The Institute

“[I]t would eventually come to loading and unloading at the next port of call. Maybe everything did. And everyone.”

Tim observes the constant loading, unloading, and back-and-forth of goods from DuPray’s train station, the use of “everyone” introducing the novel’s first evocation of concentration camps—as the Institute children are taken from their homes and brought to a place where they are imprisoned and abused. Later, in a reversal, the train will bring Luke to Tim.

“‘Here’s what you do,’ Tim said. ‘You go on back home right now, and I’ll walk behind you, just make sure you don’t change your collective mind.’ ‘What’s a collective mind?’ Robert asked.”

This reference to the Bilson twins’ collective mind foreshadows the collective mind (and psychic assault) of the Back Half children. The twins use their collective mind for relatively innocent mischief, whereas to the Institute, a collective mind is a resource to be exploited. Later, the Institute children will use their collective mind to save themselves and others like them.

“It was never the midnight drag races that bothered me…What bothers me are the messes we have to clean up when one of those stampeders hits a tree or a telephone pole. Dead is bad. But the ones who are never the same…I sometimes think they’re worse.”

“The ones who are never the same” foreshadows the fate of the permanently damaged children in Back Half and Ward A, who die in the destruction of the Institute at the end of the novel. Sheriff Ashworth differs from the adults at the Institute in that the injury and suffering of children cause him pain.

“I’m an investment. A stock with good growth potential. Invest the nickels and reap the dollars, right? It’s how America works.”

Luke muses about the Broderick School for Exceptional Children (the school paying for some of his expenses), but his thoughts can also apply to the Institute—where children are used and discarded. The idea of people as commodities also applies to Maureen. The housekeeper’s debt is a commodity that can be bought and sold, which makes her a kind of commodity as well.

“‘There’s an abyss, okay? Sometimes I dream about it, and it’s full of all the things I don’t know.…’ ‘You know what they say about the abyss, don’t you?’ Herb asked. ‘[...] When you stare into it, it stares back at you.’”

Luke and his father Herb discuss Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphorism of “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” In its ambition to hunt monsters seeking to destroy the world, the Institute has become a monster itself. The heroes of the story—Tim, Luke, and the other children—take care not to become the monsters they are fighting.

“[Doctor Hendricks] knew [Mrs. Sigsby] wasn’t kidding anyone, least of all herself. Siggers was like that unknown Nazi buffoon who thought it would be a terrific idea to put Arbeit macht frei, work sets you free, over the entrance to Auschwitz.”

This quote is one of the novel’s many references to concentration camps. Like the blatant lie in the motto over the gates of Auschwitz, Mrs. Sigsby fills the corridors of the Institute with images of happy children and mottoes like “I CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY.” The signs deny reality, telling the tortured children that they have no right to their pain and anger and if they suffer, it is their own fault.

“[Luke] thought of the Roman satirist, Juvenal, who said that if you gave the people bread and circuses, they’d be happy and not cause any trouble. He guessed the same might be true of booze and cigarettes, especially if you offered them to scared and unhappy kids who were locked up.”

Alcohol, cigarettes, and THC-laced brownies offer the children respite from fear and pain. These “treats” also motivate them to cooperate in order to get the tokens needed to purchase more forms of relief. The children who become addicted lack the will to resist and are the most manageable of the bunch—which Stackhouse speaks to himself.

“He was only twelve, and understood that his experience of the world was limited, but one thing he was quite sure of: when someone said trust me, they were usually lying through their teeth.”

Mrs. Sigsby assures Luke that he will be sent home to his parents (who were murdered on the night of his kidnapping). After Luke escapes, she echoes this very sentiment when confronting Avery. In telling Luke to trust her, perhaps she assumed he was too inexperienced to recognize deceit; but with Avery, she doubles down, having been fooled once before.

“[Luke wanted] to bring the Institute down on their heads, as Samson had brought the temple of Dagon down on the Philistines [...] As his father liked to say, it was good to have goals. They can bring you through tough times.”

Luke’s fantasy foreshadows the climactic scene in which the children raise Front Half with their combined power and drop it on the Institute’s administration building. The biblical Samson was in the Philistines’ temple when he destroyed it, and he was crushed alongside his enemies—which is what befalls some of the Institute children in the destruction. This mental image gives Luke the courage and determination needed to fight.

“Luke retreated, marveling at how quickly all his unquestioned assumptions about adults—that they were nice to you if you are nice to them, just for starters—had been blown up.”

Adults are supposed to nurture and protect children—however, those at the Institute are corrupted, some by the belief that they are sacrificing children to save the world, and others by a warped sense of “professionalism.” Some may be psychopaths or sadists by nature.

“There were cracks in the walls of…this hole of hell. If [Luke] could use his secrets—and his supposedly superior intelligence—as a crowbar, he might be able to widen one of those cracks. He didn’t know if escape was possible, but should he find a way to do it, escape would only be the first step to a greater goal. Bring it down on them, he thought. Like Samson after Delilah coaxed him into getting a haircut. Bring it down and crush them. Crush them all.”

