The Amulet of Samarkand

“Now, now, Bartimaeus, we don’t use the s-word in civilized company, do we? Jabor and I are playing the long game.”

Here, Stroud exposes the different ways in which spirits cope with the magicians’ long-standing system of exploitation. Though Bartimaeus calls spirits “slaves” in magical society, Faquarl chides him for using the “s-word,” implying that it is both rude and unwise to use such explicit language to describe magicians’ treatment of spirits. While Bartimaeus is always looking to escape, Jabor and Faquarl believe in complying quietly until they can exploit the magician who has bound them. Simpkin, however, fully conforms to the system and finds enjoyment in being bound to Sholto, believing that it grants him status in society.

“Shortly afterward I departed to a girder halfway up a crane on the opposite bank, where they were erecting a swanky riverside condo for the magical gentry.”

In this excerpt, Bartimaeus implies a division in social castes within British society. Being a magician does not simply give great magical power; rather, it also implies a social status and political power that far surpasses that of non-magic-using people.

“It wasn’t healthy to be encased in a body for so long. How humans can stand it without going completely mad, I’ll never know.”

Though spirits are bound by the type of summoning circles magicians create, this quote also gestures toward a different façade of their enslavement. More than simply being exploited for their powers, spirits are made to appear in physical form, which is antithetical to their being.

“A magician wouldn’t have wanted to come within a dog’s bark of me without being protected up to the hilt with charms and pentacles. Next he would have needed the help of imps to find me under my Concealment; and, finally, he would have had to conjure up a fairly heavyweight djinni to subdue me. If he dared. But this girl and her boyfriends had done it all on their own, without seeming particularly fussed.”

This passage foreshadows the eventual confrontation between the Resistance and the magicians. It implies that the Resistance has somehow breached the divide between commoners and magicians, wherein magicians seem all-powerful because of their inaccessible materials and artifacts.

“[Nathaniel’s parents] couldn’t get away fast enough. The usual sort: take the money and run, if you get my meaning, sir. Barely stopped to say good-bye to him.”

As a ministry clerk tells Arthur, Nathaniel’s sale to the government is tantamount to parental abandonment, reflecting the theme of Social Displacement and the Loss of Community. This assessment of Nathaniel’s parents’ behavior implies an inherent fear of children marked to become magicians. It also implies that Nathaniel’s parents may have been facing financial difficulties, using their son for their own gain.

“His birth records have been removed and destroyed, sir, and he has been strictly instructed to forget his birth name and not reveal it to anyone. He is now officially unformed.”

The destruction of children’s birth records completely alienates them from their former families and makes them dependent on their masters and the British government as a whole. Without the identity provided to them through their master, they would effectively no longer exist in official records.

“That road leads to competing dynasties, family alliances…it all ends in blood feuds. Read your history books, Martha: see what happened in Italy.”

Arthur’s justification of the magical apprenticeship system is based on a fallacy: While not having direct lineage with one’s apprentice might subdue the notion of a “dynasty,” in practice, magicians can and do cultivate bonds that are innately family in nature. Since the apprenticeship system delivers young children to new guardians, the effect of establishing sequestered alliances—seen especially through Simon and Schyler’s association or Rupert Devereaux’s inheritance of the prime minister position through his master—remains alive and strong.

“She was the only person to use his name. His tutors called him Underwood, after his master. His master himself just addressed him as ‘boy.’”

This passage exposes the lack of connection that Nathaniel has with the only people with whom he interacts, highlighting the theme of Social Displacement and the Loss of Community. While Martha still addresses him by name, his tutors use his master’s last name to identify him, thereby negating his own identity. Arthur goes even further by not deigning to find anything to call him by other than his gender, which signals how little interest he has in Nathaniel.

“It would be unthinkable: commoners would be in charge! We would slip into chaos, and invasion would quickly follow.”

Here, Mr. Purnell parallels Simpkin’s own tone, which endorses the propagandized belief of magicians’ supremacy over spirits and society. Though both characters are made to have fewer rights by this belief, both adhere to it wholeheartedly.

“A magician […] is a wielder of power. A magician exerts his will and effects change. He can do it from selfish motives or virtuous ones. The results of his actions can be good or evil, but the only bad magician is an incompetent one.”

Here, Stroud implies that in a society led by magicians, competency and power are prioritized above morality. The government’s ethical stance is therefore obscured by its seeming competency: As long as its magicians express their power effectively, the government cannot be deemed “bad” under its own moral framework.

“Thee, recreant demon—I ask you! No one used language like that anymore, and hadn’t for two hundred years. Anyone would think he had learned his trade entirely out of some old book.”

Bartimaeus’s observation is unwittingly accurate and indicative of the lengths to which Nathaniel has gone to be proficient in summoning spirits. As he can only rely on textbooks and the writings of long-dead masters instead of his own, Nathaniel’s education is an amalgamation of knowledge that showcases both his tenacity and the drawbacks of having an uninterested master.

