Circumstance vs. Choice Theme Analysis

At the beginning of I Am the Messenger, Markus Zusak’s 2002 novel, main character Ed Kennedy wallows in discontent with his life. He is frustrated with his dead-end career as a taxi driver in a hopeless suburban town and his lack of a love life, but cannot seem to improve his life due to his innate ineptitude. However, fate appears to offer Ed an opportunity when he stumbles upon a bank robbery that he manages to foil. Afterward, he begins to receive instructions in the mail that send him on missions to help others. Just as he is beginning to feel like he has the choice to improve himself by helping others, Ed discovers that the instructions, and in fact his entire life for the past year, were controlled by one man. Once the man withdraws his control from Ed’s life, Ed realizes it is his choice now how he lives his life. Ed’s progress throughout the novel toward taking charge of his life shows that while one cannot control the circumstances that dictate their life, one can choose how to react to those circumstances.

At the beginning of the novel, circumstance seems to have set Ed up to live a mediocre life. No matter how much Ed wishes he could change his life, he cannot seem to succeed. Ed describes his town as a “suburban outpost” where he grew up in an impoverished neighborhood. Part of his explanation for his unsuccessful life is that very few people who grow up in his neighborhood actually succeed. This shows how, at the beginning of the novel, Ed believes that the circumstances of one’s birth dictate their adult life. Ed also attributes his current unfulfilling job to his inherent laziness in school and his alcoholic father’s waste of the family money. Ed sees these factors as beyond his control, allowing him to wallow in misfortune rather than taking action. When Ed encounters a problem, such as the bank robbery he gets caught up in at the beginning of the novel, he laments the series of circumstances that led him into this mess. This reveals Ed’s perspective that his life is miserable because he can’t control the unfortunate events that happen to him.

Ed’s fate appears to turn around when playing cards with instructions begin arriving in the mail. Now, Ed’s life is still dictated by forces beyond his control, but he begins to view this as a positive change in his life. The motif of the playing cards symbolizes the role of fate in Ed’s life, because in both Ed’s life and in card games, one does not get to choose the cards, or circumstances, they are dealt. The playing cards direct Ed to help strangers he would otherwise never meet, such as a senile old woman, Milla, who believes Ed is her dead husband. While Ed helps the strangers (comforting Milla by reading to her, for example) he feels his perspective on himself beginning to improve. He begins to see himself as privileged by the opportunity to meet people like Milla, showing how the imposition of the cards upon his life actually creates a positive change for his character. After Ed successfully helps several strangers, his mother tells him that both she and Ed are doomed because they never left their dead-end town, but Ed argues that they would be the same people no matter where they lived. He says he wants to try to improve himself within the circumstance he lives in now. This shows how Ed’s perspective on fate is beginning to shift. He accepts that he still has no control over the town he grew up in or the missions given to him, but he also understands that he can affect how these events change him as a person.

When Ed meets the man who has been sending him the playing cards, he realizes the man has been controlling his life far beyond just sending him the names of people in need. The man’s influence on Ed’s life includes orchestrating the failed bank robbery Ed encountered at the beginning of the novel and killing Ed’s father before the novel began. One could interpret this man as either God or as the author himself, given the incredible control he has over Ed’s life. These revelations confirm Ed’s perspective that one does not have control over their own life, but at the same time, Ed has to start making his own decisions once the man leaves. Ed has depended on outside forces to dictate his life for so long, he does not know how to exercise his own free will. After Ed finally gets together with his longtime crush, Audrey, he realizes their union is not described in the file the man wrote about Ed’s life. Audrey helps Ed realize that while the file dictated his life so far, every decision Ed makes from that point on belongs to him alone. This shift suggests that while a person like Ed cannot choose the circumstances of their lives, they can nonetheless decide how to move forward from those circumstances.

The novel ultimately suggests that like Ed, no one can determine the hand they are dealt by life. Forces beyond one’s control, like the man who mails the playing cards, will always affect one’s life. However, like Ed chooses to let the missions change his perspective and like he chooses to proceed with his life after the man withdraws, one still has the free will to decide what to do with life’s circumstances.