Magični Realizem V Delih Sedem Minut Čez Polnoč in Ocean Na Koncu Ceste
UNIVERZA V MARIBORU FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA ODDELEK ZA ANGLISTIKO IN AMERIKANISTIKO
MAGISTRSKO DELO MAGIČNI REALIZEM V DELIH SEDEM MINUT ČEZ POLNOČ IN OCEAN NA KONCU CESTE
Mentor: Kandidatka: izr. prof. dr. Tomaž Onič Monja Poštrak
Maribor, 2018
UNIVERZA V MARIBORU FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA ODDELEK ZA ANGLISTIKO IN AMERIKANISTIKO
MAGISTRSKO DELO MAGICAL REALISM IN A MONSTER CALLS AND THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE
Mentor: Kandidatka: izr. prof. dr. Tomaž Onič Monja Poštrak
Maribor, 2018
Lektorica: red. prof. dr. Michelle Gadpaille Lektorica povzetka: mag. Margit Berlič Ferlinc, prof. ang. in slo Prevajalka: mag. Margit Berlič Ferlinc, prof. ang. in slo
ZAHVALA
Iskreno se zahvaljujem svojemu mentorju izr. prof. dr. Tomažu Oniču za sprejeto mentorstvo in za strokovno vodenje ter nasvete pri izdelavi magistrskega dela.
I would also like to sincerely thank Prof. Dr. Michelle Gadpaille for her linguistic advice and guidance.
Prisrčna hvala tudi vama, mami in ati, da sta mi stala ob strani skozi vsa leta mojega študija in me vzpodbujala. Hvala tudi tebi, Odi, moj štirinožni prijatelj.
Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt. Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
UNIVERZA V MARIBORU ______Filozofska fakulteta______(ime članice UM)
IZJAVA O AVTORSTVU IN ISTOVETNOSTI TISKANE IN ELEKTRONSKE OBLIKE ZAKLJUČNEGA DELA
Ime in priimek študent‐a/‐ke: _Monja Poštrak______Študijski program: _POUČEVANJE ANGLEŠČINE IN ZGODOVINA______Naslov zaključnega dela: ___MAGIČNI REALIZEM V DELIH SEDEM MINUT ČEZ POLNOČ IN OCEAN NA KONCU CESTE (MAGICAL REALISM IN A MONSTER CALLS AND THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE)______Mentor: _izr. prof. dr. Tomaž Onič ______Somentor: ______
Podpisan‐i/‐a študent/‐ka _MONJA POŠTRAK______izjavljam, da je zaključno delo rezultat mojega samostojnega dela, ki sem ga izdelal/‐a ob pomoči mentor‐ja/‐ice oz. somentor‐ja/‐ice; izjavljam, da sem pridobil/‐a vsa potrebna soglasja za uporabo podatkov in avtorskih del v zaključnem delu in jih v zaključnem delu jasno in ustrezno označil/‐a; na Univerzo v Mariboru neodplačno, neizključno, prostorsko in časovno neomejeno prenašam pravico shranitve avtorskega dela v elektronski obliki, pravico reproduciranja ter pravico ponuditi zaključno delo javnosti na svetovnem spletu preko DKUM; sem seznanjen/‐a, da bodo dela deponirana/objavljena v DKUM dostopna široki javnosti pod pogoji licence Creative Commons BY‐NC‐ND, kar vključuje tudi avtomatizirano indeksiranje preko spleta in obdelavo besedil za potrebe tekstovnega in podatkovnega rudarjenja in ekstrakcije znanja iz vsebin; uporabnikom se dovoli reproduciranje brez predelave avtorskega dela, distribuiranje, dajanje v najem in priobčitev javnosti samega izvirnega avtorskega dela, in sicer pod pogojem, da navedejo avtorja in da ne gre za komercialno uporabo; dovoljujem objavo svojih osebnih podatkov, ki so navedeni v zaključnem delu in tej izjavi, skupaj z objavo zaključnega dela; izjavljam, da je tiskana oblika zaključnega dela istovetna elektronski obliki zaključnega dela, ki sem jo oddal/‐a za objavo v DKUM.