In the biblical story of Samson, Samson was captured by the Philistines when his lover Delilah cut his hair, stealing his strength. This weakness made it possible for his enemies to carry him into the heart of their temple. When his hair grew back and he recovered his strength, he destroyed the temple from within. Unlike Nicky, Luke decides to rebel by using his upbringing as a good boy—cooperative and polite—to make himself appear weak until the Philistines who run the Institute become complacent and bring him into the heart of their temple. Eventually, the staff does grow complacent. The employees frequently leave Luke unsupervised, which allows him to steal a key card for the elevator as well as pen and paper to write a note to Maureen.

“There were other people here with at least some shreds of decency left, but working in a place like this destroyed your moral compass.”

In the process of dehumanizing others, the Institute’s staff members degrade themselves. They may start out as relatively decent people, but over time (as their jobs require them to do things that violate human decency), the discomfort of cognitive dissonance causes them to attack victims as the source of their discomfort.

“There’s a town in Maine, Jerusalem’s Lot, and you could ask the people who lived there about the men in the black cars.”

“Jerusalem’s Lot” refers to Stephen Kings novel Salem’s Lot (1975). King’s stories frequently contain references to his other works, creating a sense of verisimilitude, as if his stories are taking place in a real world.

“They didn’t have to be a bunch of dazed dummies sitting on the ventriloquist’s knee. It was so simple, but it was a revelation: what you did for yourself was what gave you the power.”

The children’s power is limited when it is employed at the will of someone else and for the purpose of dominion. They find that when they come together to save themselves and each other, their power is magnified. This illustrates the theme of power coming not from domination but from ordinary people standing together.

“Kalisha knew what came next, what had to come next, and she dreaded it. Of course, she also wanted it. Only it was more than wanting. It was lusting. They were children with high explosives, and that might be wrong, but it felt so right.”

Kalisha’s own power feels wrong to her because she understands herself as a child. She shouldn’t have to defend herself from adults. She shouldn’t have to wield power of this magnitude—but she and her friends are on their own, and they finally have the combined strength to free themselves.

“Once again Kalisha had that sense of sublime power. It came on sparkler nights, but then it was dirty. This was clean, because it was them.”

Unlike before, when they were being used by people who lacked humanity, the children are engaged in righteous destruction—like Samson pulling down the temple of the Philistines. The children differ from the adults in that they are addressing a clear and present evil, not attacking distant targets who might cause destruction in the future.

“Or could [Tim] say that it was fate? That he had been moved to DuPray by the hand of some cosmic chess player…And what piece was he? It would be nice to believe himself a knight, but more likely, he was just another pawn.”

The motif of Tim as a knight is fully realized the moment he pledges himself to Luke (the “queen”) in his “chess game” against Stackhouse—as is the traditional role of a knight, a stalwart protector.

“There was a tap on [Stackhouse’s] shoulder. He turned to regard the misguided hero. He was broad-shouldered (as an authentic hero should be), but he was wearing glasses, and that didn’t fit the stereotype. Of course there was always Clark Kent, Stackhouse thought.”

Stackhouse’s reference to Superman’s secret identity, Clark Kent, emphasizes the fact that Tim is an ordinary man. He is a guardian at heart, a protector, not a warrior.

“Seventy years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated by atomic bombs, the world is still here even though many nations have atomic weapons, even though primitive human emotions still hold sway over rational thought and superstition masquerading as religion still guides the course of human politics.”

Mr. Smith’s statement embodies survivorship bias: The assumption that if humankind still exists, then the Institute’s methods must work. It is faulty logic because it is unfalsifiable. Perhaps the Institute has kept humanity from self-destructing, but they have no proof that the world would have ended if they hadn’t interfered. In fact, they have no proof that their actions didn’t make things worse. Perhaps if the powerful and depraved hadn’t interfered, ordinary people—ones who care about each other—would have kept things stable. Furthermore, Mr. Smith’s reference to religion is ironic considering the Institute operates like a cult.

“Luke was thinking of the girl who’d asked him about the SAT math problem—she’d gotten the answer wrong, and this was the same thing, only on a much grander scale; a bad answer derived from a faulty equation.”

The Institute is built on a false premise: that precognitive insight is accurate for more than a day or two ahead of a given event. From this premise, they derive the unfalsifiable belief that if the world still exists, it is due to the Institute. The Institute even has mathematical models telling them that their premise is false, but their belief is the belief of a cult, which is immune to facts and evidence.

“Statistics can prove anything. Nobody can see the future. If you and your associates really believe that, you're not an organization, you're a cult.”

The Institute is cult-like in its belief system, isolation of members, and fear of an outside threat. Many of the staff members believe (or profess to believe) that their work is saving the world. They may be compelled to believe out of the cognitive dissonance caused by self-awareness; they smother their own sense of degradation with an illusion of righteousness.

“Smith shook his head. ‘You’re very bright, Luke, but you’re still just a child, and children indulge in magical thinking—they bend the truth until it conforms to what they wish were true.’”

Children’s “magical thinking” is based on the belief that they can control external forces by their own thoughts or actions. Luke and his friends are doing the opposite: They are relinquishing control and responsibility for things that are outside their sphere. The Institute itself attempted (and ultimately failed) to exert control via literal magical thinking (the children’s psychic powers).

“Sane people don't sacrifice children on the altar of probability. That's not science, it's superstition.”

The literal sacrifice of children was sometimes commanded by ancient religions to please their gods. It gave believers an illusion of control over their fates (i.e., magical thinking). The Institute embodies a modern version of this impulse—sacrificing children for the sake of the future.