The Last Graduate

In The Last Graduate, the students lack of access to adults proves to be a crucial aspect of their coming-of-age journey, for the Scholomance is a place where the students must utilize the lessons of the school itself, along with interactions between peers and alliances, to decide who they want to be in life. The school itself forces students to mature by presenting them with life-and-death decisions on a daily basis. No one can rely on parents or enclaves to serve as a buffer between them and the voracious mals. In such a setting, the students learn harsh lessons about adulthood, for they know that a single mistake could be fatal. 

While education is a key element in coming of age, Novik creates an extremely ominous version of the scholastic world. At its best, education is an intentional process designed by wiser mentors in order to prepare students for life as adults. In the Scholomance, however, there are no adults to act as guides, and there is no intention behind the process other than the ultimate struggle to survive graduation. The knowledge and rewards that students gain are presented as largely arbitrary, as when El finds the book of

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