TDIRS: The Grey King
Mar. 21st, 2003 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyI retreated into books today.
Read Murder in Scorpio. Not bad, although you could hear the plot groaning in places, and it had some of the bad American cozy traits: relentless proffering of physical details, a kind of artificiality about the world ... can't put my finger on it quite.
Read The Vanished Child and am now torn between wishing I could write like that and a desperate urge to go out and get The Knowledge of Water and A Citizen of the Country right now. Which I'm not gonna.
And I finished The Grey King.
I'm not familiar with Welsh mythology/folklore, and I'm actually rather bored by Arthurian stories, so there may be all kinds of stuff I'm missing. Please feel at liberty to enlighten me. *g*
I have a complete weakness for amnesia stories. They fascinate me, and amnesia in novels tends to be a good reliable source of angst. So the first 30 pages of TGK are probably my favorite; I find Will as an ordinary boy who senses things he cannot understand rather more compelling than Will the Old One, or any of the other ordinary children in the series (with a partial exception for Bran). But overall, TGK does a much better job than either TDIR or Greenwitch of playing off the normal against the supernatural, showing just how fast Will has to juggle to keep the two sides of his life from destroying each other. And Will in this book--as markedly not in Greenwitch--acts like a normal boy, especially in his friendship with Bran.
TGK is also unique in the series because the important elements of the plot are those carried by the mortal characters. Will's quest--find the harp, wake the Sleepers--is intertwined with and overpowered by the unfolding story between Bran and Owen Davies, Caradog Prichard, and John Rowlands. The most cataclysmic and powerful thing that happens in the entire book is Cafall's death at Prichard's hands.
I hate that moment. I make myself read it every time, because it is so desperately important, and because it's so beautifully written, and every time I hate it. I hate Caradog Prichard far more than I hate the Brenin Llwyd, and I always want someone to stop him, one of the other men to see the milgwn, for things not to happen as they do. I've owned this book for almost nineteen years, and the pain of Cafall's death is still sharp and terrible.
I would argue that's one reason TGK deserved the Newberry.
My point, from which I have slightly sidetracked myself, is that the STORY that powers TGK is the story of Owen Davies and Caradog Prichard and the effect of that story on Bran. That story's effect is heightened by Bran's real identity and the growing hold the Brenin Llwyd gains over Prichard's mind, and counterpointed by Will's quest for the harp and the Sleepers, but here the realistic elements overpower the supernatural. The dead sheep are as much a life or death matter as the golden harp. Caradog Prichard is a far more dangerous enemy than the Brenin Llwyd, because he is not bound by any rules.
Cooper's skill at structure has improved immensely (from my perspective, which is that The Dark Is Rising has a very weak structure), as the two stories, the mundane and the supernatural, are interwoven in such a way that they can't be picked apart. Caradog Prichard and the Brenin Llwyd are like two sides of the same coin, just as Bran's identity as Arthur's son is inseparable from his difficult relationship with Owen Davies.
Cooper also starts to insist here, as she has not particularly before, that the true power--and even more importantly, true morality--lies with the mortals, a motif embodied in John Rowlands. John Rowlands says to Will:
And Will agrees, putting it even more starkly: "For us, there is only the destiny. Like a job to be done. We are here simply to save the world from the Dark" (Cooper 146). It becomes clear here, and clearer in Silver on the Tree, that the Light's puissance is limited, that because it cannot deal in shades of gray, it can do nothing for men but save them from the ultimate blackness of the Dark. It cannot save them from themselves; it cannot make their decisions for them. One of the ways, I think, in which the series mirrors the process of growing up which is the main task of its major characters, is the way in which the supernatural powers become less and less helpful, less and less relevant In OSUS, Merriman protects and the children trust him implicitly. TDIR is all about Will's burgeoning power and mortal characters are secondary, when present at all. Greenwitch begins to blend the two--and to show the ways in which they do not and cannot blend. Here in TGK, the novels--and the readers--are beginning to outgrow the idea that magic can solve everything. Nothing can bring Cafall back. Nothing can mend the eleven years of grief and guilt that have trampled Owen Davies down into nearly nothing. The Light's great quest is irrelevant to the mortal men--except insofar as the Brenin Llwyd's defensive malice brings strife and grief among them. The Light can't FIX things. That's not what it's for.
Will's power as an Old One fails him, trips him up, leaves him unable to deal with his mortal opponents and his own physical weakness. It is the men who make choices and decisions, not merely Caradog Prichard's mad obsession, but Bran overcoming his grief and anger to warn Will, Owen Davies's love for Guenevere, his decision to finally tell Bram the truth, his standing up to Caradog Prichard, John Rowlands's calm acceptance of Will for what he is and his desire to help without the burden of knowledge.
