Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc
Download 1.22 Mb. Pdf ko'rish
|
FINAL Current Developments at the Intersection of British Children ONLINE VERSION
Eaglesmount
trilogy, Jacques’ Redwall series, Conlon-McKenna’s In Deep Dark Wood or Booth’s Doctor Illuminatus. 66 Baldry’s animal fantasy takes over the well-tried cast replete with its unequivocal, yet rigid roles of both good and evil. Such fixed constellations lead to the predictability of plot, role behaviour, ending and moral. With clichés of old confirmed, innovations are hindered, as there is no room for development. Baldry’s trilogy therefore strictly follows the guidelines when she assigns the roles of evil to those animals which since times immemorial embody the villain. Obviously, wolf, weasel and snake are predestined for the part of the rogue. Accordingly, in the Eaglesmount novels, they embody cowardice, violence, cruelty, ruthlessness and tyranny. Prime motivation for the evildoers is their hunger for power and its conservation. Emotionless, these animals do not show respect for anyone but their most senior. Even then, overthrowing the latter is actively schemed for. Needless to 66 Cherith Baldry. Eaglesmount: The Silver Horn. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2001; Cherith Baldry. Eaglesmount: The Emerald Throne . London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2001; Cherith Baldry. Eaglesmount: The Lake of Darkness . London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2001; Brian Jacques. Redwall. London: Hutchinson, 1986; Brian Jacques. Mariel of Redwall. London: Hutchinson’s Children’s Books, 1991; Marita Conlon-McKenna. In Deep Dark Wood. Dublin: The O’Brien Press, 1999; Martin Booth. Doctor Illuminatus . London: Penguin, 2003. 103 say that - in this hostile environment - friends are nonexistent. Their place is taken by temporary accomplices or servants. The fox or the owl, with their cunningness and cleverness have potential for both hero or villain. By contrast, the squirrel, the rabbit and the mouse are cute and good-natured. Eagles eclipse all other animals with their wisdom and strength. Jacques’ Redwall animal fantasy series works with the same traditional roles of evil as Baldry’s. Picking two novels at random, one is met with a very similar picture. Both Redwall and Mariel of Redwall work with traditional roles of evil and the direct contrast between villains and heroes. Whereas badgers, hedgehogs, moles, otters or rabbits are on the good side, the roles of evil are occupied mostly by rats, but also snakes . By direct contrast between domestic mice and wild, nomadic rats, the wickedness of the latter is emphasised. In Mariel of Redwall for instance the villain is an insane, belligerent megalomaniac driven by greed and lust for power. The Irish author Conlon-McKenna’s novel In Deep Dark Wood also works with traditional roles of evil. An old woman clad in black, replete with long skirt, cape and boots, Bella Blackwell matches the typical picture of the wicked witch. Although she lives at a castle and runs a dragon school, she might as well inhabit a gingerbread house. Booth’s Doctor Illuminatus owes to the same traditional roles of evil as Baldry. This implicates that he falls back on the fixed roles and the clichés they entail. In Doctor Illuminatus , the representative of evil is De Loudéac, who “seeks to do terrible wrong in the world by his creation”. 67 It is not only his destructive vein that brands him as evil, but also the fact that he pursues his aims with a fanatic energy. Unfailing external signs of his evilness are his bad body odour, mirrored in his nickname “Malodor”, and his cruelty when he casually disembowels a dog. 68 In Nimmo’s The Children of the Red King 69 series, three sisters, the Bloor family as well as some of the endowed children are outright evil, yet without the potential to develop. They remain static throughout the series, thus allowing Charlie Bone and the good endowed children to thwart their plans. Delaney’s The Wardstone Chronicles rely on the traditional evilness of spirits, boggarts, witches and necromancers that the Spook and his apprentice have to face. However, 67 Booth, Doctor Illuminatus, p. 52. 68 Ibd.; p. 117, p. 129. 69 Jenny Nimmo. The Children of the Red King. London: Egmont, 2002-present. 104 the rigid roles of good and evil are broken up by the young witch Alice, who mediates between the two extremes. Dale’s Whispering to Witches 70 is built on traditional clichés of evil – of witches in particular. By relating the events from the point of view of a good witch clan that has to fight an evil one, Dale’s novel – interlarded with allusions to Harry Potter - humorously demonstrates the relativity of evil. Further traditional roles of evil can be found for example in McNish’s The Doomspell trilogy (the witches), Nicholson’s The Wind on Fire trilogy (above all the Master), Nix’ Abhorsen trilogy (the necromancer Hedge), The Keys to the Kingdom series (the Morrow Days and their minions, the Skinless Boy) and The Ragwitch (the eponymous doll), Paolini’s Galbatorix of the Inheritance cycle and Rowling’s Voldemort. As we have seen, traditional British children’s fantasy polarises and fixes the roles of good and evil so as to exclude any ambiguities. Such black and white contrasts are meant to facilitate the child’s understanding as well as to help it classify good and evil. On the assumption that children need obvious guidelines and role models for the development of their own character and world view, one thus insinuates that - at their respective stages of intellectual development, cognition and experience – children cannot yet cope with the full truth. As is the case with one-sided approaches, clear-cut yet artificial categorisations support the formation of stereotypes rather than the depiction of authentic circumstances. 71 Too radical a simplification may lead to an overall lifelessness which then results in too naïve and predictable plots with an obligatory happy ending. Download 1.22 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
Ma'lumotlar bazasi mualliflik huquqi bilan himoyalangan ©fayllar.org 2024
ma'muriyatiga murojaat qiling
ma'muriyatiga murojaat qiling