Mistakes

A year ago I started writing a novel called Malt. It centered around a superhero, Maxwell Malt, who worked solely in a small town a couple of hours' drive from New York City (called Eastport, and apparently actually exists) without the use of actual superpowers, and living in terror of having his secret identity discovered. Other main characters were Wilfred Jenkins, a reporter seeking just that information about Max, and October and Ferret, two very weird surname-less sisters, one of whom Max was supposed to fall in love with. (How I intended to write this last after years of shunning romance, I have no idea.)

Malt eventually failed, for various reasons. First of all, it had no real plot. Wilfred was supposed to hunt down Max and his secret identity and whatnot, eventually finding out who he was, with the occasional bizarre event tossed in. At one point they were supposed to end up on a boat, at another in a taxi in New York City. Max was going to get drunk at an unspecified time. As previously mentioned, he was also supposed to fall in love with October. This is the entire outline of my planning.

The second issue was that I tried to write the universe without magic. The problem with this was that, if you have superheroes, even powerless ones, you have to have supervillains. Those usually require some form of magic. When I do rewrite Malt, although Max will still get by with purely human ability, the universe will have magic in such strength that it is incorporated into the government; in the same continuity will be another novel involving a government official and a professional magician/bodyguard, yet to be titled.

Finally, I was not very good at characterization. Max is painfully insecure. It's why he became a superhero, why he hides his identity, why he's terrified of being exposed (as he thinks of it). It dictates most of the decisions he makes--or at least, it should. Unfortunately, my characterization at the time was either terribly ham-handed or completely absent, and I'm not sure which instances read better. Wilfred's motivations, too, were unclear, and October was pretty much a weirdo to save me from assigning her any real character traits.

I do intend to rewrite Malt, once I've worked out what the plot actually is. Wilfred, October and Ferret may be entirely absent. I have no idea. But hopefully it'll be better than the first attempt.

Ralph

Anyone remember William? He has a friend. He's good at that.

---

    William was eight years old when he met Ralph. The other boy was two years older, although slightly shorter, and spent a lot of time around the rivers, which was probably why William hadn’t met him sooner. On this particular day, the older boy was crouched barefoot in the mud on the riverbank nearest William’s family farm, untamed blond hair falling into his face as he stared into the swirling water. He was trying to contact an aquean, one of the semi-human creatures that lived in the stream; one of them had spoken to him a week or so ago, and he wanted to see if he could initiate contact.

    “Aren’t you worried about getting that nice cloak of yours dirty?”

    Ralph spun around, as if about to deliver a witty comeback, although in fact he had yet to think of one. There was a kid sitting there, grinning in a way that wasn’t insolent but seemed like it should have been. He was barefoot too, and appeared to have been wading in mud, since the hems of his breeches were filthy, although the rest of his clothing was clean; brown vest, white shirt unsullied by a single scrap of dirt. His black hair was offensively neat when compared to Ralph’s own mess, and there was a laugh in his blue eyes.

    When Ralph failed to respond, the kid persisted. “Well, aren’t you?”

    “Are you suggesting I’m a sissy?” Ralph looked him over suspiciously. Many of the other boys in the surrounding farms had accused him of this very thing because of all the time he spent staring into reflective waters. This kid, though, just looked affronted.

    “Of course not. Why would I say something like that? But it’s an awfully nice cloak, and it seemed a shame to get it all muddy.” He sounded sincere, but there was still something in his expression, something that seemed like he was laughing at Ralph.

    “Well…yeah.” The kid was right, in a way: it was a nice cloak, the way it cascaded long and red over his shoulders. He suspected that his parents had gotten it for him to make him look more heroic, but it was hard to do that when you were ankle-deep in mud, and he didn’t care all that much about keeping the cloak itself clean. He grabbed the edge and brought it up to his face. Yep, covered in what his mother often referred to as “unspeakable filth” (particularly when he forgot to wipe his feet). After a few moments’ contemplation, he let the offending hem drop into the river.

    “So…what are you doing?” Ralph flinched; the mysterious kid was suddenly kneeling right next to him, staring eagerly into the water as if expecting to find some hidden truth there. It threw him off, the way the kid just seemed to assume that Ralph would talk to him. Sure, he hadn’t made any mocking comments about vanity or whatever yet, and he seemed genuinely interested in what Ralph was doing, but…

    “Look, kid. I don’t even know you—”

    “I’m William Chauncey. And you?”

    “Uh, Ralph. Ralph Gibbs. But—”

    “Oh, I’ve heard about you!” William tilted his head, apparently surprised. “I get the idea that people don’t like you much. I’m not really sure why.”

    “Yeah, I know.” So nice to be reminded of that. Again. He was getting tired of having reasons to dwell on it. “Listen, Will—”

    “William. I’m not a Will.” He sounded slightly offended, as if being “a Will” were something negative.

    “Okay, William. If you’re here to make fun of me or something, you needn’t bother. I know what you’re going to say. Although…” Ralph paused. “What did you mean, you’ve heard about me? I would think everyone around here knows me by sight, by now. Not for any good reason, but even so…are you new around here or something?”

    “No. I’ve lived here all my life, but I’ve never seen you before. I don’t spend a lot of time by the river.”

    “But…you’re all muddy.”

    “I was helping a dream toad.” William grinned. “She got stuck up a tree after she gave some ravens nightmares, and although I have nothing against the ravens most of the time, they can be awfully vindictive.”

    “Dream toads talk to you?”

    “Well, yes. They’re very social creatures.” He said this as if it was common knowledge. “Is that what you’re looking for, then? I know where a colony of them lives.”

    “You do?” Ralph blinked, shook his head. “This is some kind of trick, isn’t it?”

    “Er…no. Why should it be? You haven’t given me any reason to dislike you. Is there something I don’t know about?” William seemed honestly at a loss. But he’d heard about Ralph from the other kids around here, hadn’t he? He couldn’t have heard anything good.

    “In case you’d missed it, I’m not very popular around here.”