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Uveljavljam permisivnejšo obliko licence Creative Commons: ______(navedite obliko) ______
Začasna nedostopnost:
Zaključno delo zaradi zagotavljanja konkurenčne prednosti, zaščite poslovnih skrivnosti, varnosti ljudi in narave, varstva industrijske lastnine ali tajnosti podatkov naročnika:
______(naziv in naslov naročnika/institucije) ne sme biti javno dostopno do ______(datum odloga javne objave ne sme biti daljši kot 3 leta od zagovora dela). To se nanaša na tiskano in elektronsko obliko zaključnega dela. ______
Temporary unavailability: To ensure competition competition priority, protection of trade secrets, safety of people and nature, protection of industrial property or secrecy of customer's information, the thesis ______must not be accessible to the public till ______(delay date of thesis availability to the public must not exceed the period of 3 years after thesis defense). This applies to printed and electronic thesis forms. ______
Datum in kraj: Podpis študent‐a/‐ke:
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Podpis mentor‐ja/‐ice: ______(samo v primeru, če delo ne me biti javno dostopno)
Ime in priimek ter podpis odgovorne osebe naročnika in žig:
______(samo v primeru, če delo ne sme biti javno dostopno)
Abstract
Magical realism as a literary mode has been the cause of numerous debates since the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez in 1967, which the majority of critics consider to be the first magical realist novel. Magical realism has been frequently confused with fantasy and is still considered by some as the latter’s branch. Though there is no unified definition of magical realism, critics have agreed upon some of the most common characteristics. The present thesis makes use of Wendy B. Faris’s theoretical framework on the mode’s characteristics and applies it to A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.
In both novels, marvellous happenings are incorporated seamlessly into a realistic narrative, which is the basic definition of magical realism. The events are presented matter-of-factly; thus, readers perceive them as realistic. Both novels also contain the primary characteristics that define magical realism as a literary mode, according to Faris.
A Monster Calls has been adapted into a movie as well as translated into Slovene as Sedem minut čez polnoč. In the translation, magical realism retains its characteristics, since it is mainly a content based literary mode. In the movie, however, visual representations of the irreducible element, i.e. the yew tree monster, offer the viewers an opportunity to perceive it as ordinary.
Key words: magical realism, A Monster Calls, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Sedem minut čez polnoč
Povzetek
Magični realizem je bil v literaturi 20. stoletja razlog za številne debate, še posebej po izdaji dela Gabriela Garcíe Márqueza Sto let samote leta 1967, ki ga ima večina kritikov za prvi magičnorealistični roman. Literarno zvrst je še danes izjemno težko natančno opredeliti in dokončna definicija še ni bila oblikovana.
Kot prvi je pojem magični realizem uporabil nemški umetniški kritik Franz Roh leta 1925. S pojmom je poskušal poimenovati nov način slikanja, ki se je razlikoval od predhodne ekspresionistične umetnosti. Toda pojem ni ostal omejen zgolj na slikarsko področje, ampak se je kmalu pričel uveljavljati tudi na področju literature. Predvsem pomemben literarni razvoj je magični realizem doživel v Latinski Ameriki, s katero je povezanih tudi največ magičnorealistične literature.
Eden izmed poglavitnih razlogov za težave pri oblikovanju jasne in enotne definicije magičnega realizma je razvoj slednjega. V preteklosti so kritiki sicer podajali številne lastne definicije, vendar so se med sabo močno razlikovale in so največkrat v celoti prezrle zgodovino pojma. Tako so v drugi polovici 20. stoletja mnogi latinskoameriški pisatelji in literarni raziskovalci poskušali definirati Rohov magični realizem in Carpentierjev »lo real maravilloso«, pri čemer so sčasoma zanemarili Rohov pomen.
Nekateri kritiki in avtorji magični realizem povezujejo s fantastiko ter trdijo, da je zgolj del slednje. Poenotene definicije magičnega realizma še ni bilo podane, toda kljub temu so si kritiki enotni glede nekaterih njegovih značilnosti, predvsem glede t. i. matter-of-fact (tj. prozaičnega) načina pripovedovanja. Fantastična dogajanja so tako opisana brez posebnih komentarjev in so spretno vpletena v realistično ozadje. Bralec jih na tak način lažje sprejme kot realistične in tudi verjame, da so del sveta v pripovedi.
