Over the course of Among the Hidden, 12-year-old Luke comes of age. Through his journey, the novel suggests that coming of age happens as young people become independent from their families and discover their place in the world. At the beginning of the novel, Luke, a shadow child (an illegal third child), has to endure a difficult change when the government purchases the nearby woods and cuts them down to build houses. The woods sheltered Luke and gave him the opportunity to play outside while still being protected from anyone who might see him and turn him in to the Population Police. Their disappearance means that Luke has to stay inside—something he finds untenable. And it doesn’t help that Mother treats Luke like he’s much younger than he is, tucking him in at night, reading him stories, and giving him kisses, all things that Luke appreciates but also resents—a mark of his burgeoning maturity. And for Luke’s safety, Mother suggests that he can never become independent and grow up—he’ll spend his life living in the attic and when she and Dad can’t care for him anymore, it’ll fall to his brothers, Matthew and Mark, to continue hiding Luke.
Mother’s desire to effectively keep Luke a child forever, however, ultimately fails. As Luke feels increasingly claustrophobic in his attic room, he discovers another shadow child, Jen, living in one of the new houses next door. He asserts his independence from his parents by sneaking over to see her during the day when Mother and Dad are out working, and his visits with Jen afford Luke a life of his own—one that he doesn’t share anything about with his parents. Moreover, Jen takes it upon herself to educate Luke about the Population Law forbidding their existence, something that has a profound effect on Luke and his growing independence. As Luke reads government-sponsored books and then independently published articles on the subject, he initially begins to doubt whether his existence is morally acceptable. Is he, as the books insist, taking precious food away from starving people who exist legally? Eventually, though, Luke comes to agree much more with the views expressed in the articles: that his existence is merely illegal, not immoral; and that he has as much right to exist as any other person. Thinking critically and clarifying his beliefs leads Luke to agree to accept a fake ID and leave his parents’ house to assume a new identity as Lee Grant, an action that completes Luke’s coming of age journey. As he’s still only 12, his identity is still changing—but Luke is nevertheless secure in the belief that he deserves to live and continue growing up long after the novel ends.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Coming of Age, Independence, and Family ThemeTracker
Coming of Age, Independence, and Family Quotes in Among the Hidden
And somehow, after that, he didn’t mind hiding so much anymore. Who wanted to meet strangers, anyway? Who wanted to go to school […]? He was special. He was secret. He belonged at home—home, where his mother always let him have the first piece of apple pie because he was there and the other boys were away. […] Home, where the backyard always beckoned, always safe and protected by the house and the barn and the woods.
Until they took the woods away.
He could have told her then about the vents—he didn’t see how anyone could object to him looking out there—but something stopped him. What if they took that away from him, too? What if Mother told Dad, and Dad said, “No, no, that’s too much of a risk. I forbid it”? Luke wouldn’t be able to stand it. He kept silent.
She jerked. “—but I cleaned that chicken al—oh. Sorry, Luke. You need tucking in, don’t you?”
She fluffed his pillow, smoothed his sheet.
Luke sat up. “That’s okay, Mother. I’m getting too old for this any”—he swallowed a lump in his throat—“anyway. I bet you weren’t still tucking Matthew or Mark in when they were twelve.”
“No,” she said quietly.
“Then I don’t need it, either.”
“Okay,” she said.
She kissed his forehead, anyhow, then turned out the light. Luke turned his face to the wall until she left.
“Am I just supposed to sit in this room the rest of my life?”
Mother was stroking his hair now. It made him feel itchy and irritable.
“Oh, Lukie,” she said. “You can do so much. Read and play and sleep whenever you want… Believe me, I’d like to live a day of your life right about now.”
“No you wouldn’t,” Luke muttered, but he said it so softly, he was sure Mother couldn’t hear. He knew she wouldn’t understand.
If there was a third child in the Sports Family, would he understand? Did he feel the way Luke did?
Luke felt strange about the joke, anyway. Of course he’d never poison anyone, but—if something happened to Matthew or Mark, would Luke have to hide anymore? Would he become the public second son, free to go to town and to school and everywhere else that Matthew and Mark went? Could his parents find some way to explain a “new” child already twelve years old?
It wasn’t something Luke could ask. He felt guilty just thinking about it.
He thought about returning home—trudging up the worn stairs, going back to his familiar room and the walls he stared at every day. Suddenly he hated his house. It wasn’t a sanctuary. It was a prison.
“But you’re a third child, too,” Luke protested. “A shadow child. Right?”
He suddenly felt like it might be easy to cry, if he let himself. All his life, he’d been told he couldn’t do everything Matthew and Mark did because he was the third child. But if Jen could go about freely, it didn’t make sense. Had his parents lied?
“Don’t you have to hide?” he asked.
“Sure,” Jen said. “Mostly. But my parents are very good at bribery. And so am I.”
“Don’t tell me your family believes that Government propaganda stuff,” she said. “They’ve spent so much money trying to convince people they can monitor all the TVs and computers, you know they couldn’t have afforded to actually do it. I’ve been using our computer since I was three—and watching TV, too—and they’ve never caught me.”
“Haven’t you learned? Government leaders are the worst ones for breaking laws. How do you think we got this house? How do you think I got Internet access? How do you think we live?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said, fully honest. “I don’t think I know much of anything.”
Luke looked at the stack of thick books on the Talbots’ kitchen counter. They looked so official, so important—who was he to say they weren’t true?
“When I was little, Mom used to take me to a play group that was all third children,” Jen said. She giggled. “The thing was, it was all Government officials’ kids. I think some of the parents didn’t even like kids—they just thought it was a status symbol to break the Population Law and get away with it.”
“Before [the famines], our country believed in freedom and democracy and equality for all. Then the famines came, and the government was overthrown. There were riots in every city, over food, and many, many people were killed. When General Sherwood came to power, he promised law and order and food for all. By then, that was all the people wanted. And all they got.”
Luke squinted, trying to understand. This was grown-up talk, pure and simple.
Luke felt a strange sense of relief, that it wasn’t truly wrong for him to exist, just illegal. For the first time since he’d read the Government books, he could see the two things being separate.
Maybe he could succeed where Jen had failed precisely because he wasn’t a Baron—because he didn’t have her sense that the world owed him everything. He could be more patient, more cautious, more practical.
But he’d never be able to do anything staying in hiding.
[…]
I want a fake I.D. Please.
Luke could tell his father’s words came out painfully, but they still stabbed at him. Maybe part of him had been secretly hoping his parents would forbid him to go, would lock him in the attic and keep him as their little boy forever.