    “Oh, I know. But I don’t actually know you, so I don’t have any excuse not to like you. Except, of course, that you still haven’t told me why you’ve been staring into the river like that.” Pause. “That’s a joke,” he added hastily. “But I do want to know.”

    “Er…” Ralph was running out of reasons not to trust the kid. Hang on, was that what he’d been doing? That seemed kind of self-destructive, now that he thought about it. William had appeared out of nowhere and started talking to him as if they’d known each other for years, and was worryingly persistent, but there was something about him Ralph liked. “I’ve been looking for aqueans. I met one recently and she said she’d talk to me again, but she hasn’t so far.”

    “What’s an aquean?” If William leaned any closer to the water, he’d fall in.

    Ralph laughed. “You’ve heard of dream toads but not aqueans?”

    “I’m a land-based wizard,” William said defensively. “You can’t expect everyone to understand what you do just because you’re a waterworker.”

    “A what? Wait, you’re a wizard?”

    “Oh, yes.”

    “Aren’t you supposed to be…older? Or more imposing? Or something? And I don’t see a wand.”

    Now it was William’s turn to laugh, although it sounded not at all mocking. “I hear that a lot. But no, it seems I can be a wizard and a kid. And I’ve learned enough control by now that I don’t need a channelling object.”

    “I’ve never met a wizard before.”

    “I can tell.”

    “But what was that about me being a waterworker? What does that even mean?”

    “You’ve heard of wizards but not waterworkers?” Apparently William could get away with laughing at his own jokes. “A waterworker is someone with a natural talent for water-based magic. Usually it manifests as being able to communicate with water creatures, like your aqueans.” He turned to peer into Ralph’s eyes, a somewhat disconcerting gesture. “You didn’t know that?”

    “No.” Ralph absently trailed one hand in the river. “I never thought of it as magic, anyway. It’s just…a thing I do.”

    “Well, at least you know what your ‘thing’ is. ‘Wizard’ is a very broad term. I may never know the full extent of my abilities.” He frowned briefly, but his grin quickly returned. “So are you going to tell me what an aquean is or not?”

    “Oh. Right.” Ralph tried to make his explanation as brief as possible: an aquean was a humanoid water-dweller, with a certain range of colour-changing ability and webbed hands and feet. They tended to be rather small, large-rat-sized, and rather aloof. No, they couldn’t change their size. Yes, their colours were limited to those naturally occurring in water. No, they didn’t change colour based on emotions, like chameleons. He wasn’t even sure they had emotions. The one he’d met had been very distant. He’d intended to keep his description of them short, but William appeared genuinely interested, and every time Ralph stopped William would prompt him to continue. He wasn’t really very knowledgeable about aqueans, though, and eventually he ran out of information. When he finished, William nodded and got to his feet. “Where are you going?”

    “These aqueans of yours sound very interesting, of course, and I hold nothing against them,” he replied. “But I don’t see much of a point in pining after them. It’s all very well to talk with magical creatures—quite exciting, at times—but if you can’t convince them to do so, there’s nothing to be done. Have you been trying to find them since you talked to the first one?” He looked unsurprised when Ralph nodded. “Then there isn’t much point in spending any longer crouched here, I think. Still want to see some dream toads?”

    “Of course!”

    “Let’s do that, then. It’ll be much more interesting.” William reached out, and Ralph allowed the other boy to pull him to his feet. The wizard suddenly took off at a run, calling over his shoulder for Ralph to follow, which he did with great enthusiasm, his cloak streaming out behind him.

    Something occurred to him. “Hey,” he yelled. “Would you be interested in a secondhand cloak?”

    William let out another laugh. “Of course!”

    And that, as far as they were concerned, settled it.

How Not to Write Vignettes

    Over the time that I’ve been posting on this blog, I’ve mostly put up writing which was, if not stupendous, then at least not horrendous. Recently my posts have been mostly those which are given as assignments. Several of the assigned posts could be improved somewhat, but the most poorly-written (in my opinion) is the vignette post.
    The instructions for this post were to write four to six vignettes, not necessarily about real events, as part of our in-class reading of The House On Mango Street. I am stunningly pathetic when it comes to writing about real life, or so I have often thought, so I proceeded to conjure up a character by the name of Madison and write about her instead. I enjoy medieval-ish settings because I read many, many fantasy novels, so that was the environment I devised. The imagined country was called Alnia, and was provided with a cast of a few characters who were not interesting enough to allow their absence of actual character. Don’t believe me? Read this: “[...] Addie said politely, because she's more worried about offending people than anyone should be.” This is all the characterization this character gets, and she’s the protagonist’s sister. Madison herself doesn’t get much to individualize her either, and she’s the first-person narrator. If you’ve read my blog recently, you know that I consider the mark of a good first-person writer to be characterizing narration; reading the vignette post will tell you that I am most definitely not a good first-person writer. I mean, look at this:

The thing about castles is that they do have secret passages, even if there aren't enough of them. Ours has three, and I know exactly where each of them is and where it goes and how to get the bricks out so you can see what's going on. I like all of them, of course, and I use them frequently, but my favourite is the twisty one that goes under the northeast tower and coils like a snake once or twice before slithering off to the stables.

