The secular angel in contemporary children's literature: David ...

The first section of this chapter will closely look at the two angels presented in the
narrative. Mestraal and Hestron are two angels who are brothers, and through them the author
poses questions pertaining to the nature of good and evil, and the often fine line that divides
the two, as well as the damaging consequences, to the self as well as to those around you, of
constantly having to choose between two very difficult and painful situations. Contrary to
Skellig, the question of the reality of the angels in McNish’s narrative is not posed as an issue
or something that the reader should dwell on. Despite the fact that the protagonist Freya is the
only one who can see them (a peculiarity explained by Hestron in the novel), their existence is
perceived as fact. One element of the story that may seem to pose the dilemma of the angels’
existence is the fact that Freya is hospitalized after Hestron visits her when she is eight years
old. Following this event, Freya becomes obsessed with angels to the point where she
becomes a threat to herself by believing she is an angel and by attempting to fly out the
window. Her father places her in the care of medical professionals who keep her
institutionalized for approximately six years. Her belief in angels is thus constructed as a
mental illness which must be cured, and so the reader may be led to believe at first that
Hestron may truly have been a figment of her imagination. By the end of the story however it
becomes apparent that the angels are real and that Freya does indeed possess angelic qualities,
something that is even observed by her father. The real questions are revealed to be not about
the existence of angels but about interrogating the concept of faith, and perseverance of
character when it is pitted against scientific forms of knowledge.
Of the three authors to be analysed in the thesis McNish is the one who most heavily
relies on and makes use of the guardian angel persona. Although his angels are far from
stereotypical, and are not messengers of God, they are defined and driven by their love for
humans and their need to guard and protect them. They are “at least seven feet tall, with
creamy-white skin, displaying [themselves] in what [Freya] later recognized as the classic
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