One thing that sets Village apart from the other settlements in the world of Messenger is that it's very interested in education. Specifically, Village seeks to educate its young people about the past and about the various places its refugees have come from, in an attempt to constantly remind people of what awful things are out there in the world and why the utopia of Village is worth fighting for. The events of Messenger show, however, that the focus on memory can only do so much to mold adult behavior. Instead, the novel suggests, the only ones capable of truly grasping the lessons of the past and turning them into concrete actions in the future are the young people who stand to inherit Village.
The design of Village and its education system in particular elevates memory not for reasons of personal pleasure or as a method to torment those whose pasts are uncomfortable and sad, but to remind people that the ideals of Village are worth fighting for. When newcomers speak about the places they come from—places that, oftentimes, wanted to put them to death for their differences, or sought to otherwise control them in a variety of ways—it allows people in Village to see, up close and personal, the way that things can be in a cruel and selfish society. This situates memory as a tool more than anything else, and one that can be used to encourage people to be selfless and work for the common good. While Mentor, the schoolteacher, teaches the importance of remembering the past and knowing about other places in a decidedly didactic manner in school, everyone in Village has access to the museum. The museum houses things that people bring with them from elsewhere, such as Leader's red sled, that also function as reminders of what the wider world is like.
This use of memory as a reminder does have its limits, however. Ramon, who was born in Village, behaves in a boastful way that Matty finds annoying and tiring—a manner that possibly arose from the fact that Ramon doesn't have personal memories of what it's like to exist elsewhere. Matty, on the other hand, does remember what it's like to live in a cruel, dog-eat-dog world, since he was born in a village where cruelty and indifference were facts of life. In other words, Matty understands on a personal level why it's important to preserve the way of life in Village, while Ramon and other children like him are possibly less naturally understanding—reminders of memory, in this case, only go so far.
It's telling that the insular, selfish, and fear-based vision of the future is one that's espoused only by adults—even those adults who came from elsewhere and remember the horrors of the outside world, like Mentor. Matty and Jean, on the other hand, understand that there's something sinister about what's going on. This suggests that, possibly because children and young people have more open minds and are less set in their ways—and also have fewer rights and responsibilities within Village—they occupy a unique space in which they can see clearly how bad things are getting. This is also why Matty must be the one to save Village, not Leader. While Leader sees what's happening and wants to change it, he understands that it's essential for him to remain in Village and, in his capacity as the leader, make sure that Mentor and his group, who want to build a wall around Village at the end of a three-week period, don't start building even sooner. Matty, however, can leave Village without arousing suspicion, and can therefore use what he knows of the past and what he believes about how the future should look to save Village and adults like Mentor from their selfish actions. In this way, the novel suggests more broadly that while adults may appear at first glance to have more power to influence the world, it's the youth who are better able to marry what they know about the past with what they want the future to look like—and in doing so, make sure that everyone, adults and children alike, have access to a better future.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Youth, Memory, and the Future ThemeTracker
Youth, Memory, and the Future Quotes in Messenger
"Were you scared of Forest?" Matty asked him. So many people were, and with good reason.
"No. It's all an illusion."
Matty frowned. He didn't know what the blind man meant. Was he saying that fear was an illusion? Or that Forest was? [...] Maybe, Matty thought, everything was an illusion to a man who had lost his eyes.
Others from Village rarely ventured into Forest. It was dangerous for them. Sometimes Forest closed in and entangled people who had tried to travel beyond. There had been terrible deaths, with bodies brought out strangled by vines or branches that had reached out malevolently around the throats and limbs of those who decided to leave Village. Somehow Forest knew. Somehow, too, it knew that Matty's travels were benign and necessary. The vines had never reached out for him. The trees seemed, sometimes, almost to part and usher him through.
"And so we would give up—or maybe even trade away—reading, and music, in exchange for the extreme excitement of pulling a handle and watching sourballs spit forth from a mechanical device?" he asked.
Put that way, Matty thought, the Gaming Machine didn't actually seem such a good trade. "Well," he said, "it's fun."
There were history books as well, like those he studied at school, the best ones filled with maps that showed how the world had changed over centuries. Some books had shiny pages that showed paintings of landscapes unlike anything Matty had ever seen, or of people costumed in odd ways, or of battles, and there were many quiet painted scenes of a woman holding a newborn child.
"No. But why would I go back? I had found a home here, the way everyone has. That's why we have the Museum, Matty, to remind us of how we came, and why: to start fresh, and to begin a new place from what we had learned and carried from the old."
"It's not the fish or crops," he said. "They'll use that, of course. They argued dwindling food supply last time. It's..."
"Not enough housing?"
"More than that. I can't think of the word for it. Selfishness, I guess. It's creeping in."
Matty was startled. Village had been created out of the opposite: selflessness. He knew that from his studies and from hearing the history. Everyone did.
People nodded back or waved in reply, but there was none of the lighthearted banter that was an ordinary part of Village. There was an intentness to everyone, an odd seriousness, and a sense of worry—unusual in Village—pervaded the atmosphere.
No wonder Seer didn't want me to come, Matty thought as he approached. It doesn't feel right.
And now she was talking to him in a way that was not foolish and childlike, designed to entrance, but instead was human and pained and adult. He felt suddenly that he loved her, and it was a feeling he had never known before.
"But you're already here!" Matty reassured her. "You needn't worry! You're part of us now. They won't send you away, even if they close Village."
"It was so important to him, and he made it important to me: poetry, and language, and how we use it to remind ourselves of how our lives should be lived..."
Then her tone changed and became embittered. "Now he talks of nothing but Stocktender's window, and of closing Village to new ones. What has happened to my father?"
Some of those who had been among the most industrious, the kindest, the most stalwart citizens of Village now went to the platform and shouted out their wish that the border be closed so that "we" (Matty shuddered at the use of "we") would not have to share the resources anymore.
We need all the fish for ourselves.
Our school is not big enough to teach their children, too; only our own.
They can't even speak right. We can't understand them.
They have too many needs. We don't want to take care of them.
And finally: We've done it long enough.
"She's quite lovely, isn't she?"
Matty shrugged. He understood that Leader was referring to Kira but the blind man's daughter was older than he. She had been like a big sister to him. No one in the old place had thought her lovely. They had been contemptuous of her weakness.
"She has a crooked leg," Matty reminded Leader. "She leans on a stick to walk."
To his amazement, Kira said no. Not no to leaving—he hadn't suggested that to her, not yet—but a definite, unarguable no to the idea of a straightened, whole leg.
"This is who I am, Matty," she said. "It is who I have always been."
"You can use the time to become accustomed to being whole..."
"I am whole," she said defiantly.
"I meant to having two strong legs."
He saw Forest and understood what Seer had meant. It was an illusion. It was a tangled knot of fears and deceits and dark struggles for power that had disguised itself and almost destroyed everything. Now it was unfolding, like a flower coming into bloom, radiant with possibility.