Apart from the use of simile, which is contrived at best, what does this tell you about Madison? She likes secret passages, okay, but you know that because she just told you. What does the style of narration tell you about her? Absolutely nothing. Well, maybe it tells you she’s very precise, but that’s a trait which isn’t at all consistent in the narration. She uses simile, which could be an indication of character, if you were to look at it in the right light. Apart from that, not much. The same notable absence of character is everywhere in the vignettes, and I think I’ve figured out why: all of the vignettes, except the first one, are about other characters.
    The three vignettes following Madison’s complaint about castles have been given the eponymous titles of “Backwards Quellen”, “The Vest of Feliciano Montgard”, and “Jester’s Mule”. Each of these, as you may have guessed, centers around the titular character (the jester, in the case of the last, since the mule is just a mule) and Madison’s experience of them. This might not seem like a bad thing; it’s characterizing to see how a character reacts to others, isn’t it? Well, yes--but only if you know what you’re doing. I clearly do not, because Madison is as flat in these encounters as she is everywhere else. I focused much too much on developing the other characters (and how well I did there is up for debate), which meant that I wasn’t paying too much attention to making the narration interesting or at least connected to the character’s personality. Obviously this is a problem that needs solving if I ever hope to be a successful first-person writer--which I don’t, but for the sake of explanation we’ll pretend I do--so what’s the source of the problem? Once again, it can be traced to Madison’s character: she’s so flat and boring that even I’m not interested in writing her.
    In order to be able to write from a character’s point of view, whether in first or third person, the writer must find the character interesting. For me, this is usually not a problem, because it’s hard for me to even come up with a character who bores me to death. In the vignettes, though, I seem to have managed it. “Castles”, which consists of Madison whining about how much she hates the titular buildings, was the first thing I wrote from her point of view. I disliked the piece from the beginning, both because it could probably be written better and because the character came off as an ungrateful teenager with no other defining character traits:

The one we're in is a horrible thing, musty and full of old tapestry and without enough secret passages, which are the only good reason for living in a castle anyway. But we have to stay because it's ancestral, just like all that furniture in the southwest tower that we're not allowed to sit on, and if we moved out it would go to some cousin in the north. I tell my parents he can have it if he wants it, I don't care, but they never listen.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why write four vignettes about a character you can’t stand? The short answer: Because I lack foresight. But I suppose you’ll want a longer explanation than that.
    The thing is, I was still hesitant to write about my actual experiences, because I’ve had such failures with that in the past and because I can’t think of interesting memories on demand--I envy those of you who can. I didn’t want to have to come up with another character, because I was afraid that the new character would be just as thoroughly uninteresting as Madison. I suppose I could have used an existing character, but the one I was focused on at the time would have been difficult: I had only written about him third-person from the point of view of others, so I wasn’t far enough inside his head to write in the first person. I have a plethora of other characters at my command, but by the time I realized how hideously dull Madison was, it was too late to try to come up with life histories for them. That takes time, you know, and most of them were already involved in a plot, so I couldn’t just drop them in new settings at their current stage of development and watch what happened. In the end, I ended up writing about Madison because I couldn’t think of anything else to do; in other words, because I lack foresight.
    Fortunately, it’s easy to learn from a mistake as monstrous as this one. Never again will I write first-person from the point of view of a character I don’t like. If I do ever choose to write first-person, I’ll pay a lot more attention to what I’m doing. In the meantime, “Daughter of Alnia” will stand as a testament to the need for proper characterization.

A Study in Mediocrity

     My most recent literary conquest--well, as it relates to school--is the novel I Am The Messenger, by Markus Zusak. Messenger begins with Ed Kennedy, underage cab driver and a study in mediocrity, and his explanation of his life so far. Well, actually it begins with a bank robbery, which he thwarts completely by accident, but after that it goes straight to his normal life. It's written in the first person, and from the start Ed makes it clear that he is not someone interesting things happen to, apart from this bank robbery business. That is, nothing interesting happens to him until soon afterward, when he receives the first ace in the mail. On it there are three addresses. At each of them, he has a task to perform.
    Now, I've previously mentioned one of the things I love about this book: the characterization present in the narration. Obviously some character is going to seep through, because it's a first-person novel, but there are plenty of authors who barely make it that far. Many either write in their own voice, or choose similar narrators in all of their books so they don't have to adapt too much. Zusak is different; the way the book is narrated is directly tied to Ed's perception of the world. Short paragraphs. Generally limited physical descriptions. Occasional dips into more descriptive language, but only if it's something Ed really cares about, like his dog, or Audrey (who is not his girlfriend, although this is not a fact he enjoys). I might not have noticed this if it had been the first book of Zusak's I had read, but this is not the case; I have also read and enjoyed The Book Thief, which takes place in Nazi Germany and tells of Liesel Meminger's life on Himmel Street (and, as you may have guessed, literary thievery). This book is also written in the first person, but not from the point of view of the protagonist, at least partly because she is a child at the time and can't make certain judgements which are necessary. The narrator is, instead, Death, who is weary of his job and tells the story of the book thief mostly because she interests him.
    Death's narration is very different from Ed's. He provides much longer paragraphs, more description. He is very reflective, understandably a bit morbid, and he tends to read more into things than Ed does. As an example, let's take Messenger's description of its protagonist--that is, Ed's physical description of himself:

"I have dark hair, half-tanned skin, coffee brown eyes. My muscles are hugely normal. I should stand straighter, but I don't. I stand with my hands in my pockets. My boots are falling apart, but I still wear them because I love and cherish them." (20)

And The Book Thief's protagonist:

"Upon her arrival, you could still see the bite marks of snow on her hands and the frosty blood on her fingers. Everything about her was undernourished. Wirelike shins. Coat hanger arms. She did not produce it easily, but when it came, she had a starving smile.
Her hair was a close enough brand of German blond, but she had dangerous eyes. Dark brown. You didn't really want brown eyes in Germany around that time. Perhaps she received them from her father, but she had no way of knowing, as she couldn't remember him." (31)

Quite a contrast, is it not? Another interesting observation: The Book Thief's narration continues in the same style, because Death, having existed for millenia, is a static character. Messenger's narration develops somewhat over the course of the novel. It's all still in Ed's voice, of course, but his perception of the world is changing, and it shows. He goes into a bit more detail about some tings; not a lot, but enough. He also begins to make observations about his and his friends' attitude toward life. At one point, he says, "[...] we don't give it a lot more thought. I guess we don't give many things a lot of thought." (217) Ed realizes that he's become complacent; he doesn't really want to be a mediocre underage cab driver for the rest of his life, but he's not ambitious enough to change it, and he sees that his friends are much the same way. This last observation becomes even more important when the last ace arrives...but that would be telling.
    There's another detail that I suppose counts as a difference, which is really quite fantastic if you like that sort of thing. Throughout the story Ed's work to fulfill the aces is generally aided by others, some of whom are a bit surly about it, who tell him somebody else gave them instructions to do what they're doing--and they don't know who's giving them the instructions. Of course, Ed doesn't know where his instructions are coming from either, and he notices the parallel. But where this really gets interesting is toward the end. Ed comes home to find a stranger sitting on his couch. The stranger is described briefly: "He has fairly short brown hair, stands a bit smaller than medium height, and wears a shirt, black jeans, and blue athletic shoes." (352)
    In case you can't already see where this is going, I present you with a picture of Markus Zusak (click for a link to its source):