Poleg pomanjkanja jasnih definicij magičnega realizma stežka najdemo tudi točen seznam magičnorealističnih značilnosti. Slednje je uspelo podati Wendy B. Faris, ki je v dveh podrobnih raziskavah natančno opredelila, katere literarne značilnosti na eni strani magični realizem ločijo od drugih sočasnih literarnih zvrsti in ga na drugi strani postavljajo na pomembno mesto znotraj postmodernizma. Farisova je navedla dve skupini značilnosti, primarne in sekundarne, ter opisala tudi pripovedne tehnike, ki se največkrat pojavljajo v magičnorealističnih literarnih delih.
Pričujoča naloga s pomočjo teoretičnega okvirja magičnorealističnih značilnosti, ki ga je zasnovala Wendy B. Faris, v raziskovalnem delu analizira deli Patricka Nessa A Monster Calls (Sedem minut čez polnoč) in Neila Gaimana The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Pri tem poskuša dokazati, da čeprav sta deli največkrat uvrščeni v literarno zvrst fantastike, ju je kljub temu možno uvrstiti v žanr magičnega realizma. V obeh delih so čudežna dogajanja spretno vpeljana v realistično pripoved, kar je osnova magičnega realizma. Ta dogajanja so predstavljena prozaično, na t. i. način matter-of-fact, kar omogoča bralcem, da jih sprejmejo kot realistične.
Naloga podrobneje analizira primarne in sekundarne značilnosti po Farisovi ter nekatere pripovedne tehnike, ki se pojavljajo v magičnorealističnih delih. Tako najprej podrobneje razišče natančne opise magičnih dogajanj in predmetov, ki pripomorejo k temu, da bralec lažje sprejme obstoj čudežnega sveta. Le-ta je v magičnorealističnih pripovedih praktično enak našemu, toda z manjšo razliko – fantastična dogajanja, osebe in predmeti so resnična. Nadalje se naloga osredotoči na magične elemente in odnos bralcev do slednjih. Za magičnorealistična dela je namreč značilno, da lahko bralec med prebiranjem zgodbe bodisi občuti dvom bodisi okleva med različnimi razumevanji fantastičnih dogajanj.
Delo A Monster Calls je bilo prirejeno tudi v istoimenski film in prevedeno v slovenščino pod naslovom Sedem minut čez polnoč. Naloga poda tudi primerjavo izhodiščnega dela s filmom in prevodom, čeprav pri tem ne poda poglobljene analize. Obe področji, predvsem magični realizem v filmu, sta namreč obsežni in bi tako lahko bili samostojni raziskavi. Naloga tako poskuša zgolj dokazati, katere magičnorealistične značilnosti so se iz prvotnega knjižnega dela v angleščini ohranile v filmu in v prevodu.
Magični realizem se običajno ne uvršča med filmske kategorije. Toda kljub temu nekateri filmi kažejo podobnosti z magičnorealističnimi značilnostmi in jih lahko zatorej analiziramo kot takšne. Tako lahko tehnike, ki jih običajno uporabljamo pri raziskavi magičnorealističnih književnih del, uporabimo tudi za analiziranje nekaterih filmov. Poleg tega lahko ponujajo filmi, posneti po knjižnih predlogah magičnorealističnih del, še dodaten kriterij pri analiziranju. Prehod s tiskanega na vizualni medij nam namreč omogoča, da opazujemo, kako vključitev vizualnih elementov vpliva na magičnorealistično pripoved.
S prevodom se vsebina zgodbe ohrani in posledično se ohrani tudi magični realizem. Glavne značilnosti slednjega so namreč vezane bolj na vsebino kot na samo besedišče pripovedi. Prozaični oziroma t. i. matter-of-fact način opisovanja dogajanj ostane in magični dogodki
so še vedno predstavljeni tako, da so neopazno vpleteni v realistično dogajanje. Prav tako je tudi glavni magični lik (tj. tisina pošast) predstavljen tako, da ga bralec z lahkoto sprejme kot realistični del sveta v pripovedi. Vendar so kljub temu prisotne manjše razlike, ki lahko pri bralcu povzročijo dvom oziroma negotovost glede resničnosti magičnih elementov. Toda te razlike so majhne in praktično neopazne ter ne vplivajo na magični realizem.
