Jane Johnson on Responsibility & Heroes

Warning: This post discusses the setup, and a few key ingredients of an enjoyable novel.  Some might call them spoilers, but I think of them as teasers.  Why not read my post, then read the novel, and decide for yourself?

In Jane Johnson’s novel The Secret Country, Ben Arnold seems like a normal twelve-year-old boy.  He’s not an acclaimed hero or a seasoned adventurer.  He's certainly never traveled far from the English village of Bixbury, where he lives with his father, mother, and two sisters.  This is not to say that he doesn’t have good instincts, or for that matter, good taste in entertainment.  For example, he fills his days playing with Daleks and Incredible Hulk action figures, and he reads noteworthy comics and graphic novels, such as The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. 

Ben may seem ordinary, but like most of us, he has a dream.  Each day he walks past the local pet store, and peers into the window, hoping against hope that Mr. Dodd has not yet sold his advertised “Rare Mongolian Fighting Fish.”  Ben’s father may earn a meager salary as a reporter for the local newspaper, but he’s agreed to pay Ben additional allowance in return for extra chores.  Ben’s mother also encourages his dream, agreeing that he can keep a fish tank in the house.  “Looking after other creatures teaches us responsibility,” she tells him.  Finally, the great day comes when Ben accumulates sufficient money for his purchase, and he hurries off to Mr. Dodd’s Pet Emporium. 

Ben’s heart leaps when he sees his beloved fish are still there.  He gets in line, and hopes that none of the other customers snap them up before he can.  He can only think of bringing them home, where his awful uncle Aleister and his father are setting up his cousin Cynthia’s former fish tank.  Unlike Ben, she never learned to care properly for her fish.  But then, her fish were even more aggressive than Mongolian fighting fish.  For she used to keep Piranhas, and one by one, the number of fish in her tank lessened, until the final one also vanished.  (No one, not even Cynthia, has offered Ben a satisfactory explanation as to how the final piranha ate itself). 

When something catches Ben’s jacket, he notices that a cat has reached through its cage, and captured the fabric in its claws.  As Ben tries to free himself, the cat informs him, in no uncertain terms, “There’s no way you’re leaving this shop without me, sonny.”  Not only does a talking cat seem unreal, and thus hard to take seriously, but also Ben is unwilling to readily relinquish his dream.  After all, he's worked hard, and saved for a long time, to purchase those fish.  So the cat asserts that the fish aren’t really rare, they aren’t exotic, and they don’t fight.  He reasons, begs, and pleads with Ben, until he finally convinces the boy to purchase him instead. 

When Ben decides to trade in his dream of “Rare Mongolian Fighting Fish,” Mr. Dodd doesn’t seem keen on selling him the cat.  This seems odd, as the cat looks exceedingly ordinary, and no one, apart from Ben, appears to notice that it can talk.  But Ben overcomes Mr. Dodd’s objections and purchases it.  Then comes the difficult part: to explain to everyone at home why he purchased a cat instead of the fish.

In proximity to his new talking cat, everything changes in Ben’s life.  He sees a TV news report of a unicorn that gallops through Lords Cricket Grounds, interrupting a test match.  He picks up an injured dragonfly, only to discover that it’s a wood sprite.  And later, when his awful uncle Aleister takes him, his sister Ellie, and his wife and daughter along to meet with a rich client, Ben discovers a dragon in her backyard.  (The woman is upset that the advertised “Garden Incinerator” is sickly, and not performing as promised). 

As each new day passes, Ben’s eyes are opened to magical aspects of this world that he had not previously guessed existed.   He learns that this magic has seeped into his world from a realm called Eidolon, where extinct animals such as dinosaurs and sabre-tooth tigers exist alongside fantastic creatures like centaurs and goblins.  Through removing these animals and selling them in our world, Mr. Dodd and Uncle Aleister are robbing Eidolon of its the magical essence, and condemning these marvelous creatures to drastically shortened lives during which they will grow weaker and sicker until they eventually waste away. 

In Mr. Dodd’s Pet Emporium, Ben could have freed himself from the cat.  He could have refused to acknowledge a talking cat, consider its arguments, or feel sympathy for it.  Instead, Ben allows his preconceptions about the world to be overturned.  He meets each new day with a willingness to battle his fears and misgivings, and works hard to do right by each new animal (or creature) he meets.  In so doing, he learns the responsibility his mother promised, and becomes the type of hero we all yearn to be.

Dragon Dave

Kirk and Spock as Parents

After Ilia vanishes from the bridge in the movie “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” she reappears aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise.  Dr. McCoy determines that she is a probe, sent by V’ger, and this replica confirms that the beautiful Deltan navigator no longer lives.  Still, the probe possesses not only Ilia’s looks, but also many of the dead woman’s mannerisms.  As Commander Will Decker once had a relationship with Ilia, he gives her replica a tour of the Enterprise, hoping he can learn as much about V’ger through the probe as V’ger learns about the ship and its crew.

Spock is concerned that the Ilia replica is their sole source of information about this vast alien consciousness that is traveling toward Earth, so he steals a space suit and departs the ship.  He travels through vast chambers within V’ger, and amid the darkness, sees immense holographic images, including a planet, the Federation space station Epsilon 9 (which, like the Klingon ships, vanished amid powerful bursts of white energy), and a giant image of Ilia.

In Marvel Comics’ “Star Trek” Vol. 1, Issue #3, writer Marv Wolfman again diverges from Harold Livingston’s script.  In his version, Captain Kirk immediately learns of Spock’s unapproved jaunt, suits up, and pursues him.  

Unlike his half-Vulcan Science Officer, a crystalline swarm attacks Kirk, and must Spock delay his journey ahead of the ship. 