     The stranger then gives Ed the following speech:

"I killed your father, Ed. I organized the bungled bank robbery for a time when you were there. I instructed that man to brutalize his wife [...] I did it all to you. I made you a less-than-competent taxi driver and got you to do all those things you thought you couldn't." (353)

Fine and dandy, you say. This guy's put Ed through a lot of crap, but so what? Well, first of all, there's the thing about making Ed what he is. It's implied that the guy is pretty young, but in order to have influenced Ed's life that much, he would have had to be an adult when Ed was a kid, or possibly even when he was born. Most striking, however, is the statement that he killed Ed's father. Pretty early in the book (page 19), Ed states that his father essentially drank himself to death; he died when his liver gave out. So the statement that this man killed Ed's father makes no sense.
     Unless...
     One more thing. After telling Ed why all this stuff has happened, the stranger gives Ed a folder. In it, written down, is everything that's happened so far in the book. Including the exact conversation that they're currently having.
    There are a couple of other indicators, after what I've told you, but I think I've already given away enough. Read I Am the Messenger yourself--it's definitely worth reading--if you want to know exactly how this all plays out.
     It's marvelous.

Reading Too Much Into Narration

Currently I am reading I Am The Messenger, a novel by Markus Zusak. I have read only one other book of his, The Book Thief, which takes place in Nazi Germany and tells the story of a girl who steals books (and, at one point, helps hide a Jew in the cellar). Clearly the two books are significantly different: Messenger is a bout the strange turn Ed Kennedy's mediocre life takes when he finds the ace of diamonds in his mailbox and follows the instructions written on it. The books are equally well-written, but the style and tone differ greatly between them, although sometimes for obvious reasons. The Book Thief has considerable overtones of death because of the setting, particularly in the second half, and many of the later lighthearted moments are full of the knowledge that they could end at any time. Messenger is altogether a less serious book; it has several serious events, but the humour in this book is much more common than in the other. Additionally, more of the serious events in the latter book have positive effects.

The changes in style between the two books, however, are quite notable. When reading The Book Thief, I had thought that it was simply written in the author's usual way. The narration was littered with moments of grimness and reflection, and contained amounts of visual description considered standard for most literature. Messenger has a style inconsistent with that of the other book. Physical description is less specific; the appearances of characters and objects are explained in broad strokes, like Ed's house, which is a "shack", or his friend Ritchie, who has a "man-boyish face". Some characters, like Marv, don't get any physical description and little of any other kind expositionally, despite importance to the story. The largest block of description of a person, apart from Ed's outline of his own character, is this:

"Audrey always sits opposite me, no matter where we play [cards]. She has yellow hair, wiry legs, the most beautiful crooked smile in the world, and lovely hips, and she watches a lot of movies." (15)

Compare that to The Book Thief's Liesel Meminger on her arrival on Himmel Street:

"Upon her arrival, you could still see the bite marks of snow on her hands and the frosty blood on her fingers. Everything about her was undernourished. Wirelike shins. Coat hanger arms. She did not produce it easily, but when it came, she had a starving smile.
Her hair was a close enough brand of German blond, but she had dangerous eyes. Dark brown. You didn't really want brown eyes in Germany around that time. Perhaps she received them from her father, but she had no way of knowing, as she couldn't remember him." (31)

Quite a contrast. The reason for this may seem unclear at first, because the narrator of The Book Thief is rarely present at events and easily forgotten. Both books are written in the first person; The Book Thief is narrated by Death himself, Messenger by Ed. Before I continue, I must tell you that I have read many first-person books where the style of narration was standard for the author, not specific to the character--or multiple books by one person where the author always chose the same kind of person to narrate. Zusak's books are different. They are told by very different people, recording the impressions of the character rather than the author--and, most importantly, characterize greatly with a thing as simple as how a person is described. Death, with good reason, sees a lot of things with the overtones of doom that serve as a constant undercurrent to his book. He does a lot of thinking in general, reflects on events and implications with great frequency and depth, and this is the way he talks about everything. Ed, on the other hand, doesn't really look deeply into things. Most of his description is surface impressions; the most in-depth description is of Audrey, who he later admits he's in (unreciprocated) love with, and even his discussion of his own character is fairly superficial. He accepts that his life is mediocre and unremarkable, he assumes that this will not change in the future, and he lives his life accordingly. He is, usually, a passive kind of person.

Of course, at this point I am only halfway into the book, and I do not know that this state of affairs will continue. Ed's life becomes much more interesting when the first ace shows up in the mail, disrupting his pleasantly average existence. Perhaps as the book continues and he follows the instructions on all the aces, his observations of his surroundings will gain more depth. But even without certainty of this happening, it remains clear that Zusak tailors his writing to the views of his characters to a greater degree than is usually seen.

William

I love this character. He sprang fully formed from an image of an irritating kid in an apple tree, and continues to provide me with inspiration daily. He's had some interesting adventures, some of them involving talking cats, which may or may not show up here later.

---

    This time he was sitting in a tree, munching an apple and dangling his legs insolently.
    "Why are you still here?" she demanded.
    He laughed. "Oh, for this reason and that one. Fancy an apple? I've got plenty."
    "But what reasons?" She was beginning to get very vexed with him.
    "Oh, that. Well, there are too many of them for me to tell even the ravens, and they can listen for hours when they've a mind to. The long and the short of it is that I'm a wizard." He took another bite of apple.
    "You can't be!"
    "Oh, can't I?"
    "No! You haven't got a robe."
    "And who said wizards have to wear robes?"
    "Well, you haven't got a hat!"
    "And?" He appeared greatly amused by her confusion, and he laughed when she scowled at him.
    "Well--well--you just can't be, that's all!"
    "Oh, all right, then. But if I'm not a wizard, then I can't tell you why I'm here." He winked and swung higher up the tree, out of sight.
    "Wait!"
    "You're very indecisive, you know that?" He reappeared, hanging upside down from a high branch.

