49 pages • 1 hour read
Trenton Lee Stewart, Illustr. Diana SudykaThe Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Importance of Teamwork
Each installment of the Mysterious Benedict Society series explores the fundamentals of teamwork. The friendship and inter-reliance of the four children serves as the bedrock of each book in the series. In The Perilous Journey, this theme becomes especially prominent when the children choose to go on a dangerous mission to save Mr. Benedict and Number Two, who are integral members of the Mysterious Benedict Society. While the children are the core members, their families and allies are also essential. By choosing to rescue Mr. Benedict and Number Two against the adults’ wishes, the children prove that they can make a big difference and do difficult and dangerous things when they work together. In fact, given how difficult it is to save Mr. Benedict and Number Two, the children’s efforts are crucial to the success of the rescue.
There are a few times in the book when certain characters reject teamwork. Whenever they do so, things tend to go badly. For example, Mr. Curtain continually resists Mr. Benedict’s offers of collaboration. He is only interested in his own evil schemes and does not realize that if he and his brother worked together, their collective genius could allow them to accomplish great things. Milligan also sometimes tries to solve problems alone, without accepting help from the children. Unlike Mr. Curtain, Milligan’s motivation for refusing teamwork is entirely selfless; he simply does not want the children to be harmed. However, the result is the same. Milligan is a very adept man, but even he cannot do everything on his own. When the children disobey his instructions and help him, they do not get in his way. Instead, they successfully help him navigate challenging situations.
Even Reynie sometimes fails to understand the importance of teamwork. He suspects that Captain Noland is up to no good, but he does not express those suspicions to his friends. Instead, he throws their only radio out the window of a train. This decision makes it harder for his friends to trust him, undermining their usually strong team dynamic and Reynie’s ability to lead the team effectively. At other times, all four of the children trust and rely on each other. They all value and uplift each other’s skills, which lets them solve difficult puzzles and find Mr. Benedict before their time runs out. Because Mr. Benedict has set the clues for the scavenger hunt, the puzzles allow all the children to shine at different points in the journey.
Seeing the Best in People
Reynie is the protagonist of the Mysterious Benedict Society series, so his character development gets the most attention. In this book, he learns that people are not always untrustworthy, which is a lesson that he struggles to internalize due to his experiences with deception in the first book. In general, Reynie has good instincts that tell him who to trust and who to avoid, but he has become more inclined to assume that people have bad intentions, even when he has no real reason for suspicion. Throughout the novel, he struggles to balance his distrust with his desire to follow Mr. Benedict’s urging to see the best in people. This problem complicates his endeavors since there are times—especially during a perilous journey—when it is good to be wary of strangers.
While Reynie’s suspicions about Daatje turn out to be correct, he sometimes takes his suspicions too far, as when he distrusts Captain Noland instead of accepting his help. Reynie could have discussed his suspicions with his friends, but he chooses instead to act alone, and his suspicions in this case hinder the group’s goals. Because his internal compass for judging who is or is not trustworthy becomes unreliable in this book, it would be prudent for him to share his concerns openly with his friends. Since he chooses not to do so, he sometimes acts irrationally and makes his friends doubt him. Trusting people is frightening for Reynie because there is always the possibility that extending trust unwisely might result in betrayal or worse. In this way, Reynie is rather similar to Mr. Curtain, for just like the novel’s antagonist, he is in the process of isolating himself from people who have good intentions and who could actually help him. Similarly, Mr. Curtain isolates himself from Mr. Benedict and refuses to collaborate with him.
At the end of the story, Reynie finally internalizes the lesson that Mr. Benedict wants to teach him and realizes that although trusting people is a risk, it is also a very important part of making friends and allies and building teamwork. By taking a risk and trusting people (as when he asks Noland to ground the Shortcut), Reynie succeeds in masterminding the daring rescue of Mr. Benedict. Without trusting and relying on people, it becomes difficult or impossible to be part of a team. Mr. Benedict’s lessons also demonstrate the importance of seeing the best in people. Despite all the harm that Mr. Curtain has caused, Mr. Benedict still sincerely hopes that his brother will change and that the two of them will be able to collaborate in the future.
The Ambiguous Role of Deception
Because The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey conforms to the conventions of the mystery genre, many aspects of the story are not quite what they appear to be. Mr. Pressius’s diamonds are a prime example of this pattern, for although he has both fake diamonds and real diamonds, it is almost impossible to tell them apart visually. Similarly, the two plants, duskwort and thwart-wort, are also virtually identical in appearance and prefer similar growing environments, but they are not equally potent. The frequent appearance of nearly identical elements in the story foreshadows the deception of the climactic scene, in which Mr. Curtain masquerades as Mr. Benedict.
Despite the harmful deceptions of the story’s antagonist, many of the deceptions featured in this story prove to be positive. For example, many of the clues that the children have to solve contain tricks and elements of misdirection. Mr. Benedict’s initial plan for the children’s journey is a scavenger hunt that would allow them to utilize their unique skills, but when he is captured, the harmless scavenger hunt turns into a life-or-death chase across the globe. In other situations, deceiving people is necessary for survival and the progression of the group’s goals. Although Mr. Benedict rarely lies, he does manipulate S.Q. and Mr. Curtain by using half-truths. Additionally, all of the characters are willing to use deception to save their own lives and the lives of others. If they were compelled to tell the truth all the time, there would be no way for the children to save Mr. Benedict and Number Two. However, the children must also learn how to use and recognize truth and deception to their advantage.
The children sometimes use deceptions that have the potential to endanger them. For example, they pretend to agree to follow Milligan’s orders when they have no intention of doing so. Usually, their disobedience pays off, but Milligan only gives the children instructions to protect them from dangerous situations. Of course, the broader arc of the novel emphasizes the fact that deceiving people is not a viable approach to life in general, and Mr. Curtain’s many machinations serve to drive this point home, for his evil plan is predicated on deceiving the entire world about his identity and intentions. He plans to adopt Mr. Benedict’s identity and take control of the world, and it is only because Mr. Benedict and the children are ultimately invested in the truth that they are able to thwart his goals.
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