Fablehaven Good vs. Evil Quotes

Right after Kendra and Seth drink the milk, Grandpa spells it out for them: cute doesn't necessarily equal good. Fairies, for instance, aren't to be considered good creatures just because they can enter the yard and frolic in the garden. Interesting that magical creatures seem to resist easy categorization.

Again Grandpa has to spell it out for Seth: Fairies are nice to look at, and they're great gardeners, but that doesn't necessarily make them safe or nice or good. Fairies aren't really malicious, and they won't try to actively hurt you, but this—again—doesn't mean that they're good at heart.

Oh, Seth—so young, so predictable. Does every preteen boy have a fascination with dangerous, scary, violent stuff? Grandpa does his best to sidestep the issue, but later in the book, it's gonna come back and haunt everyone (which might be a terrible pun depending on whether any of the bad guys at Midsummer Eve turn out to be ghosts).

Grandpa relays what the fairies told him about the act of vengeance they wreaked on Seth. Apparently, from the fairies' perspective, Seth was incredibly cruel—perhaps even evil by their standards—in how he caused the captured fairy to fall, and then have to witness her own ugliness as an imp. This raises the question: can unintentional actions be cruel, or evil?

According to Grandpa, festival nights are not particularly fun because they're when evil creatures get to run loose and do whatever they want. Of course that doesn't stop Seth from being curious about what goes on though, which causes problems later in the book.

Kendra's encounter with the scary, gauze-wrapped lady sure seems scary—and we might even go ahead and say this apparition seems pretty evil. Entrancing someone and then filling their head with whispers sure seems to fit the definition.

Grandma lays it out for Seth and Kendra: intentions aren't everything when it comes to telling good from evil, but they sure do matter. Seth didn't mean to cause any harm by opening the window on Midsummer Eve, and in fact he thought he was doing something good by rescuing the baby on the roof—the supernatural critters that abducted Grandpa, on the other hand, most certainly went in with the intention of doing harm, and so they can carry the most blame for the way things went down.

We don't know if all witches in this world are evil, or if Muriel's a special case, but the way Grandma says it, we're starting to get worried about what Muriel wants with Bahumat. Evil witch + evil demon = evil sandwich of evil that we don't wanna mess with.

Grandma is just a treasure trove of information about evil. Apparently some supernatural creatures are pretty darn evil, and when they used to run amok, that was bad news for everyone else—so the not-so-evil creatures imprisoned them. Though now we're wondering… if the creatures of light are essentially good, why are they so into punishing evil? Something about that doesn't seem very good to us.

That's a cheery thought, Grandma—but in her defense, it seems to be true, at least in the world of Fablehaven. After all, the time when chaotic creatures have their run of the preserve is called Midsummer Eve, not Midsummer Morning or Midsummer Afternoon. Still, this doesn't make us feel too optimistic when Seth, Grandma, and Kendra descend into the basement of the Forgotten Chapel to face Muriel and hopefully neutralize the threat she represents…