Among the Hidden introduces readers to a world where, following a multi-year drought and an ensuing food shortage, the government of an unnamed country has seized control of every aspect of citizens’ lives. So in addition to mandating what crops farmers grow and forcing factories that once produced junk food to produce more nutrient-dense food, the government has also implemented the Population Law, a controversial policy that states families can only have two children. Twelve-year-old Luke is an illegal third child, known as a shadow child, and he’s spent all his life fearing that if anyone outside of his immediate family learns of his existence, he’ll be made to disappear. To protect him, Mother and Dad force Luke to stay away from the windows and stay in his attic bedroom, and they don’t allow him to watch television or use the computer—they believe the government is always spying on them and will be able to see Luke through the television. To them, the government is all-seeing and all-knowing, and so they live in a constant state of fear.
When the government seizes the woods near Luke’s house and clears it to build a housing development for wealthy people (who are known as Barons), Luke makes a shocking discovery: he’s not the only illegal third child in the world. He soon befriends Jen, a third child in the new housing development, and their friendship changes Luke’s understanding of how the government works. Jen spends most of her day on the computer in a secret chat room with other shadow children, and she rejects outright the idea that the government is always watching people—it’s far too inefficient and incompetent, she insists, to be able to spy on people through their computers or televisions. But what she suggests is essentially that the government uses propaganda, like TV commercials saying all televisions are recording devices or books insisting that having more than two children will drive the world to ruin, to instill fear in the population and scare people into complying. Propaganda that uses fear to convey its message, the novel shows, is an extremely effective way to control people, as it’s controlled his family’s choices and hence Luke’s life. And while the novel ends with Luke only just becoming aware of the extent of his country’s propaganda machine, he nevertheless realizes that the only way to change things for other shadow kids like him is to face his fears—and to uncover, and then tell, the truth.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Propaganda, Fear, and Control ThemeTracker
Propaganda, Fear, and Control Quotes in Among the Hidden
“Why?” he asked at the supper table that night. It wasn’t a common question in the Garner house. There were plenty of “how’s” […] Even “what’s” […] But “why” wasn’t considered much worth asking. Luke asked again. “Why’d you have to sell the woods?”
Luke’s dad harrumphed, and paused in the midst of shoveling forkfuls of boiled potatoes into his mouth.
“Told you before. We didn’t have a choice. Government wanted it. You can’t tell the Government no.”
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.
“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.
She ran to a phone, Luke following breathlessly. She dialed. Luke watched in amazement. He’d never talked on a phone. His parents had told him the Government could trace calls, could tell if a voice on a phone was from a person who was allowed to exist or not.
“Dad—” She made a face. “I know, I know. Call the security company and get them to cancel the alarm, okay?” Pause. “And might I remind you that the penalty for harboring a shadow child is five million dollars or execution, depending on the mood of the judge?”
She rolled her eyes at Luke while she listened to what seemed to be a long answer.
“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.”
In the evenings, spooning in his stew or cutting up his meat, Luke felt pangs of guilt now. Perhaps someone was starving someplace because of him. But the food wasn’t there—wherever the starving people were—it was here, on his plate. He ate it all.
“Luke, you’re so quiet lately. Is everything all right?” Mother asked one night when he waved away second helpings of cabbage.
“I’m fine,” he said, and went back to eating silently.
But he was worrying. Worrying that maybe the Government was right and that he shouldn’t exist.
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?
“No, of course I wouldn’t rather hide,” Jen said irritably. “But getting one of those I.D.’s—that’s just a different way of hiding. I want to be me and go about like anybody else. There’s no compromise. Which is why I’ve got to convince these idiots that the rally’s their only chance.”
“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.”
“They shot her,” Jen’s father said. “They shot all of them. All forty kids at the rally, gunned down right in front of the president’s house. The blood flowed into his rosebushes. But they had the sidewalks scrubbed before the tourists came, so nobody would know.”
“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.
