David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "hero-s-journey"
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME is not, repeat not, a mystery. The protagonist is a fifteen-year-old autistic boy who discovers his next-door neighbor's poodle, stabbed to death with a garden fork. He then sets out to discover who did it and write about it as a project for school.
Christopher John Francis Boone is the narrator and he loves to "do the maths", can't stand to be touched, and hates the colors yellow and brown. He sprinkles red food coloring on his food because he loves the color red. The next-door-neighbor blames Christopher for the death of her poodle and calls the police. When the policeman touches him, Christopher hits him and is carted off to jail. They let him out when his father explains about his "no touching" policy. His father makes him promise to give up his search for the murderer of the poodle, but Christopher can't help himself. Complications ensue.
What's amazing about this book is how much we identify with Christopher, even though he occasionally wets himself and threatens people with a knife. When he sets off to find his mother, who he thought was dead, we are just as scared as he is. He tries to figure things out logically and is good at it, but then his nerves get to him and he shuts down totally, doing "the maths" in his head.
Mark Haddon worked with autistic children as a young man, so if one of his goals was to instill a greater understanding for "special needs" children, he succeeds wonderfully.
Christopher John Francis Boone is the narrator and he loves to "do the maths", can't stand to be touched, and hates the colors yellow and brown. He sprinkles red food coloring on his food because he loves the color red. The next-door-neighbor blames Christopher for the death of her poodle and calls the police. When the policeman touches him, Christopher hits him and is carted off to jail. They let him out when his father explains about his "no touching" policy. His father makes him promise to give up his search for the murderer of the poodle, but Christopher can't help himself. Complications ensue.
What's amazing about this book is how much we identify with Christopher, even though he occasionally wets himself and threatens people with a knife. When he sets off to find his mother, who he thought was dead, we are just as scared as he is. He tries to figure things out logically and is good at it, but then his nerves get to him and he shuts down totally, doing "the maths" in his head.
Mark Haddon worked with autistic children as a young man, so if one of his goals was to instill a greater understanding for "special needs" children, he succeeds wonderfully.
All the Light We Cannot See
The title ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE is a double entendre. It’s about a blind girl during WWII, but it also shows us some light that shown through the horrible events.
Marie-Laure has congenital cataracts, but she probably sees more than most of us. At one point in the story, she describes to another girl what she sees. She sees colors, not darkness. Her father, a locksmith at a Paris museum, makes a miniature model of their neighborhood, and she must memorize it with her fingertips. He takes her six blocks from their apartment and tells her she must lead him back to their apartment. She’s terribly frustrated at first, but she eventually does it, and then she knows there’s virtually nothing she can’t do.
The second main character is a German, Werner, who is kind of an electronic genius. Doerr ties him to Marie-Laure in that he and his sister Jutta listen to her grandfather’s radio broadcasts about science. Werner and Jutta are orphans, and another “light” in the story is Frau Elena who treats her wards like her own children. There’s a parallel in Marie-Laure’s story where Madamn Manec, her great uncle’s housekeeper, is a freedom fighter who can make soup out of stones. I’m not exaggerating much.
Werner wins a spot at a school for the best of the Hitler youth where the technical teacher gives his charges an assignment: make something out of spare parts. Werner is able to make several devices, and he becomes the teacher’s research partner. There were people in Germany who hid their Jewish friends. Not everybody was a skunk. One was Frederick, Werner’s bunk mate, at the Hitler Youth camp. When the students are required to pour cold water on a prisoner to show they will follow orders, Frederick refuses. That makes him a weakling in the director’s eyes, and he’s got a big target on his back, but we know Frederick is really another one of the “lights” in the story.
When the teacher is promoted, Werner is sent to Russia to ferret out partisans who are sending out radio signals. Here he is reunited with Volkheimer, the giant student who served as an enforcer for the camp director. Only Volkheimer likes and respects Werner. At first we think Volkheimer is a stone cold killer, but we gradually learn that he was swept up in events just like millions of other people who would never have thought to do in everyday life what they did in the war. At the end of the book, we see what a mensch Volkheimer really is under the rough exterior.
Marie-Laure’s father and his daughter escape from Paris prior to the Nazi invasion, taking them to St.-Malo, an island where his uncle lives in a house with six floors, plus an attic. He hasn’t left the building in years, thanks to a gas attack during WWI. Madamn Manac prods Etienne into using the giant radio in the attic to help the partisans.
Another parallel between the two stories is the American invasion at Normandy and the French partisans who are helping the Allied army find German coastal artillery. Werner is sent to Saint-Malo. There’s another plot line involving the Sea of Flames, a great diamond the director of the museum may have given Marie-Laure’s father to protect. It’s one of four, but three are fakes. Marie-Laure’s father doesn’t know if he has the real one. A German sergeant major thinks he knows where it is.
I usually look for character-driven novels, and Marie-Laure and Werner are two of the best I’ve encountered since I read Kent Haruf’s PLAINSONG with the two wonderful bachelor farmers. When you reach the climax, pay close attention. Doerr often suggests rather than tells what’s happening. If you don’t, you’ll only have to go back and reread it.
Marie-Laure has congenital cataracts, but she probably sees more than most of us. At one point in the story, she describes to another girl what she sees. She sees colors, not darkness. Her father, a locksmith at a Paris museum, makes a miniature model of their neighborhood, and she must memorize it with her fingertips. He takes her six blocks from their apartment and tells her she must lead him back to their apartment. She’s terribly frustrated at first, but she eventually does it, and then she knows there’s virtually nothing she can’t do.