- - -

    Now he was in the kitchen, sitting on the table and munching another apple, or maybe the same one. When she came in, he grinned as if at some private joke.
    She slammed her hand on the table near him, and was further irritated when he didn't flinch. "You'll be in trouble when Mother gets home, you know. Mother doesn't approve of this sort of thing."
    "Oh, I doubt I'll have too much trouble with your mother. Do you have any cold cider? I'm parched."
    "Right, I suppose you'll use your wizardly powers," and she rolled her eyes.
    "I don't think it will come to that. I'm rather charming, you know."
    Which was even more infuriating, because it was true.
    "You're just saying that because you're not really a wizard. You won't use your powers because you don't have any."
    He shook his head with an air of disappointment, though his grin never left his face. "Still on about that, are you? Oh dear. I believe I've already disposed of the illusion that I require a robe, hat, or wand. What is it now?"
    "Well--look, why did you have to ask about the cider, then? You should just know! Better yet, conjure up your own drink!"
    He dropped his apple core carelessly on the table. "That would be a dreadful waste. There are better ways of using magic, you know. And you never did answer me, anyway."
    "You're just an arrogant boy, that's what you are! You don't deserve any cider!" She felt a bit silly, having said this, but she tried to look stern anyway.
    "Well, well." He contrived to look affronted. "If you're going to be like that, I'll get my refreshment somewhere else." He jumped up and swung a leg over the window sill.
    "But--" For some reason, she suddenly wanted him to stay. At least until her mother got home, she amended, so she could watch her rage at him.
    "Farewell, fair maiden." And he was, suddenly and irrevocably, gone.
    A few minutes after he left, she remembered the apple core. When she reached for it, however, it was gone. In its place was a bracelet of some unknown material, a simple bangle of gold-veined red. When she slipped it on, a seed fell onto the table.
    She stared out the window for several minutes. Then she went out to milk the cows, wondering.

---

    He was standing in snow halfway to his knees, and his scarf, which was far too long, whipped around him in the wind. The snow collected on his shoulders and in his hair, and fell into his pockets when he held them open, but he didn't seem to be cold.
    As she watched, he scooped up a handful of the whiteness, despite the fact that he wore no gloves.
    "You shouldn't do that."
    He turned, smiled at her. "Why not, my dear lady?"
    "You'll get frostbite, or some such. It's like putting your hand in a bucket of ice water."
    "Is it really?" He looked surprised. "Learn something new every day, I suppose." He turned his hand over and watched the snow fall, fluttering down to become indistinguishable from anything else. "And who are you, who is so wise in the ways of winter?"
    "Stella." She felt, absurdly, that he was mocking her--perhaps because she had been so often mocked in the past. But he seemed perfectly pleasant. "And you?"
    "I'm William, when I choose to be myself. There have been times that I've had to be somebody different, but I think those days are over." He thrust his hands into his pockets and leaned back, staring up at the grey sky. "Walk with me, Stella, won't you? I could use the company." He looked over at her. "If you don't mind terribly, that is."
    He walked strangely in the snow, lifting each leg entirely above the surface before plunging it back in. Nevertheless, she found herself struggling to keep up with him. "So what are you doing in this town?"
    "Oh...nothing, really." And she looked at him and knew, absolutely knew, that he would tell her nothing more on the subject no matter how she pressed.
    They walked in silence for a while, watching the snow muffle the world. And neither minded the silence.

Daughter of Alnia

Contents
1........................................Castles
2.....................Backwards Quellen
3...The Vest of Feliciano Montgard
4...............................Jester's Mule

The Color Purple

            Alice Walker’s epistolary novel The Color Purple tells the story of two sisters, Celie and Nettie, who are separated by the unfortunate circumstances of their lives and do not meet again for many years. Celie is forced to marry Albert (referred to for much of the book as Mr___), who views her as a lesser being and treats her like a servant; later, Celie meets Shug Avery, the woman Albert actually wanted to marry, and the two become first friends and then lovers. Nettie, on the other hand, flees their abusive father and becomes a missionary in Africa after becoming friends with a woman named Corinne; by some chance, Corinne is raising Celie’s children, who were taken from Celie after her father got her pregnant. Throughout their lives, the two sisters go through many changes in their perspectives on religion which eventually lead to the same ideas, as well as experiencing similar forms of gender inequality, though they react to it differently.

            Based upon the different directions their lives take, it is apparent that Celie and Nettie begin with different views of God. Celie’s letters to God are written in the tone of a journal or diary. She seems to think of God as a confidante, perhaps with the idea that he is the only one who will listen to her problems. There is a point where she recounts a conversation with Nettie about Celie living with Albert (Mr ___), noting: “I just say, Never mine, never mine, long as I can spell G-o-d I got somebody along.” (17) It is clear that confiding in God helps Celie deal with what is happening to her. On the other hand, it seems probable that Nettie’s concept of God is different; based on the fact that she becomes a missionary and on some of her own statements, it appears that she views God more distantly. Although her situation at the start of the book is in many ways as bad as her sister’s, she never writes letters to God or any other such entity. Later on she mentions prayer, but this seems to be a more remote form of communication. This may have something to do with Nettie’s continued belief, while Celie goes through a second stage of religious development: the idea that there is no God at all. After Celie finds out that the man she knew as her father is not really, and learns the truth about her parents, she goes through a period of doubting God’s existence or willingness to help her. This is not thoroughly covered in her letters apart from her explanation of it to Shug, but it still clearly occurs. But Nettie, who watches the destruction of the Olinka people’s way of life, never stops believing in God. This may stem from her conception of him: because she sees God as a more distant figure, she does not blame him for the actions of selfish humans as Celie seems to.

