Ninth House

“Alex—whose knowledge of Latin was less than working—looked it up: Death conquers all. But in the margin, someone had scrawled irrumat over vincit, nearly obliterating the original with blue ballpoint pen.” 

Alex is unprepared for entering Lethe, where it is assumed she knows Latin, a dead language associated with privileged education and which indicates Lethe’s veneration of tradition. The word substitution made by a playful society member suggests that the reality of what the secret society does might not be as exalted as what they would like to think. 

“The bite had left a visible curve that she knew would heal badly, if it healed at all. Her map had been changed. Her coastline altered.” 

Comparing Alex’s injury to a change on a map or to a coastline implies a profound alteration, more so than a mere scar would suggest. Clearly, the bite—the culmination of the violent events over the prior several months—has changed her in profound ways. 

“During the day its panels glowed amber, a burnished golden hive, less a library than a temple. At night it just looked like a tomb.” 

Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by prominent architect Robert Bunshaft in the early 1960s, has become one of the university’s cornerstones because of its unique architecture and the wealth of its collection. The analogy to a hive alludes both to the library’s unique design and to the idea that the scholars swarming it resemble bees. A library, particularly a special one like the Beinecke, is often seen as a temple of knowledge; comparing it to a tomb foreshadows the fact that knowledge in the novel is often associated with death and the other world.