Ključne besede: magični realizem, A Monster Calls, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Sedem minut čez polnoč.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ...... 1
2 Magical Realism ...... 3
2.1 Origins of Magical Realism ...... 3
2.2 Definition of the Term ...... 7
2.3 Main Characteristics of Magical Realism ...... 9
2.3.1 Understanding Magical Realist Characteristics According to Wendy B. Faris . 10
2.4 Magical Realism in Film ...... 15
2.5 Magical Realism in Children’s Literature ...... 15
3 Magical Realist Elements in A Monster Calls and The Ocean at the End of the Lane .... 18
3.1 Real-World Setting and Characters ...... 18
3.2 Fantastical Elements ...... 19
3.2.1 The Irreducible Element ...... 19
3.2.2 Merging the Realms ...... 23
3.2.3 Disturbed Perception of Time and Space ...... 24
3.2.4 The Presence of Ancient Systems of Belief and Lore ...... 25
3.2.5 Unsettling Doubts ...... 27
3.3 Linguistic Aspects ...... 28
3.3.1 Metafictional Elements ...... 28
3.3.2 Repetition and Mirroring ...... 31
3.3.3 Verbal Magic ...... 33
3.4 Narrative Style ...... 33
3.4.1 Matter-of-fact Narrative ...... 34 i
3.4.2 An Abundance of Realistic Details ...... 36
4 A Monster Calls between Genres and Languages ...... 38
4.1 Magical Realism in the Film A Monster Calls ...... 38
4.2 A Comparison of Magical Realist Elements in A Monster Calls and Its Slovene Translation Sedem minut čez polnoč ...... 40
5 Conclusion ...... 42
6 Works Cited ...... 44
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1 Introduction
Magical realism is a literary mode most frequently connected to the works of Latin American writers of the second half of the 20th century. Though it has frequently been confused with fantasy, critics have defined it as its own literary mode. There is still no unified definition of magical realism, and critics are still exploring its characteristics. They do agree, however, that for a literary work to be magical realist, extraordinary happenings need to be incorporated into a realistic narrative in such a way that the readers perceive them as realist.
Patrick Ness writes mainly for young adult audiences. He wrote A Monster Calls after the original idea of Siobhan Dowd, another young adult novelist who was not able to finish the novel herself. “She had the characters, a premise, and a beginning. What she didn’t have, unfortunately, was time” (Ness 2016, 7).
A Monster Calls is a story about Conor whose mother is fighting cancer. One night, Conor observes a yew tree on the hill next to his house transform into a monster. The latter comes to Conor and tells him that he was the reason it has come. In the following nights, the monster visits Conor several more times and tells him three stories: one of a king who lost most of his loved ones to battles and had to remarry; one of a parson who betrayed his own beliefs to try and save his daughters; and one of an invisible man who grew tired of being invisible. After the monster’s stories, it is time for Conor to tell the monster his tale, which turns out to be the tale of his fear of his mother passing away.
Neil Gaiman is a well-known writer for both adult and child audiences. His tales are usually full of marvellous and extraordinary happenings presented in a realistic narrative. Such an example is The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The novel received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2014, and it was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards in 2013, among other awards. Although it is mainly considered to be fantasy, the following thesis aims to propose that it can be considered as magical realist.