The second main character is a German, Werner, who is kind of an electronic genius. Doerr ties him to Marie-Laure in that he and his sister Jutta listen to her grandfather’s radio broadcasts about science. Werner and Jutta are orphans, and another “light” in the story is Frau Elena who treats her wards like her own children. There’s a parallel in Marie-Laure’s story where Madamn Manec, her great uncle’s housekeeper, is a freedom fighter who can make soup out of stones. I’m not exaggerating much.
Werner wins a spot at a school for the best of the Hitler youth where the technical teacher gives his charges an assignment: make something out of spare parts. Werner is able to make several devices, and he becomes the teacher’s research partner. There were people in Germany who hid their Jewish friends. Not everybody was a skunk. One was Frederick, Werner’s bunk mate, at the Hitler Youth camp. When the students are required to pour cold water on a prisoner to show they will follow orders, Frederick refuses. That makes him a weakling in the director’s eyes, and he’s got a big target on his back, but we know Frederick is really another one of the “lights” in the story.
When the teacher is promoted, Werner is sent to Russia to ferret out partisans who are sending out radio signals. Here he is reunited with Volkheimer, the giant student who served as an enforcer for the camp director. Only Volkheimer likes and respects Werner. At first we think Volkheimer is a stone cold killer, but we gradually learn that he was swept up in events just like millions of other people who would never have thought to do in everyday life what they did in the war. At the end of the book, we see what a mensch Volkheimer really is under the rough exterior.
Marie-Laure’s father and his daughter escape from Paris prior to the Nazi invasion, taking them to St.-Malo, an island where his uncle lives in a house with six floors, plus an attic. He hasn’t left the building in years, thanks to a gas attack during WWI. Madamn Manac prods Etienne into using the giant radio in the attic to help the partisans.
Another parallel between the two stories is the American invasion at Normandy and the French partisans who are helping the Allied army find German coastal artillery. Werner is sent to Saint-Malo. There’s another plot line involving the Sea of Flames, a great diamond the director of the museum may have given Marie-Laure’s father to protect. It’s one of four, but three are fakes. Marie-Laure’s father doesn’t know if he has the real one. A German sergeant major thinks he knows where it is.
I usually look for character-driven novels, and Marie-Laure and Werner are two of the best I’ve encountered since I read Kent Haruf’s PLAINSONG with the two wonderful bachelor farmers. When you reach the climax, pay close attention. Doerr often suggests rather than tells what’s happening. If you don’t, you’ll only have to go back and reread it.
The Underground Railroad
Why should you read another book about the Underground Railroad? Well, this is a book of fiction, based on actual slave histories, and it also has a few fictional flourishes, such as magical realism. One of the critics compares author Colson Whitehead to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Oh, yes, the novel also won the National Book Award.
The magic realism isn't as wild as Marquez's work, but there is a progressive community in South Carolina that appears to treat escaped slaves fairly, and there's an entire farm in Indiana that welcomes runaways before the Civil War.
Cora, the main character, is afraid to run away, as her mother apparently did. Mabel is a hero in the black community because the slave catcher, Ridgeway, was unable to find her. Another slave, Caesar, convinces Cora that she should go, especially after she suffers a horrible beating at the hands of her master, trying to save a young boy.
As we know the Underground Railroad wasn't an actual railroad. Anti-slavers and heroic escapees like Harriet Tubman found sympathetic whites and free blacks who provided hiding places for the slaves on their way north, usually Canada.
Ridgeway is the villain of the story. He shoots a captured slave in the forehead for singing too much. But his reputation is ruined when Cora seems to avoid his grasp as well as Mabel.
Ridgeway is a mere shell of his former self when he finally runs Cora to ground. There's some foreshadowing in the book, so we know Cora isn't returned to her master; the suspense is how she gets away again, which is just a tad unrealistic.
Another original aspect of the book is how it portrays the slaves on the Randall plantation, Cora's original plantation. There's a sort of hierarchy where some of the slaves are outcasts: the lame, the aged, the mentally ill. Some of the slaves actually help keep the others under control. Cora winds up at the Hob, the outcast quarters. But her grandmother and her mother left her a plot of land where she grows her own vegetables, defending it fiercely.
You will find yourself talking to Cora as the story progresses. Go North young lady, you'll say. The smart runaways head for Canada; there is no real sanctuary for escaped slaves in the states, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line, no matter how attractive it looks.
The magic realism isn't as wild as Marquez's work, but there is a progressive community in South Carolina that appears to treat escaped slaves fairly, and there's an entire farm in Indiana that welcomes runaways before the Civil War.
Cora, the main character, is afraid to run away, as her mother apparently did. Mabel is a hero in the black community because the slave catcher, Ridgeway, was unable to find her. Another slave, Caesar, convinces Cora that she should go, especially after she suffers a horrible beating at the hands of her master, trying to save a young boy.
As we know the Underground Railroad wasn't an actual railroad. Anti-slavers and heroic escapees like Harriet Tubman found sympathetic whites and free blacks who provided hiding places for the slaves on their way north, usually Canada.
Ridgeway is the villain of the story. He shoots a captured slave in the forehead for singing too much. But his reputation is ruined when Cora seems to avoid his grasp as well as Mabel.
Ridgeway is a mere shell of his former self when he finally runs Cora to ground. There's some foreshadowing in the book, so we know Cora isn't returned to her master; the suspense is how she gets away again, which is just a tad unrealistic.
Another original aspect of the book is how it portrays the slaves on the Randall plantation, Cora's original plantation. There's a sort of hierarchy where some of the slaves are outcasts: the lame, the aged, the mentally ill. Some of the slaves actually help keep the others under control. Cora winds up at the Hob, the outcast quarters. But her grandmother and her mother left her a plot of land where she grows her own vegetables, defending it fiercely.
You will find yourself talking to Cora as the story progresses. Go North young lady, you'll say. The smart runaways head for Canada; there is no real sanctuary for escaped slaves in the states, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line, no matter how attractive it looks.