As in TDIR, the women are largely background figures: Betty Prichard who never appears on stage and can do nothing with her husband (and one does wonder what kind of woman she is, to be married to a man like that); Aunt Jen, who nurtures; Megan Ty-Bont Jones, who so splendidly lies to Caradog Prichard; and of course Guenevere, like Helen of Troy, leaving a trail of dissension and heart-break wherever she goes. Cooper does not demonize Guenevere; she is in no sense responsible for Prichard's petty evil. But I think she is to blame for weakness--the prior weakness of betraying Arthur, and the great weakness of abandoning her son, abandoning the man who loves her. She makes bad decisions--as Merriman has done, as Will has done--and Cooper goes ahead and lets the consequences of those decisions play out.
Looking ahead to Silver on the Tree for a moment, I can never make up my mind in TGK whether Cooper has already decided on Blodwen Rowlands's other identity. Is she the lord in the sky blue cloak? Will (who, as TDIR and Greenwitch establish, has a certain unthinkingly sexist attitude and has not yet fully learned his lesson about it) never sees that lord clearly enough for any kind of identification. And what of the only mention of her as Blodwen Rowlands in the story?
And over the page:
And then the bit that makes my blood run just slightly cold: "Blodwen and Mrs. Evans, your auntie, looked after Bran between them" (Cooper 125). It is certainly clear that Blodwen Rowlands--who makes no on-stage appearance in TGK--had rather a lot to do with the beginning of Bran's life in modern Wales. And if John Rowlands arrived just in time to prevent Owen Davies from killing Caradog Prichard ... well, eleven years later the Dark would have been in a bit of a bind if it hadn't had Caradog Prichard like putty in its paws. I'm not going to lean on it too heavily, just note that Blodwen Rowlands is introduced into the background as someone with a special interest in Bran.
This is a book about mortality, about the realization that the price of life is death, and the price of love is loss. This is why it is more than just a children's adventure story, why it is the best of the TDIRS books--why it is beautiful and painful and long-lingering in the mind.
WORKS CITED
Cooper, Susan. The Grey King. The Dark Is Rising Sequence 4. New York: Aladdin-Atheneum, 1975.
Read Murder in Scorpio. Not bad, although you could hear the plot groaning in places, and it had some of the bad American cozy traits: relentless proffering of physical details, a kind of artificiality about the world ... can't put my finger on it quite.
Read The Vanished Child and am now torn between wishing I could write like that and a desperate urge to go out and get The Knowledge of Water and A Citizen of the Country right now. Which I'm not gonna.
And I finished The Grey King.
I'm not familiar with Welsh mythology/folklore, and I'm actually rather bored by Arthurian stories, so there may be all kinds of stuff I'm missing. Please feel at liberty to enlighten me. *g*
I have a complete weakness for amnesia stories. They fascinate me, and amnesia in novels tends to be a good reliable source of angst. So the first 30 pages of TGK are probably my favorite; I find Will as an ordinary boy who senses things he cannot understand rather more compelling than Will the Old One, or any of the other ordinary children in the series (with a partial exception for Bran). But overall, TGK does a much better job than either TDIR or Greenwitch of playing off the normal against the supernatural, showing just how fast Will has to juggle to keep the two sides of his life from destroying each other. And Will in this book--as markedly not in Greenwitch--acts like a normal boy, especially in his friendship with Bran.
TGK is also unique in the series because the important elements of the plot are those carried by the mortal characters. Will's quest--find the harp, wake the Sleepers--is intertwined with and overpowered by the unfolding story between Bran and Owen Davies, Caradog Prichard, and John Rowlands. The most cataclysmic and powerful thing that happens in the entire book is Cafall's death at Prichard's hands.
I hate that moment. I make myself read it every time, because it is so desperately important, and because it's so beautifully written, and every time I hate it. I hate Caradog Prichard far more than I hate the Brenin Llwyd, and I always want someone to stop him, one of the other men to see the milgwn, for things not to happen as they do. I've owned this book for almost nineteen years, and the pain of Cafall's death is still sharp and terrible.
I would argue that's one reason TGK deserved the Newberry.
My point, from which I have slightly sidetracked myself, is that the STORY that powers TGK is the story of Owen Davies and Caradog Prichard and the effect of that story on Bran. That story's effect is heightened by Bran's real identity and the growing hold the Brenin Llwyd gains over Prichard's mind, and counterpointed by Will's quest for the harp and the Sleepers, but here the realistic elements overpower the supernatural. The dead sheep are as much a life or death matter as the golden harp. Caradog Prichard is a far more dangerous enemy than the Brenin Llwyd, because he is not bound by any rules.
Cooper's skill at structure has improved immensely (from my perspective, which is that The Dark Is Rising has a very weak structure), as the two stories, the mundane and the supernatural, are interwoven in such a way that they can't be picked apart. Caradog Prichard and the Brenin Llwyd are like two sides of the same coin, just as Bran's identity as Arthur's son is inseparable from his difficult relationship with Owen Davies.
Cooper also starts to insist here, as she has not particularly before, that the true power--and even more importantly, true morality--lies with the mortals, a motif embodied in John Rowlands. John Rowlands says to Will:
... those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun. ... At the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the Universe.
