City of the Beasts

Alex’s flute and the music he creates with it symbolize peace and interpersonal connection throughout the novel. Even at the start of the story, when Alex is relatively immature, his flute is his greatest source of strength and the thing that keeps him calm even as his home life gets difficult. One of Alex’s lowest points comes when Morgana steals his flute, showing that despite its importance to him, he has not yet developed the maturity to protect it and use it effectively. Shortly thereafter, Kate gives Alex the flute that belonged to his grandfather, signifying that the upcoming journey will provide Alex will the skills to use this new, more valuable possession effectively. 

Throughout Alex’s trip through the Amazon, the flute provides a valuable means of connection between Alex and everyone he meets, including animals. Even in moments of conflict amongst the members of the expedition, the flute music creates calm and diffuses tension, symbolizing the presence of a guiding unity above the conflict, as well as Alex’s potential to access that unity. Just as Alex’s ability to cultivate mindfulness becomes a life-saving skill, so too does his flute take on increased importance as the dangers become more immediate. Alex uses the flute to calm the People of the Mist, subdue the white bat on his quest for the water of health, and, most importantly, establish a meaningful connection with the Beasts. The Beasts “had never received such a grand offering” (284) as Alex’s music and the dance that Nadia creates to match it, and that gift allows Alex and Nadia to seek out the crucially important crystal eggs and water of health. The flute takes on its greatest symbolic power when, in order to collect the water of health, Alex is forced to leave the flute behind. Though he is initially devastated, he finds himself just as powerful without it, noting Nadia’s words that he, not the flute, is truly the creator of the music. The flute ultimately represents not just the idea of seamless interpersonal connection but also Alex’s ability to achieve that connection on his own.

Food and images of its preparation are another important marker of Alex’s changing maturity over the course of his journey. Food begins as a marker of Alex's unhappiness at home, where his father cooks in place of his sick mother and produces nothing but rubbery pancakes. When he arrives at Kate’s apartment, she shows her affection for him by serving his favorite food, but even that enjoyment is undermined when Kate tells him that “you never know what people put in meatballs” (43). 

Once their trip is underway, Alex is such a picky eater that he goes hungry for the first several days of the trip, refusing to try new foods and so eating almost nothing. This extreme unwillingness to step outside his comfort zone represents Alex’s rigid adherence to the beliefs and realities of his childhood. Eventually, he decides to try a bite of cooked anaconda, but this first step into the unknown is motivated not by a sense of adventure but by a still-childish desire to impress his peers, thinking about “how his prestige with Cecilia Burns and his friends in California would balloon” (139). However, that experience reminds him of his family and he is rewarded with his first experience of, as Nadia calls it, “seeing with the heart” (140). 

As the journey progresses, Alex becomes more and more willing to try new foods, even when they are strange or unappetizing. His new sense of adventure and the rewards it brings reach a peak when Alex unhesitatingly consumes the broth containing Mokarita’s bones and so becomes a member of the tribe. When he finally eats fish, which previous disgusted him, Alex wonders at how long he went without eating something so delicious, demonstrating that just as it symbolized his limited worldview at the start of the story, food also represents the personal growth he has achieved by the end.

The magical amulet that Walimai gives Nadia to protect her from danger is a recurring reminder of Nadia’s strengths and assets. That Nadia even communicates with Walimai is exceptional among her people, and so his gift of the amulet further marks her as a unique intermediary between very different worlds. 

The amulet provides her with both an increased sense of inner strength and the outward ability to summon Walimai to her side, a duality that illustrates anessential balance between individual fortitude and shared responsibility. Although Nadia believes the amulet to be so powerfully magical that she cannot get by without it, her mission in search of the crystal eggs reveals to her that the amulet itself is not actually as powerful as her own skills and abilities. Just as Alex is still a musician after leaving his flute behind, Nadia finds that she is still able to communicate with Walimai and the spirit world without the amulet, which she leaves behind when she takes the crystal eggs.