Thoughts from Class

I enjoyed the end of the Magus. For one, it wasn't a definitive end. If it had ended either way (with he and Alison together or not) it would have gone against the entire grain of the book. The entirety of The Magus is one huge mystery, the majority of what we do know stems from being told what is not true (versus being told straight truths). Secondly, Nicholas states near the end that he feels that he is finally free (eleuthera) from "their" watch. Our whole lives we've witnessed the pattern of human life, we can predict the outcomes of interactions between people fairly easily. All his time spent and decisions made on Phraxos were heavily influenced by Conchis; his life didn't follow a pattern we could anticipate because he wasn't under much of his own willpower. At the end however, he feels free of this erratic influence. In the final few pages we can finally use our history of witnessed interactions to decide what will happen next as he is finally under his own control. He slips back into the pattern of normal human life, because people can't exist without following a pattern of living laid down before them. Nicholas had no less freedom to live his life under Conchis as he did without Conchis.