The story of The Ocean at the End of the Lane follows an adult narrator, whose name is never revealed, attending a funeral near his childhood home. After returning from the ceremony and making his way towards his sister’s house, he somehow winds up at a farm, located at the end of a lane where he used to live as a child. There, he is greeted by an old woman whom he recognizes as Mrs Hempstock, the mother of his childhood friend Lettie. The narrator takes a seat next to the pond behind the farm and remembers that Lettie called
1 the pond her ocean. Then, the memories of more than forty years ago start coming back to him, and he tells us the story of his magical experience with Lettie when he was seven years old. It all began with the narrator’s family leasing rooms in their enormous house in order to get additional income. One day, an opal miner from South Africa arrives to stay with the narrator’s family. Shortly after, however, he commits suicide in the family car. On the day the police find his body, Lettie Hempstock and the narrator meet for the first time. She takes him to her family’s farm where she lives together with her mother and grandmother. It quickly becomes clear that the Hempstock women have special abilities. They know exactly what the police investigating the opal miner’s death are doing and are familiar with the content of the opal miner’s final letter. In the following days, the narrator joins Lettie on her “quest” to the forest on her family’s farm to try and make a creature, i.e. a “flea” leave, because it is causing trouble. They manage to make it disappear, but it burrows into the sole of the narrator’s foot and makes its way into his world. The “flea” then takes the shape of Ursula Monkton, the narrator’s family’s new nanny and housekeeper. After finding out about her nature, the narrator manages to escape to the Hempstocks. Lettie helps him defeat the “flea”, but at a great cost: she almost loses her life. Her mother gives her to the pond, i.e. the ocean where she will sleep until she is well enough.
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2 Magical Realism
2.1 Origins of Magical Realism
The term “magical realism” originated in the early 1920s in the Weimar Republic. The German art critic Franz Roh first used the term “magischer Realismus” (translated by Maggie Ann Bowers as “magic realism”) in his 1925 book called Nach-Expressionismus, Magischer Realismus: Probleme der neusten europäischen Malerei (Post-expressionism, Magic Realism: Problems of the Most Recent European Painting). He used the term to define a new painting style that succeeded expressionist art. Some critics, however, claim that it was the director of the Museum of Art in Mannheim, Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, who first came up with the term when he prepared a painting exhibition in 1923. But Hartlaub abandoned the term and instead started using the term “neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivity). Roh abandoned the term “magischer Realismus” as well in favour of Hartlaub’s New Objectivity. The latter quickly became the established term for the new post- expressionist painting style in Germany (Bowers 2004, 8).
The influence of Roh’s magic realism quickly spread from Germany to other European countries, such as the Netherlands, France and Italy. The artistic movement had the most noteworthy impact on the Italian writer Massimo Bontempelli. In 1926, he founded the literary journal 900 in which magic realist writings and critiques were published. Despite the fact that the works in the magazine seemed sometimes more fantastical than magic realist, he is still considered to be the first magic realist creative writer (Bowers 2004, 12).
In the late 1920s, magic realism made its way to Latin America where it would develop most notably as a literary genre. In 1927, Roh’s book was partially translated into Spanish. The translation was published in José Ortega y Gasset’s Revista de Occidente, a Madrid-based literary magazine. The translation had one key difference from the German original, though: in the title, “realismo mágico” was placed before “post expresionismo” (Guenther 1995, 55). Revista de Occidente’s readership base did not stay limited to Spain; it also reached Latin America. With the publication of Roh’s text in Revista de Occidente, magic realism found its way to Latin America as early as 1928, but it was not considered to be a strictly Latin American phenomenon until Arturo Uslar Pietri used it in 1949 in his book Letras y hombres de Venezuela (Reeds 2013, 54).
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After the introduction of magic realism in Latin America with the translation of Roh’s text, the cultural migration from Europe to the Americas in the 1930s and 1940s played an important role in the term’s dissemination. Among the exiles who fled the terror of the Third Reich, many were important cultural figures who continued their work in Latin America (Guenther; 1995). Another important element in the development of magical realism in Latin America involved the role of two diplomats and writers: Arturo Uslar Pietri, a Venezuelan, and Alejo Carpentier, a French-Russian Cuban. During the 1920s and 1930s, they lived in Paris, where they were strongly influenced by European artistic movements, including magic realism (Bowers; 2004). When Uslar Pietri first used the term magic realism in 1949, he did not mention Roh. Only in 1986 did he admit that the term came from the German art critic. In the same year, Alejo Carpentier published his famous prologue to El reino de este mundo in which he first used the term “lo real maravilloso” to describe the uniqueness of the Latin American flora and fauna (Reeds 2013, 52). Unlike magic realism, the term “magical realism” was first used by Angel Flores in his essay “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction”, published in 1955. Flores named Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine writer, as the first magical realist and his 1935 collection of short stories Historia universal de la infamia as the starting point of Latin American magical realism (Flores 1955, 189).