The final view that both of them reach, however, is the same. There is no great detail in Nettie’s description of her changing viewpoint, only a brief description of the realization both she and Celie eventually reach:

“God is different to us now, after all these years in Africa. More spirit than ever before, and more internal. Most people think he has to look like something or someone—a roofleaf or Christ—but we don’t. And not being tied to what God looks like, frees us.” (257)

This is a more eloquent summary of the understanding of God that Celie also comes to—that God has no specific shape or appearance. It is in everything in some way, a spirit that infuses everything rather than a being that controls it. The fundamental reason for God’s creation of things, as explained by Shug to Celie, is that it, like everything else, wants to be loved. This version of God appeals to the sisters possibly because both of them have been in situations where they, too, wanted to be loved: Celie for most of her life before meeting Shug, and Nettie to some extent when Corinne is suspicious of her husband Samuel’s interactions with Nettie.

            Both sisters also have experience with sexism, but they have encountered and responded to it in different ways. Celie, in fact, has dealt with it from the beginning: she is treated much like an object by the man she knows as her father, first sexually abused and then sent off to live with Albert in a way much reminiscent of someone trying to sell something. It is clear from what she records of people’s words that the men she knows treat their wives like property, just there to follow instructions. Albert, relatively early in the book, even states that he beats Celie just because she is his wife. Nettie’s experiences of this mentality occur in Africa rather than America, but in some ways what she sees is much the same. To begin with, of course, she also lives with their “father”, and witnesses his abuse of Celie; she has a similar incident with Albert but responds by fighting back, which leads to her being forced to leave his house. The following years, for Nettie, are not as rife with sexism as her sister’s, and Samuel seems to see her as an equal. It is only in Africa that she observes the same gender inequality Celie has been living with all along:

“[The men] listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don’t even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground…[for the women] to ‘look in a man’s face’ is a brazen thing to do.” (162)

Among the Olinka as well as the people in the sisters’ hometown, the women are thought of and taught to think of themselves as inferior. The men assume that what women have to say is generally of little importance, and that they exist only to be ordered around. Female children in the Olinka village are not even allowed to go to school, due to the assumption that they will never use that education. In fact, this is another link to Celie’s experiences, as Celie is not allowed to go to school following her first pregnancy. It is clearly demonstrated that sexism is much the same for both sisters.

            Although they see the same patterns in gender inequality, Celie and Nettie do not react to it in the same way. Celie first becomes extremely subdued, rarely speaking to anyone apart from her sister—at least partly because so many of the people in her life are men. After meeting Shug, Celie discovers her own lesbian feelings, and though it is not entirely certain, it seems that this may be partially influenced by her negative experiences with men. This is most clearly demonstrated by Celie’s response to being asked whether she dislikes Albert just because he is a man: “Take off they pants, I say, and men look like frogs to me. No matter how you kiss ’em, as far as I’m concern, frogs is what they stay.” (254) It becomes obvious, after this exchange and a later conversation on the same subject, that Celie will never be happy in a relationship with a man; of course, this is also clear in her interactions with Shug. But Nettie does not feel the same way, despite having experienced the same kind of sexism her sister has. Quite apart from being lesbian, Celie has a dislike for all men, but Nettie clearly does not make the same immediate judgment; she even marries Samuel after Corinne’s death. This may be because Nettie has not dealt with gender inequality as directly as Celie. She has merely observed it from the outside, without it being applied to her most of the time; her life is not defined by male supremacy as her sister’s is. Divergent experiences lead to unlike reactions and assumptions.

Even as their lives follow completely different courses, Celie and Nettie manage to draw the same conclusions about religion and God; they also see much the same kind of gender inequality, though Celie is more directly affected, which is probably why the sisters respond so differently. Nettie begins with a more distant view of God than her sister seems to have, but like Celie, she eventually comes to the realization that God has no set appearance and is in everything. Celie is a victim of sexism many times over, while Nettie only views it from the outside, and as a result Celie hates men while Nettie does not. Alice Walker’s point in creating these characters, therefore, seems to be at least partly in favor of fighting against gender inequality; Nettie fights from the beginning and her life is presented as being better, while Celie remains submissive until she leaves Albert’s house with Shug, at which point her life improves but not to the level of her sister’s. Celie and Nettie themselves, as characters, are simply products of their experiences and cannot be judged as anything else.

Letters to God

    In the novel The Color Purple, the protagonist Celie's letters to God make it clear that she is a religious person, but it also shows something about the way she sees God. It would seem that she thinks of God as someone to whom she can tell all her problems without too much judgment, perhaps someone to confide in. As the book goes on her letters begin to sound more and more like a diary, or maybe just letters to a friend. However, in her first letter, Celie writes, "Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me." In this instance, it is clear that she is addressing the God who would be the recipient of her letter, were she able to send it. Perhaps, as the story continues, her faith in God becomes secondary to her belief in what is happening now. In the beginning her letters are also much shorter--brief confidences, or confessions; it is difficult to tell sometimes why she writes things down. As she continues, the letters get longer, and it seems more as though she is telling the story of her life. It is as if she thinks of God as the only friend she has, or the only person who would care enough to listen.
    As I have mentioned, the letters mainly seem to record the goings-on of Celie's life, with particular attention to things out of the ordinary. There are several different potential reasons for her doing this.  Maybe she wants to keep a record of important events in her life so she can look back on it later on; she may not want to forget anything, and the best way she can think of to remember is by writing everything down. Or, based on the aforementioned sentence from the first letter, maybe she is going through a confusing time as compared to her life before the letters. In this case, she would be writing things down to more easily process them, to help her get a better understanding of what is going on. This seems somewhat more likely, as she mainly records those events which break her regular routine; many of them she seems to be confused about, or uncertain, and perhaps she needs to work out her feelings on paper. This would explain why none of the letters are dated.
    Another possible reason for her letter-writing may be related to Celie's sister, Nettie. In her eighth letter, Celie writes, "I know I'm not as pretty or as smart as Nettie, but she say I ain't dumb." Celie goes on to explain how her sister tried to teach her things she was learning at school after Celie herself was taken out of school by her father. So it's possible that Celie is also writing things down because she wants to improve her writing. She might see this as learning something (which it is), and because her sister is no longer present to teach her things, she wants to find some way to teach herself.

