A Northern Light Themes

Books, books, and more books. In A Northern Light, Mattie is obsessed to distraction with books and literature and authors and writing. In fact, it's one of the major ways that she tries to make se...

Becoming an adult isn't like taking the red pill or the blue pill like in The Matrix; Mattie doesn't just wake into a new reality. Instead, in A Northern Light, she gradually moves away from the si...

It seems uncomplicated to readers from the beginning of A Northern Light: Mattie dreams of going to college, and she's got a plan to get there. She even has a scholarship and a place to stay. But h...

In A Northern Light, duty and responsibility largely arise from family and community. Duties are often based on gender norms and other social expectations, and these pressures cause a lot of fricti...

Okay, let's contextualize A Northern Light: It takes place in 1906, which is the middle of a turbulent time for women's rights and gender roles. (If this isn't ringing any bells for you, click righ...

In Mattie's community, marriage is the only option for respectable young women, and because of this, marriage in A Northern Light is tangled up with ideas of freedom and confinement. After all, if...

Although only a few instances of overt racism appear in A Northern Light, race and racial inequality still are profoundly prevalent in the community, especially for Weaver Smith and his mother. (Fo...

In many ways, A Northern Light is all about the power associated with words. Unfortunately, though, only a few characters truly understand the impact words can have on relationships, individual ide...

Even though A Northern Light takes place in a rural community, there's plenty of complex social pressures and drama. In a time filled with rigid gender and race expectations, and in a town filled w...

Family permeates the entirety of A Northern Light. Mattie wants to leave hers to follow her dreams, but she feels guilty for even considering it because she loves her family and she promised her mo...