He jets over to Kirk, and banishes the attacking crystals with a few well-aimed phaser shots.  Kirk and Spock then journey together into V’ger. 

Instead of holographic images that illuminate the surrounding darkness, the men travel through lighted caverns.  Instead of projections powered by plasma energy, Spock deduces that V’ger’s memory is stored by highly efficient crystals, which have recorded everything they destroyed, from Ilia, to the Epsilon 9 space station, to the three Klingon ships that attacked the space cloud at the beginning of the film.  

Wolfman’s changes give us more interaction between the story’s two main protagonists, tell us more about how V’ger functions, and better link the Klingons’ disappearance to the overall plot.  By showing us caverns of light, he connects V'ger's destructive energy with its “memory,” as well as how this alien consciousness learns (or gains enlightenment).  People and things may be dead in a corporeal sense, but they remain very much alive to this vast alien entity.  Thus, Wolfman perpetuates the theme he began in Issue #1 (see last month's entry "Klingons and the Book of Genesis"), when he narrated: 

“In the beginning there was darkness.  

Then God said 'Let there be light.'  

...and the light was good.”

Of course, the humans, the Federation, and the Klingons disagree with V’ger’s assessment.  But then, V’ger cannot comprehend how its actions affect others.  As with a child, lecturing it will do no good.  Kirk and Spock must help this growing alien entity develop a more mature viewpoint, one that respects others’ rights and differences, and recognizes its responsibility as a steward of the universe.  Unfortunately, instead of having eighteen years in which to nurture their child, only a few hours remain before the cloud reaches Earth.  But then, whoever said that parenting was easy?

Dragon Dave 

Roald Dahl: The Importance of Mothers Part 2

Alas, our See's Easter Eggs have vanished.
Please come to our aid, Willy Wonka!

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie lives in a small house with his mother and father, who care for his four grandparents.  As the house is small, his grandparents share the bed, while Charlie and his parents sleep on the floor.  As his father’s meager wages from the toothpaste factory must satisfy all their needs, Charlie’s mother has little money for food, and sometimes she and his father miss a meal to ensure Charlie has enough to eat.  But when his father loses his job, and only brings home a fraction of his former pay shoveling snow, Charlie refuses to take their portion of food.  Instead, he stops playing, and refuses to do anything that will make his body burn precious calories.  Even so, he grows dangerously thin.

Contrast Charlie with Augustus Gloop, a nine-year-old boy who finds the first Golden Ticket for a tour of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.  He was, in Roald Dahl's words, so enormously fat he looked as though he had been blown up with a powerful pump.  Great flabby folds of fat bulged out from every part of his body, and his face was like a monstrous ball of dough with two small greedy curranty eyes peering out upon the world. 

“I just knew Augustus would find a Golden Ticket,” his mother had told the newspapermen.  “He eats so many candy bars a day that it was almost impossible for him not to find one.  Eating is his hobby, you know.  That’s all he’s interested in.  But still, that’s better than being a hooligan and shooting off zip guns and things like that in his spare time, isn’t it?”

Or how about Veruca Salt, the girl who lived with her rich parents?  When she heard about the Golden Tickets, she told her father that she simply had to have one.  So her father, who owns a peanut business, stops buying peanuts and buys Wonka candy bars by the hundreds of thousands.  Each night, his father went home to find his daughter lying on the floor for hours, kicking and yelling and screaming for her Golden Ticket.  So on the third day, one of his workers found a ticket inside a candy bar wrapper.  The newspaper carried a picture of Veruca sitting between her beaming parents, and the girl was grinning from ear to ear.  

Better yet, meet the third lucky ticket holder, Violet Beauregard.  She stands on a chair in her living room, loudly telling the assembled reporters how much she enjoys chewing gum all the time.  “My mother says it’s not ladylike and it looks ugly to see a girl’s jaws going up and down like mine do all the time, but I don’t agree.  And who’s she to criticize, anyway, because if you ask me, I’d say that her jaws are going up and down almost as much as mine are just from yelling at me every minute of the day.”

“Now Violet,” Mrs. Beauregard said from a far corner of the room where she was standing on the piano to avoid being trampled by the mob.

“All right, Mother, keep your hair on!” Miss Beauregard shouted, and goes on to tell the reporters about her record for continuous gum chewing.

Strangely, the fourth ticket holder, Mike Teavee, grows annoyed by the reporters who swarm his living room.  “Can’t you fools see I’m watching television?” he asks angrily, “I wish you wouldn’t interrupt.”  He then goes on to tell the reporters how much he enjoys all the shows involving guns and gangsters and shootings.  “Their terrific, those gangsters!” he says.  “Especially when they start pumping each other full of lead, or flashing the old stilettos, or giving each other the one-two-three with their knuckle-dusters!  Oh boy, what wouldn’t I give to be doing that myself!”

Clearly, a mother’s presence alone is not enough.  For a person to grow up respectful of others, and capable of acting responsibly in society, more is required.

On the day of the tour, the other four children show up with both parents, who are beaming and dressed to the hilt.  Charlie’s father decided he didn’t deserve to go, but Charlie’s grandpa Joe did, as he had fed the boy’s dreams of touring Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.  And his mother feels it’s her duty to stay home and care for the other three grandparents, so she consigns Charlie to his grandfather’s care, knowing that her presence is not necessary for the boy to conduct himself properly during the tour.

Despite the presence of both parents, the other four lucky ticket holders lack Charlie’s maturity and discipline, and come to grief amid so many fantastic temptations.  Charlie, on the other hand…well, let’s just say that he does his mother proud.

Dragon Dave