Innocence as a defense against evil

Innocence as a defense against evil is presented as a possible source of protection during the destruction of the shrine: Ben appears untouched by much of the terror that overwhelms those around him, and contact with him restores Sue’s and Gerry Fenn’s failing strength. The novel makes the idea consequential without settling whether Ben possesses a supernatural power or whether his effect has another explanation.

Protection in the Crisis

When Ben runs back to Sue, she is nauseous and dizzy, her knees sagging. His arms around her waist coincide with the dizziness vanishing and the sickness passing. Sue recognizes that her strength and calm seem to come from her son, though she does not understand why. She clings to his hand as they cross the benches toward the altar, where the injured are calling for help; she knows she cannot reach them safely and must get to Fenn first.

Fenn, too, says he is too weak to move. Sue brings Ben up the steps and urges Fenn to touch the boy and hold his hand. When she places their hands together, Fenn’s depleted vitality begins to return. The effect is more than a private comfort between mother and child: in the midst of the disaster, Sue deliberately uses Ben’s presence to help another person. The moment is interrupted by the sight of Molly Pagett rising from her knees, her hair and hands burning, and the sound of her screams.

A Proposed Explanation

Afterward, Fenn considers whether Ben’s innocence protected him from the evil and terror at the shrine. Ben had not witnessed Alice’s radiance or levitation, had not seen Einor, and had not experienced the shaking earth or the ground opening. Fenn also recalls that some other children in the field did not share the terror of their parents and guardians, although other young people did. The pattern therefore suggests a possible connection between childhood innocence and protection, but does not establish that all children were shielded in the same way.

Fenn imagines Ben as a human conductor: the weakness of Sue and Fenn passes through him and dissipates into the ground. This is his attempt to account for the strength they regain through touch, not a demonstrated rule with clearly defined limits. The narrative leaves open whether innocence actively resists evil, alters how the horrors are perceived, or produces an effect that Fenn can only describe by analogy.

Ambiguity and Significance

Ben’s experience complicates the simplest version of the theory. Although Fenn thinks the boy did not witness the horrors that others saw, Ben later asks about a lovely lady in white standing by the tree while people screamed and the altar burned. Fenn wonders whether he truly saw a figure within the radiance or whether the night’s terrors have distorted his own memory. Ben’s question makes innocence neither simple ignorance nor a complete barrier to perception: the boy appears not to have shared the others’ terror, yet may have noticed something Fenn cannot confidently identify.

The idea consequently offers a fragile counterforce rather than a solution to the shrine’s destruction. Ben helps Sue and Fenn recover enough strength to move, while the meaning of his apparent immunity remains unresolved. For Fenn, the remembered glow and Ben’s account of the woman in white become associated with courage and the possibility of faith, but they do not remove his uncertainty about what happened.