“Since the days of the Median Magi, students have always lived alone in their mentors’ house—one master to one pupil, conducting their lessons with secrecy and stealth. From ziggurat to pyramid, from sacred oak to skyscraper, thousands of years pass and things don’t change.”

Bartimaeus’s observation about magicians’ unchanged system of education reveals how engrained the practice of sequestering students into a tailored teaching method is. It also hints at how slow magicians’ societies are to adopt changes to their way of life, though it is unclear if subjugating and enslaving spirits was always part of their curriculum.

“Magicians don’t have a complete monopoly on knowledge, you know. Far from it. And anyway, knowledge and intelligence are very different things. As you’ll one day discover.”

Here, Ms. Lutyens directly challenges Nathaniel’s assumption of magicians’ rightful omnipotence over society. Though his belief is born out of the doctored knowledge he was given, he has not yet developed the intelligence, as Ms. Lutyens implies, to question and challenge that knowledge. Her words speak to The Illusion of Power.

“He noticed his master smiling, rather smugly. Not that I owe any of this to you, Nathaniel thought witheringly, I read all this. You’ve taught me next to nothing.”

As the only instance in which Arthur deigns to show approval of Nathaniel’s abilities, this scene illustrates just how ignorant Arthur is of Nathaniel’s abilities. While Nathaniel has clearly demonstrated his knowledge, Arthur will still continue to ignore Nathaniel’s competency and write him off as a shameful, unintelligent apprentice until it’s too late.

“No matter how hard you try, magicians always find a way to clobber you in the end.”

This declaration from Bartimaeus echoes Nathaniel’s assessment of spirits in the next chapter: “Demons always found a way. Give them any power at all and sooner or later they would have you” (139). Both have the same tone and hint at The Cyclical Nature of Oppression that causes them to both vilify each other without proper knowledge of one another.

“It is not uncommon to swallow lesser imps that fall into one’s power but that wasn’t really my style.”

This passage foreshadows the conclusion of the battle between Bartimaeus, Nathaniel, Simon, and Ramuthra. It also gestures to how spirits from the Other Place live among each other; theirs is a society that seems almost cannibalistic should weakness be demonstrated.

“Travelling across the city was a special occasion in itself—it rarely happened to Nathaniel, whose experience of the world was confined mainly to books.”

This excerpt gestures to how little experience Nathaniel has of the world, of its people, and of the many kinds of circumstances that can be lived through. His experience of life has been, up until now, one known through a disconnected medium, which caters to his naivete and gullibility.

“If we do not stamp it [the Resistance] out, other commoners may follow their lead like the brainless cattle they are. We will therefore take draconian measures to halt this vandalism. All subversives will be detained without trial.”

That these are words spoken by the prime minister, the man meant to represent all his constituents and not just magicians, is indicative of how magicians regard commoners as second-class citizens. For him (and most likely other members of the government), non-magical people are akin to sheep needing to be herded but not heard.

“But perhaps, if you are open and honest with him about what you’ve done, there is a chance that he will listen to you when he returns. A very small chance.”

While Martha’s advice here appears to be well intended and helpful, it nevertheless is a betrayal of trust between her and Nathaniel. Ultimately, she sides with Arthur in his decision to turn out Nathaniel and ruin his chances at being a magician. She is well aware that Arthur will most likely turn him away, but she does not fault her husband, implying that he is justified in his reasoning.

“Our existence here is nothing but a series of penalties! Only the cursed magicians themselves change, and as soon as one drops into his grave, another springs up, dusts off our names and summons us again! They pass, we endure.”

Faquarl here paints a bleak picture of the lives led by spirits, one that is an endless cycle of servitude. Though their long lives allow them to see the many evolutions in human society, their burden remains the same: No matter how many years or magicians go by, their experience of the human world has been constant and consistent throughout.

“Once again, his helplessness infuriated him. Curse the djinni! It was never there when he needed it.”

This passage here reveals to what degree Nathaniel appropriates Bartimaeus’s ability as his own. It is not a lack of his own abilities that produces a feeling of helplessness in Nathaniel; rather, since he equates Bartimaeus’s power as his own, he perceives that it is Bartimaeus’s absence that removes his agency.

“Whatever his original grudge against Lovelace, his previous discretion had now been replaced by a desperation powered by grief. Simple things like self-preservation were disregarded in his pride and fury.”

Though Bartimaeus is correct in this instance in assessing a change in Nathaniel’s thirst to pursue Simon, his bias against magicians colors his judgment, as he believes that pride still dictates Nathaniel’s choices. Grief, however, is Nathaniel’s true motivator, as he exposes when he declares to Schyler after killing him, “You made a mistake […] It is not my master that I’m doing this for” (411).

“He’d never been out of the city before now. Never even been in a big park, most likely. The emptiness terrified him.”

Here, Stroud juxtaposes the Underwoods’ garden with the open field. Though both are dominated by flora, Nathaniel only feels safe and at peace in a walled enclosure where he can see the statue of his idol. Removing the walls and allowing him to see beyond to the rest of the world terrifies him since it is unpredictable and uncontrollable.