Social Problems in The Iron Witch

          In the book The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney, a big social issue is taking advantage of people and being selfish. In the book, the Wood Queen takes advantage of the main character, Donna, to get what she wants. Donna is an alchemist. Her best friend Navin has helped her through everything she's done since she started going to her school. Now she's home-schooled, but Navin is still her best friend. Xan (Donna's half-fey boyfriend) can open the Old Path to the Elflands, where wood elves, which are evil fey creatures, live. The Wood Queen took advantage of Donna's friendship with both of them to get what she wanted. Since Donna cared about Navin more than anything, the wood elves took advantage of that and captured Navin to lure Donna into the Elflands. Since Xan could get into the Elflands, they took advantage again to get Donna in there. Then, to make it even worse, the Wood Queen took advantage of Donna and Navin's friendship to blackmail Donna into giving her the elixir of life, which gives someone who drinks it immortality, because she knew that Donna would do anything to save Navin. Again, she took advantage of Donna even more, because just because Donna's an alchemist, she would be able to find it. Overall, the Wood Queen and the other wood elves took advantage of Donna to get what they wanted, and they didn't care about what happened to Navin or Donna, as long as they got what they wanted. This is also selfishness, because they only cared about themselves and not anyone else. For example, the Wood Queen blackmailed Donna to give her the elixir or else they would kill Navin. Therefore she didn't care about what happened to Navin, she only cared about herself.

          This is a big problem in the book because it puts Donna into a situation she doesn't want to be in. If she breaks into Quentin's house to steal the elixir and gives it to the Wood Queen to save Navin, she'll be breaking every alchemist rule and will get severely punished, not to mention that the enemies would have the elixir and would be immortal, so how would the alchemists defeat them? But if she chooses to be loyal to the alchemists and not give the wood elves the elixir, Navin will die. This puts Donna into a tough situation. Donna ended up getting the elixir but only staged giving it to the wood elves until the very last second when she destroyed it. Therefore she saved Navin without giving the enemy the elixir, but she will still be punished by the alchemists for stealing the elixir. This created a huge problem for Donna, because Navin might also be punished, and that's the last thing that Donna wants to happen. So because of the Wood Queen's selfishness and greed, Donna got put into a horrible situation. I think this could have been avoided if the Wood Queen hadn't blackmailed Donna, because Donna really didn't have a choice then. I know if Donna wasn't blackmailed she wouldn't have almost given the wood Queen the elixir, but it wasn't really fair to Donna because she didn't have a choice and she got nothing out of it. She ended up the same as before, just with added trouble with the alchemists and a lot of hate toward her from the wood elves. Therefore, taking advantage and being totally selfish can be a huge problem that is in the world today. People don' care about other people and will take advantage of them to get what they want, which isn't right. This is a big social issue that could be avoided and only hurts people.