Magical realism’s literary production was most distinguished in Latin America during the “Boom” of the 1960s and 1970s. Gabriel García Márquez’ novel Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967) is considered to be one of the prime examples of magical realism. As Regina James claims, “in modern usage, the text itself has shaped the definition [of the term]” (quoted in Aldea 2011, 41). Because of the success of his novel, García Márquez is most closely associated with magical realism in Latin America and is also considered to be one of the most influential magical realists. His style of writing, especially his matter-of-fact narrative, inspired many writers to adopt the magical realist mode. Furthermore, he contributed to establishing a closer connection between magical realism and Latin American literature (Bowers 2004, 32). In the abundance of critical studies available on One Hundred Years of Solitude, the interpretations and approaches employed consider the magical elements in the novel to be subordinate to recollections of history and politics (Aldea 2011, 41).
In addition to García Márquez, magical realism is also frequently associated with Jorge Luis Borges who, as Sieber claims, develops the basis for magical realism through “his new fiction or nueva narrativa” (2012, 174). The latter sets the stage for the “Boom” in magical
4 realist literary production in Latin America in the late 1960s and 1970s. Other influential magical realist authors in Latin America include Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas-Llosa, Isabel Allende, José Lezanam Lima, Miguel Angel Asturias, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rolfo, Maria Luisa Bombal, Laura Esquvel, Rosario Castellanos, Elena Garro and others (Sieber 2012, 168).
Magical realism did not remain limited to Latin America. In the early 1970s, it began spreading to other continents. The most noteworthy locations are Canada, the Caribbean, West and South Africa, India, the United States, England, Australia and New Zealand. Outside Latin America, perhaps the most acknowledged writer is Salman Rushdie, a British- Indian writer. Contrary to Latin America, the literary production of magical realism in these countries has not been present long enough to be able to trace influences between individual magical realists. Additionally, the writings do not occupy the mainstream of these countries’ overall literary production. In India, for example, two further acknowledged and prised magical realists, apart from Rushdie, are Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy. Together, the three do not form their own group or movement in Indian literature. They are unrelated to each other and are even located in different countries. Rushdie switches between living in England, India and New York; Ghosh lives between the United States and India, while Roy remains in India (Bowers 2004, 45, 46).
On the other hand, the development of magical realism in Canada is more substantial than in India. In the 1970s, it developed as a prominent sub-genre of Canadian literature. With the writings of Canadian magical realists, such as Robert Kroetsch, Jack Hodgins, Gail Anderson-Dargat and Michael Ondaatje, the literary mode became a means for Canadian regions to express themselves (Bowers 2004, 47-50). In the United States during the late 1980s, the prevailing form of magical realism has a strong cross-cultural and gender aspect. These magical realists were predominantly women who use magical realism for their political agenda concerning gender and the marginalization of cultures. The African American Toni Morrison’s magical realist narratives, for example, are influenced by African American oral folklore and mythical elements from West African culture. Similarly, Maxine Hong Kingston incorporates Chinese oral storytelling traditions. Often connected to both Morrison and Hong Kingston is the Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, who includes Native American and Native Mexican mythical and folkloric elements into her narratives (Bowers 2004, 54, 55).
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The literary production of magical realism in Africa was closely connected with postcolonialism, especially in the South and West. West African Writers, such as Ben Okri and Amos Tutuola, combine the western novel form and western themes (e.g. colonialism and religion) with local lore, thus producing a cross-cultural literature (Bowers 2004, 53). As the critic Brenda Cooper observes, “African writers very often adhere to this animism, incorporate spirits, ancestors and talking animals, in stories, both adapted folktales and newly invented yarns, in order to express their passions, their aesthetics and their politics.” (quoted in Bowers 2004, 53). The magical realism found in South Africa differs, though, because this part of the continent has a notable history of European settlement, causing its colonial history and culture to be significantly different. The most influential South African magical realist is André Brink, whose writings on the position of Afrikaners are becoming more widely acknowledge in both English and Afrikaans literature (Bowers 2004, 54).