The Kite Runner

Perhaps it is time to present another important aspect of writing: believability. How much suspension of disbelief can an author require before a story falls apart? This can be very well demonstrated by The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini’s historical fiction novel. It tells the story of Amir, beginning with his life in Afghanistan with his servant and friend Hassan. Although he moves on from this life in many ways after his departure from the country of his birth and his marriage, the memory of Hassan never quite leaves him, a fact which becomes clear when he goes to meet an old friend of his father’s. But I am not here to discuss the plot of the book; I am here to discuss what, in this story, stretches my own suspension of disbelief.

In a previous essay (On the Nature of Being Qfwfq), I mentioned that character flaws are an important part of every story; that they are, at least in part, what makes a story readable. The Kite Runner’s Amir certainly has flaws, because the main character of a book is required not to be flat and boring. However, consider his friend and servant Hassan. There is something slightly odd about him as a character, which may not be obvious at first, but think: when does Hassan show that he is not “perfect”? He always takes the blame for things Amir has done, he never seems to get angry, he offers Amir endless encouragement and defends him when it becomes necessary. For example:

“...he never told on me. Never told that the mirror, like shooting walnuts at the neighbor’s dog, was always my idea.” (4)
“If he felt the sting of my tease, his smiling face didn’t show it.” (28)
“That was another thing about Hassan. He always knew when to say the right thing...” (37)
“Hassan held the slingshot pointed directly at Assef’s face. His hand trembled with the strain of the pulled elastic band and beads of sweat had erupted on his brow.” (42)

The last example is, perhaps, the most telling. Hassan is willing to defend Amir despite the fact that, as a Hazara, he is in more danger from Assef than Amir is. He is also quite obviously afraid of Assef, but he doesn’t allow that to stop him. All of this, as well as the later events that eventually cause Hassan to leave, make it clear that he is almost uncannily perfect; his arsenal of positive traits appears to have no end. This comes up again in Rahim Khan’s account of his reunion with Hassan: when first confronted with the idea of leaving, Hassan “said the village was his home now; he and Farzana had made a life for themselves there.” (206) But after Rahim Khan had spent a night in their house, Hassan informs him that they have decided to drop everything and go to Kabul to help him take care of the house. He gives no explanation, and nothing specific seems to trigger this change of mind--it’s simply another example of his lack of flaws. All in all, Hassan is not a very convincing character, simply by virtue of his virtues. This is not to say that it is impossible to have a believably selfless character, but Hassan isn’t it.

There is also an interesting correlation which I think may be more than just a coincidence. Near the beginning of the book, when Assef harasses Amir and Hassan, Hassan’s threat is as follows:

“‘...If you make a move, they’ll have to change your nickname from Assef “the Ear Eater” to “One-Eyed Assef,” because I have this rock pointed at your left eye.’” (42)

One might be a little confused by the decision to be specific about which eye, because it doesn’t seem to be an important distinction--at least, not until Amir again meets Assef.  Amir has come to retrieve Sohrab, and Assef forces Amir to fight him. Sohrab proceeds to defend Amir with his slingshot:

“Then Assef was screaming. He put his hand where his left eye had been just a moment ago.” (291)

Again, it doesn’t seem like much at first, just a bit of helpful detail. But when you examine the two statements together, you notice that in both cases it is the left eye that is threatened. Now, consider the fact that Sohrab is Hassan’s son, and that Hassan, from what we know of him, would probably have done the same thing to protect Amir if it became necessary. Besides being a reminder of Hassan’s unrealistic personality, this underlines how similar Sohrab is to his father. Take this with the fact that Sohrab is almost identical to Hassan, and you have a twist of fate that doesn’t quite ring true.

In fact, Assef seems to be a center of impossible coincidences. The most obvious of these by far is Amir’s meeting him while searching for Sohrab. Hosseini seems to realize how ridiculous this is, and makes an attempt to point it out while staying in character:

“The moment felt surreal--no, not surreal, absurd...My past was like that, always turning up...he was already here, in the flesh, sitting less than ten feet from me, after all these years.” (281)

Although this is an admirable effort to put the situation into perspective, saying that he, too, finds it difficult to believe, its real effect is to make the coincidence seem even more impossible. The way in which the revelation is structured leads the reader to wonder whether the author simply ran out of surprises; whether he constructed this scene just because he couldn’t think of another way to further the plot. A similar emphasis on unreality surrounds one of the direct results of Amir’s meeting Assef; Amir is in the hospital reflecting on his injuries:

“I kept thinking of something else Armand/Dr. Faruqi had said: The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.” (297)

Here we have an example of an absurdity associated with Hassan, who had a harelip as well, though he was born with his. The situation seems to say that Amir has, in some sense, become Hassan--or at least, the two are now much more similar. Now, I must admit, fiction is not intended to be exactly like real life; if it were, we wouldn’t bother to read it. However, an author cannot insert something as bizarre as this and make the reader believe it. Even if it is accepted on one level, on another the reader will be thinking that maybe the situation is just a little too perfect.

The Kite Runner does not by any means fail to get its point across, mainly about the struggle to overcome one’s past and the difficulty of stopping a chain of lies once it has been started. The story itself is riveting and generally well-written. I would certainly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read it--but be prepared for an overabundance of impossible coincidences. Be careful of scenes that fall apart when given too much thought; they can be the downfall of an otherwise good book.

On the Nature of Being Qfwfq

It is impossible to write a character who does not have some sort of flaw, because without character flaws you have no plot. In Qfwfq, the main character of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, the defining flaw is that he almost constantly misunderstands the intentions and thoughts of others, while he is often misunderstood by them; he also seems to have an underlying fear of being inadequate.