(Cooper 145-6)
And Will agrees, putting it even more starkly: "For us, there is only the destiny. Like a job to be done. We are here simply to save the world from the Dark" (Cooper 146). It becomes clear here, and clearer in Silver on the Tree, that the Light's puissance is limited, that because it cannot deal in shades of gray, it can do nothing for men but save them from the ultimate blackness of the Dark. It cannot save them from themselves; it cannot make their decisions for them. One of the ways, I think, in which the series mirrors the process of growing up which is the main task of its major characters, is the way in which the supernatural powers become less and less helpful, less and less relevant In OSUS, Merriman protects and the children trust him implicitly. TDIR is all about Will's burgeoning power and mortal characters are secondary, when present at all. Greenwitch begins to blend the two--and to show the ways in which they do not and cannot blend. Here in TGK, the novels--and the readers--are beginning to outgrow the idea that magic can solve everything. Nothing can bring Cafall back. Nothing can mend the eleven years of grief and guilt that have trampled Owen Davies down into nearly nothing. The Light's great quest is irrelevant to the mortal men--except insofar as the Brenin Llwyd's defensive malice brings strife and grief among them. The Light can't FIX things. That's not what it's for.
Will's power as an Old One fails him, trips him up, leaves him unable to deal with his mortal opponents and his own physical weakness. It is the men who make choices and decisions, not merely Caradog Prichard's mad obsession, but Bran overcoming his grief and anger to warn Will, Owen Davies's love for Guenevere, his decision to finally tell Bram the truth, his standing up to Caradog Prichard, John Rowlands's calm acceptance of Will for what he is and his desire to help without the burden of knowledge.
As in TDIR, the women are largely background figures: Betty Prichard who never appears on stage and can do nothing with her husband (and one does wonder what kind of woman she is, to be married to a man like that); Aunt Jen, who nurtures; Megan Ty-Bont Jones, who so splendidly lies to Caradog Prichard; and of course Guenevere, like Helen of Troy, leaving a trail of dissension and heart-break wherever she goes. Cooper does not demonize Guenevere; she is in no sense responsible for Prichard's petty evil. But I think she is to blame for weakness--the prior weakness of betraying Arthur, and the great weakness of abandoning her son, abandoning the man who loves her. She makes bad decisions--as Merriman has done, as Will has done--and Cooper goes ahead and lets the consequences of those decisions play out.
Looking ahead to Silver on the Tree for a moment, I can never make up my mind in TGK whether Cooper has already decided on Blodwen Rowlands's other identity. Is she the lord in the sky blue cloak? Will (who, as TDIR and Greenwitch establish, has a certain unthinkingly sexist attitude and has not yet fully learned his lesson about it) never sees that lord clearly enough for any kind of identification. And what of the only mention of her as Blodwen Rowlands in the story?
... I was not there, but my wife was, and he [Owen Davies] told her about Gwen and the baby. My Blodwen has a warm heart and a good ear. She said he was like a man on fire, glowing, he had to tell somebody . . .
(Cooper 123)
And over the page:
Then I arrived, and a good thing I did, or he [Owen Davies] would have killed the man [Caradog Prichard]. Blodwen had sent me with some things for the baby.
(Cooper 124)
And then the bit that makes my blood run just slightly cold: "Blodwen and Mrs. Evans, your auntie, looked after Bran between them" (Cooper 125). It is certainly clear that Blodwen Rowlands--who makes no on-stage appearance in TGK--had rather a lot to do with the beginning of Bran's life in modern Wales. And if John Rowlands arrived just in time to prevent Owen Davies from killing Caradog Prichard ... well, eleven years later the Dark would have been in a bit of a bind if it hadn't had Caradog Prichard like putty in its paws. I'm not going to lean on it too heavily, just note that Blodwen Rowlands is introduced into the background as someone with a special interest in Bran.
This is a book about mortality, about the realization that the price of life is death, and the price of love is loss. This is why it is more than just a children's adventure story, why it is the best of the TDIRS books--why it is beautiful and painful and long-lingering in the mind.
WORKS CITED
Cooper, Susan. The Grey King. The Dark Is Rising Sequence 4. New York: Aladdin-Atheneum, 1975.
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-24 12:32 pm (UTC)I think the world has room for a noir Arthur, and you're the person to do it.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-24 02:41 pm (UTC)The thing's getting weirder by the second; I'm now describing it in my notes as an Arthurian steampunk pre-Raphaelite comedy of manners noir mystery. And I think this is where the wombat ends up. But there's all kinds of stuff I want to do with it ... if I can just figure out where to begin. And, of course, figure out why Kay murders Loheris. But I think I need to get into the world before I struggle with that.
Perhaps it begins with Medraut's childhood. Ponder.
I don't think I've read that poem, although it sounds familiar--aside from being by Mike, I mean.