Jairy Barnswaller, Lily Bolpin and the Fork! Factory!

Spoilers for North! Or Be Eaten, but I’ll try to keep spoilers beyond that to a minimum!

My kids and I were talking about the Fork! Factory! this week and had some thoughts about what happens to the kids there.

Gorah was so looking forward to getting her Jairy back, but when she finally acquired two children to trade for her son, she was informed that he had tried to escape and was taken to Throg. The next parent in ‘line’ from the group of parents working together to get their children back was Mykel Bolpin, whose daughter Lily had been in the Fork! Factory! for 8 years, and was now 20 years old.

Obviously, the factory is full of kids making weapons for the fangs, and Janner wonders why they use kids when adults could work longer and harder, but this is never fully explained. We know from TmitH (slight spoilers!) that the older kids were eventually “promoted out” of the factory (p.230). We also know that kids would often try to escape when they first arrived, but rarely tried again after facing the overseer’s whip and the coffin. Other than when the overseer told Gorah that her son had tried to escape and been taken to Throg, we don’t hear of anyone being taken to Throg for trying to escape. When Janner came out of the coffin the first time, he noticed a pile of bones in the corner of the room, so it’s possible that some children didn’t survive the overseer’s whip and the coffin, and – spoilers! - it seems to be implied in TMitH that the overseer does leave the biggest troublemakers in the coffin to die (p. 284).

So what happened to Jairy? My theory: the overseer is a liar. He sends kids to Throg, yes (like the Knubis girl almost was), but not for “trying to escape.” Being “promoted out of the factory” basically means being “promoted to Throg to become a fang,” and by the time the kids have spent so many years as tools in the factory, they’ve given up all hope of anything better and more willingly (and more successfully) get fanged. So maybe Fork! Factory kids make better fangs? I’m guessing they usually get sent to Throg sometime after they turn 20, since Lily Bolpin was already 20 and was still in the factory. She must have narrowly missed being sent to Throg! Jairy must have aged out and been sent to Throg for that reason.

So these are my thoughts. It still seems kind of weird that they would have “only” kids in the factory, but maybe they were afraid that adults would actually rise up and fight back. Kids are more “pliable souls” and easier to control.

What do you think? Try to keep spoilers out of the comments!

Oh, and  - SPOILERS! – what do you think happened to Jairy in the end? Do you think he was one of the fangs in the final battle? Do you think he was there at the end? Again, remember that blur strips don’t work in the email notifications, so keep your BLURRED (yes, please blur spoilers) spoilerish comments vague!