For a certain period of time, Qfwfq is the last living dinosaur, and because he has nowhere else to go, he ends up living in a village of the mammals that now inhabit the Earth. He is able to do this because the dinosaurs have, by now, been gone for long enough that nobody remembers what they looked like. As during several other lifetimes (of which he has many throughout the book), he eventually falls in love, in this case with a “New One” by the name of Fern-flower. Most of their relationship consists of her telling him about her dreams, which he generally misinterprets in one way or another. In one particular instance, she describes a dream in which a particularly magnificent dinosaur passes her house while ignoring her completely, and Qfwfq, as usual, reacts in the wrong way:

“The young creature had mistaken my shyness for disdainful pride. Now, when I recall it, I realize that all I had to do was maintain that attitude a little longer, make a show of haughty detachment, and I would have won her completely. Instead, the revelation so moved me that I threw myself at her feet, tears in my eyes, and said: ‘No, no, Fern-flower, it’s not the way you believe; you’re better than any Dinosaur, a hundred times better, and I feel so inferior to you…’” (104)

Fern-flower, of course, does not expect or want this reaction, and as Qfwfq says, “a feeling of uneasiness” develops between them. Qfwfq reacts wrongly to her dream because he is afraid of being misunderstood, of being thought of as something he does not believe he is. He also displays this is his other reactions to his misinterpretations of Fern-flower’s dreams; when she informs him of a dream in which a dinosaur wants to eat her alive and she likes him for it, for example:

“That dream should have made me understand many things and especially one thing: that Fern-flower desired nothing more than to be assaulted. This was the moment for me to embrace her. But the Dinosaur they imagined was too different from the Dinosaur I was…I missed a good opportunity.” (101)

Here, too, he does not react as Fern-flower expects and wants him to, because he takes this to mean she perceives him differently than he really is, and he wants to correct that perception. However, in his rush to ensure that no one thinks of him in the wrong way, he completely disregards the intentions of those he interacts with. He assumes they think in a certain way, and he filters all of their actions through his own misapprehension of their personality, reacting to what he thinks is meant. It is an interesting irony that, by trying to make himself understood, he misunderstands everyone else.

In one of his earlier incarnations (which likely influenced his feelings as a dinosaur), Qfwfq is some sort of amphibian; what kind, we will never know. All of his family, at the time when the story occurs, have made the transition from life in water to life on land—all, that is, except his great-uncle N’ba N’ga, who stubbornly insists on remaining a fish. Because of this situation, the rest of the family is engaged in a continuous struggle to convince N’ba N’ga that life is better on land. Around this point, Qfwfq falls in love with an undefined reptile, most likely a lizard, by the name of Lll. As has been mentioned, Qfwfq is an amphibian and not entirely free from the pull of the water, so he worries about appearing inferior to Lll as he sees her, leading him to hide his uncle’s existence:

“The time had come for Lll to meet my family; and since its oldest and most authoritative member was Great-Uncle N’ba N’ga, I couldn’t avoid a visit to him, to introduce my fiancée. But every time an opportunity occurred, I postponed it, out of embarrassment; knowing the prejudices among which she had been brought up, I hadn’t yet dared tell Lll that my great-uncle was a fish.” (75)

Qfwfq, as demonstrated in other passages, seems to view Lll as a superior creature in relation to him, because he is less evolved than she. Thus it follows that he fears that, if it is revealed that his great-uncle is one of those who shuns the land with the insistence that only the sea will last, Lll will associate Qfwfq with this philosophy; she will think of him a too undeveloped for her to continue seeing him. Understandably, he does not wish to be thought of as a lower life form. Furthermore, in this paragraph at least, he appears to be trying to delude himself as to the nature of his secrecy. He cites “the prejudices among which [Lll] had been brought up” as if to say that he expects Lll to be species-ist (which seems the only appropriate word) toward N’ba N’ga, and that this is the main reason he avoids introducing her to his uncle. As it turns out, of course, he has once again misunderstood, and Lll’s reaction on meeting N’ba N’ga is not at all what was expected.

After finally encountering Qfwfq’s uncle, far from considering him to be a lower life form, Lll becomes extremely interested in the nature of life as a fish. She begins visiting N’ba N’ga frequently, learning from him how to swim as a fish would—or somewhat differently, as she is of an entirely different species. Qfwfq eventually realises this and believes he understands her motives, but, yet again, he is mistaken:

“It was a game, for her: I understood. But a game I didn’t like. I had to recall her to reality, to the future that was awaiting her.” (81)

A particularly interesting aspect of his reaction is the lack of acceptance of his uncle’s lifestyle. Earlier in the story, he mentions that N’ba N’ga is unwilling to accept a reality other than his own. By his own statement shown above, however, Qfwfq reveals that he is just as unwilling to acknowledge that anyone might have a different idea of what is an ideal life. This, too, can be traced to his many misunderstandings; he has tried to convince N’ba N’ga that life on land is superior, ignoring the reasons his uncle provides for living like a fish. Because he refuses to understand another way of life, he assumes that Lll thinks the same way, and so confronts her with this mistaken impression:

“‘Lll, I have to talk to you,’ I said as soon as I saw her, ‘you’ve been amusing yourself long enough. We have more important things ahead of us. I’ve discovered a passage in the mountains: beyond it stretches an immense stone plain, just abandoned by the water. We’ll be the first to settle there, we’ll populate unknown lands, you and I, and our children…The world belongs to those with legs, not to fish, and you know it.’” (81)

Once again, Qfwfq has failed to understand another’s intentions, and once again it results to some extent in lost love. He discovers that Lll, rather than agreeing with him that returning to the water is a step backwards, has come to share great-uncle N’ba N’ga’s point of view. Rather than making an effort to interpret her actions correctly, Qfwfq has interpreted them as what they would mean coming from him: a game, humouring his deluded uncle. He mentally superimposes the way he thinks of Lll over the way she really is, and he tries to make himself understood as being on a level with this imagined Lll without taking into account that she may have hidden depths. And this is Qfwfq’s great failing, his life’s downfall: he doesn’t realise that he’s misunderstood until it’s far too late.