but he also doubts himself, and his conscience does battle with his fears. Several times, he confronts the conflict between fear and resolve, and each time his better nature wins out. In the process, Max learns he’s a better person than he, or anyone else, knew.
Max’s best friend, Kevin, taught him to love books, especially stories about King Arthur’s knights, who went on grand quests, defeated evil, and protected the innocent. In one King Arthur novel, The Sword in the Stone, “It’s about this kid who everyone thinks is a real loser until one day he accidentally pulls this sword out of a stone” (97-98). Max is several sizes larger than his classmates, worries that he’s a dunce, and is known as the son of a murderer. It’s no surprise that he struggles with his self-image. The idea of King Arthur, a nobody who becomes a hero, gives Max hope that he too might rise above his apparent limitations.
Max witnessed firsthand the ultimate cruelty when his father killed his mother in front of him. He can’t get her back, but he can help Rachel, who struggles with an abusive stepfather. Max brings to her the protective power of his gigantic physique and an Arthurian belief in heroism and chivalry.
Still, he’s 14 and filled with doubts. His brain keeps trying to convince him to give up, abandon Rachel, and escape her situation. Each time he considers leaving, though, he simply can’t do it: “[O]nly a crudball creep would leave an eleven-year-old girl all alone in the world” (38).
Rachel descends into the frightening and eerie darkness of the mine tunnels, and, gripped by terror, Max follows, hoping to protect her. Once again, part of his mind wants to run away, but a stronger, more noble part wants to stay and honor his commitment to her. Time after time, he’s faced with a choice between being safe and helping Rachel, and each time he chooses her. Clearly, he’s a good person, but he persists in believing otherwise.
For all his self-doubt and childlike fear, Max proves himself to be much more than a scared teen. The sheer size of him is matched by the great depth of his heart, which guides him to do the right thing despite the risks. This nobility of spirit extends even beyond Rachel to the Undertaker, whom he helps save when the tunnels begin to collapse. Finally, Max realizes that his largeness is also greatness. His doubts must take second place to his nobler intentions.
Reading as a Defense, and Reading as Inspiration
Rachel loves to read for its own sake. The adventure tales she reads take her to other, better worlds than the one she lives in. Books also help her escape from the pain of living with an evil stepfather. Though Rachel reads to avoid her own feelings, the books also nudge her in the direction of accepting, with all its discomfort, the adventure of life.
Reading keeps her world at bay, but eventually she must confront the problems she faces. Fortunately, the books inspire her with stories of what might be and of adventures that could come true. The novels have heroic protagonists who face their fears and venture boldly on great quests. Rachel understands that the journey to her father is such a quest. When she arrives at Chivalry, she begins to come out of her shell to engage with him.
This takes some time as Rachel gathers her spirits and her courage. The books, once protections against the world around her, now support her desire to engage with that world. Max notes that “there’s a whole other person living inside her that only comes out when she talks about books, and that person is so brave that nothing could scare her” (120). As she talks about books, they seem to animate her. She gains boldness simply from describing how much they inspire her.
At last, she’s ready to meet her father. He is, however, no longer alive, lost in a mine accident. What matters to Rachel is to be in the presence of his grave, where perhaps she can commune with him and absorb some of his wisdom. Any inspiration she can garner from her visit will help her face the demonic Undertaker.
As her adventure reaches a climax, Rachel recognizes that she already has what she needs to overcome the problems that plague her. This realization happens while she’s in the tunnels that make up her father’s gravesite. Her quest thus complete, Rachel returns to her father the miner’s helmet that has, for so many years, kept her safe. She drops it into the deep chasm where her dad lies, in the hope that, somehow, he’ll find it useful in death.
The books that protected her also inspire her, and Rachel at last comes out into the world. Her first big adventure heralds the possibility of many more to come. Rachel will begin to create her own life story, an adventure not in a book but one she can share with others, including Max.
Comforting Beliefs and Powerful Truths
The truth is a moving target in the story. Rachel and Max must learn to navigate the slippery, unstable passageways that separate comfortable beliefs from what’s really true. Doing so gives them confidence in their power to navigate the uncertainties of life.
People in Max’s town believe he’s a dangerous person simply because he’s very large and his father is a murderer. Max knows he’s not dangerous, but he buys into the common view that he’s not very smart or very nice. When the Undertaker accuses him of assault and kidnapping, it’s an easy idea for the police to accept.
Rachel and Max meet Frank and Joanie, and they soon realize the couple cannot be trusted. Neither Max nor Rachel is willing to talk about what happened to them, so for Dip the truth about their situation remains obscured. This gives Frank and Joanie a chance to try to capture Max for the reward money. Had the kids told Dip the truth, he might have been able to help them right away.
Rachel won’t tell Max the truth about her father, and Max is forced to keep faith with her despite his ignorance. “She’s not going to tell me what’s really going on, or why she’s being so mysterious” (125). She thus puts Max into grave danger in the mine tunnels by not giving him the chance to suggest better, safer ways of communing with her dead father.
Rachel also believes in magic and its power to correct the wrongs in her life. She thinks her helmet and books magically protect her from the Undertaker, and that magic leaks usefully out of books. Indeed, many good things happen when she invokes magic or prays, and she attributes them to miraculous outside forces. Her belief is so strong that even Max, who doesn’t think magic is real, begins to wonder if there’s some truth to her idea.
The truth, though, once understood, is more powerful than all the fake beliefs. Some people really are dishonest and will cause harm if it benefits them, and others ignore signs of that dishonesty at their peril. Max is a smart and good person, despite all the bad press he receives and believes; he persists in denying his own virtues until finally he recognizes that other people’s beliefs about him aren’t gospel.
The magic Rachel invokes comes not from outside her but from within, from the strength of character that people naturally possess but can’t use until they’re willing see past their own defenses to their own real power. It’s Rachel who makes it all the way across the country; it’s she who finds a way out of the mine; it’s she who uses circumstances to force a confession from the Undertaker.
Misreading the truth, or hiding it, or simply believing what they wish were true, complicates Rachel’s and Max’s lives and makes it harder for them to deal with the problems they face. Only when they accept the truth can they behave in ways that move their problems toward resolution. Their comforting beliefs about the power of books and helmets and magic and dumb strength finally give way to the much more powerful truth that they already have the resources to meet the challenges in their lives. At last, they can toss away the mental crutches that kept the world at bay and instead accept their own power to walk unaided through that world.
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