Pilgrimage: First Steps: Chp 1 - 10

[Andrew, Wound Up]

***Open discussion of chapters 1-10 below, no spoiler marks needed. Be sure you have read through chapter 10 before reading! Note: if this is your first visit to this topic I recommend you read this post about discussion ideas, then skip down and post your initial response, then read and respond to other people's posts.***

At the very least check in here when you finish chapter 10 and tell us if you are enjoying the book. I'll post specific discussion ideas below, along with some general topics we'll see repeated throughout the book.

Chapter 1 - 10 discussions:

1) What other novels have you read that are based on super long walks?

2) At this point what do you think is the cause of Harold's guilt related to Queenie and Maureen?

Bonus: Produce your artistic version of the final scene in this section, when the rain stops and Harold is uplifted. If you want assistance posting the picture you can e-mail it to me at johnyqd@yahoo.com .

General Discussions:

1) Share your favorite quote(s) from this section.

2) Do you have a favorite or most intriguing character at this point in the novel?

Location reminder

If you are returning to this topic after having continued past chapter 10, here is a plot reminder:

Harold has walked through a horrible rainstorm and his spirits have been brightened by a clearing sky.

GO!

[Andrew, Wound Up]

I'm really enjoying the book - especially the unexpectedly subversive surprises. Due to my internet problem I'm writing this long after I finished the section so my memory is lax.

Long Walks: Stephen King gets my first two nods here with The Long Walk and The Stand. Walk is a short story that tells the story of an interminable and usually fatal forced walk, a non-combative Hunger Games. Walk shares the theme of death and introspection but from the perspective of youth.

I've written elsewhere about my thoughts on The Stand which insists on having a longstanding influence on my reading. There is a lot of walking in the book but my focus specifically is related to the final walk taken by the heroes of the story. They march with a sense of finality and also focus on life and death but on a much larger, species level, scale.

The next book that comes to mind is The Road which is dark, bleary, stark and similar in its focus on mortality.

My final submission will be The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This might be cheating as it opens up a large vein of fantasy novels (and there are at times other modes of transportation involved). At its heart though this series is about walking: there and back again in The Hobbit; to Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings.

Guilt: I think Queenie got into some type of compromised condition related to their lecherous boss and Harold helped her by sacrificing his own character. After the event Harold abandoned Queenie in an attempt to absolve himself of the guilt he never deserved.

Quotes: "That's the marmalade, Harold. Jam is red. If you look at things before you pick them up, you'll find it helps."

Harold contemplated his relationship with his wife who signs his letters and handles most of his affairs now that he's retired: And it raised the question... that if she was, in effect Harold, "then who am I?".

An odd bit was the description of the landscape where Harold muses that the view from a car is so juxtaposed to a walkers views. What is odd is how the book cover with the green hills is expressly opposite from Harold's thoughts.

Harold's discussion with his son, when David says "I dunno. I was already in shit. It seemed easier to stay in it than come back." really felt poignant, the whole situation captured Harold's relationship with his son starkly.

Character: Harold. I usually have a side character that stands out but in this case I am intrigued by Harold Fry and I'm excited to continue learning his history and to find out if he can keep on walking.

Overall: I'm loving the book, enjoying it more than I thought. The conversation with the shoe licking man hints at something bigger. Harold's familial relationships are complex and messy in a way that has a "real" feeling.

[Michelle, Overrun By Pets]

At first I didn't think I had read any books with long walks. Andrew suggested The Wonderful Wizard of Oz which I have indeed read. I then remembered Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia although they were not specifically about walks, there was a lot of walking, exploring, discovery and pilgrimages of sort. I would also say that a pilgrimage always reminds me of The Poisonwood Bible and even to a certain extent Shine Shine Shine.

Harold Fry on his walk reminded me of Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, but older. Not in a developmentally disabled kind of way, but in a taking a long journey, meeting interesting people along the way and affecting lives just as the walker is also being affected by his interactions. So far Rachel Joyce reminds me of Gillian Flynn in terms of slowly trickling out major plot details so that you are constantly yearning for more information. This is why the book pace is moving along so quickly for me. The text style is simple and appealing, almost like a children's book. This may be why I referenced so many children's books in the first part of the question.

Harold has thoroughly segmented off certain memories and their corresponding emotions. This makes it very difficult to understand his motivations at this point in the book. Harold seems to be motivated primarily by regret. This could be because he recently retired and has much to reflect on, maybe it is because he was the child of an alcoholic father and a mother who abandoned him.

Harold lost connection with Queenie abruptly. He did not say goodbye to her, he never thanked her appropriately for an as-yet-unknown deed and feels he needs to make it right now that he has received communication from her. There are still many missing pieces puzzle pieces to this story. Queenie had a much larger affect on Harold than he ever admitted to family members and maybe even himself, until now.

Harold regrets his part in the dysfunctional family unit of himself, Maureen and David. He regrets not being a more emotionally invested father to David and a better husband to Maureen. He feels bad that his marriage is in a rut, but doesn't know how to fix the problems. Harold and Maureen have serious communication problems and do not seem very connected to each other.

My favorite character in this section of the book was "the Woman with Food". She was like a fairy godmother providing everything Harold needed at the exact moment he needed it. She provided the great insight "But it never ceases to amaze me how difficult the things that are supposed to be instinctive really are." She gave Harold food, drink, respite and most importantly companionship.

I had a ton of favorite quotes in this section of the book, but I will try to limit them to a few.

"If he kept looking at the things that were bigger than himself, he knew he would make it to Berwick."

"In walking, he freed the past that he had spent twenty years seeking to avoid, and now it chattered and played through his head with a wild energy that was its own. He no longer saw distance in terms of miles. He measured it with his remembering."

"Now that he accepted the slowness of himself, he took pleasure in the distance he covered. Far ahead the horizon was no more than a blue brushstroke, pale as water, and unbroken by houses or trees, but sometimes it blurred as if the land and the sky had bled into one another and become matching halves of the same thing."

[Michelle, Overrun By Pets]

@Andrew - DANG IT, I forgot about The Hobbit I definitely read that one too!

[Andrew, Wound Up]

Michelle's submission for the bonus:



Andrew's submission for the bonus: