Institutional Complicity in Evil in Hell Bent
The Thematic Claim: Institutions as Engines of Evil, Not Merely Enablers of It
In Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo argues that institutions do not merely fail to prevent evil—they actively manufacture it. The novel's secret societies built a passage to hell as a deliberate offering, and the governing body that claims to oversee them covers up murders and protects its own. The thematic claim is that institutional complicity is not a bug but a feature: the respectable facades of Yale's elite societies exist precisely to launder supernatural violence into tradition, and the oversight body meant to police them is designed to fail.
The Founding Violence Beneath the Facade
The novel grounds its critique in the physical geography of Yale itself. When Alex Stern, Dawes, and Turner examine the ancient map in the Peabody, they find blood stains marking the spot where a young maid named Gladys fled, her life stolen and her soul consumed by Daisy Whitlock. That act created a nexus of power, and years later, the first tomb of the first secret society was built directly over it. The architecture of the institution is literally founded on murder.
Turner, the detective, articulates the novel's central accusation when he points to the site of the Trowbridge house, a stop on the Underground Railroad where people thought they would be safe. He asks whether this is what magic is for—propping up the people in power and letting those with everything take a little more. The magic of the societies is not a neutral tool; it is a mechanism of extraction, the same mechanism that built the university.
Alex's own observation about the Skull and Bones tomb sharpens the point: it is a temple to something dark and wrong, built openly, as if its builders knew no one could touch them. The societies do not hide their power; they display it, confident in their impunity.
Lethe: The Oversight Body Designed to Fail
The novel's most pointed critique is reserved for Lethe itself, the society supposedly created to keep the other societies in line. Dawes's theory is that Lethe built the Gauntlet into Sterling Library—that the oversight body itself hid a secret door to hell in plain sight. The founding fathers of Lethe, Harkness, Whitney, and Bingham, were themselves society men who commissioned the architecture of half the campus.
Darlington's reflection after the descent captures the rot: Lethe had been allowed to atrophy, its secrecy and ritual making its members strangers to each other. Perhaps that was how it was always intended to function—toothless and powerless, a sop to the university while the societies did as they pleased. The oversight body is not a check on power; it is a public relations gesture.
The novel dramatizes this failure through Michael Anselm, the lawyer who serves as the new Praetor. When Alex presses him to help Darlington, Anselm threatens her with expulsion from Lethe. He is not interested in justice or rescue—he is interested in maintaining the appearance of order. His promise not to cover for her again reveals that covering for people is the actual function of the institution.
Mercy, the outsider, asks the question that exposes the whole system: how do they get away with this, and isn't Lethe supposed to stop it? The answer the novel gives is that Lethe was never meant to stop anything.
The Rituals of the Powerful
The Book and Snake ritual shows institutional complicity in its most visceral form. The general, a military man connected to the society through a high-powered alumnus, uses the corpse of Jacob Yeshevsky to extract intelligence. The priest is smooth, professional, almost bored. The dead man's body is desecrated—crab-walking across brass letters, drooling, being bitten by a stone snake—all for the benefit of a man who wants solid intel, not fortune-telling.
Alex's observation is damning: real magic looks indecent, decadent, perverse—welcome to Yale. The ritual is not an aberration; it is the society's standard practice. The dead are not meant to be treated this way, but the institutions have normalized it.
The murder of Dean Beekman and the quiet death of Marjorie Stephen show how the societies handle threats. Beekman's death is theatrical, staged with Bible quotes, while Stephen's death is barely acknowledged. The societies do not want eyes on them, and the university administration, the police, and the public all cooperate in looking away.
Character Connections
Alex Stern is the necessary outsider. She sees the institutions from the outside because she was never meant to be inside them—a scholarship student from a broken home, tapped into Lethe for reasons she doesn't fully understand. Her anger at Darlington's disappearance—