In mainland Europe, magical realism remained closely connected to the original ideas of Roh and was not substantially influenced by the Latin American variant of the mode. Most European magical realists were influenced by Massimo Bontempelli and his literary journal 900. He inspired the Flemish writers Johan Daisne and Hubert Lampo. The most influential magical realists is Günther Grass (Bowers 2004, 58, 59).
Based on the suggestions of José David Salvidar, literary critic Tomo Virk describes four main stages in the development of magical realism. The first stage includes the term’s creation by Roh in the mid-1920s. The second stage supposedly took place in the 1940s, during which the term began its transformation in Latin America. Uslar Pietri and Carpentier coined two similar terms “realismo magico” and “lo real maravilloso”, respectively. The third stage featured magical realism’s most significant development. It began in 1955 when Flores published his renowned essay, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction”. Another significant work for the term’s development at this stage was Leal’s 1967 essay, “Magic Realism in Spanish America”. Furthermore, this stage was most significant in magical realism history, because the most influential Latin American novels were published during this time, such as Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. The fourth stage marked the time after the Latin American boom of the 1940s. During this stage, magical realism began to spread from Latin America to other geographical locations, such as India, Canada and the USA (Virk 2000, 120-124).
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2.2 Definition of the Term
Briefly defined, magical realism, according to Faris, “combines realism and the fantastic so that the marvellous seems to grow organically within the ordinary, blurring the distinction between them” (Faris 2004, 1). Despite this seemingly clear, though basic definition, magical realism still remains a great mystery in literary history and criticism. As Kalenić Ramšak writes, magical realism’s characteristics and its influences on Latin American prose of the 20th century are still not clearly elucidated. Furthermore, there is still not an overall accepted and exact definition of magical realism nor an accurate list of magical realist authors, and it is still not clear how magical realism affected the development of the modern prose (Kalenić Ramšak 2008, 7).
A great deal of the confusion surrounding magical realism stems from it being contemporary with surrealism. The latter began to develop as an artistic movement in the early 1920s and lasted until the end of the 1930s. Some critics even believe that magical realism is simply a part of the surrealist art movement, especially since the two movements share significant similarities. Additionally, some of the magical realists, particularly Alejo Carpentier and his “lo real maravilloso”, were influenced not just by Roh but by the surrealists as well. However, the theorists of both surrealism and magical realism tried to define each movement as unique and emphasized their differences (Bowers 2004, 11, 21, 22).
One of the main issues in forming an exact definition of magical realism is the confusion surrounding the term and its history. In the past, many critics created their own definitions without taking the term’s historical development fully into consideration. Furthermore, some critics denied Roh’s role in the development of literary magical realism (Reeds 2013, 41). Cuban-born literary critic Roberto Gonzáles Echevarría therefore believes that the reason behind the ambiguity surrounding the definitions of magical realism is the “general absence of historical bearings in the formulation [of the term]” (quoted in Aldea 2011, 1).
In the second half of the twentieth century, many Latin American critics tried to define magical realism and “lo real maravilloso”, and tried to either prove or negate a connection between the former and Roh. To begin with, by naming Borges as the first magical realist, Flores diminished Roh’s role in the development of magical realism. By doing so, he confirmed Uslar Pietri’s separation of magical realism from Roh. In 1967, Luis Leal published “Magic Realism in Spanish America” in response to Flores’s essay. He re-
7 established Roh as the originator of the term magical realism. However, he connected magical realism and the marvellous real, which would later be the source of further confusion. In the following years, the dispute around magical realism and its originators grew stronger and became more confusing. In the same year as Leal and in common with the latter, Angel Valbuena Briones published an essay in which he acknowledged magical realism and Carpentier’s marvellous real as the same thing. A year later, Orlando Gómez Gil also recognised Carpentier as a magical realist. However, he believed that the latter’s claims on Latin America being marvellous were based in legend and myth, not reality. In her 1969 book, Jean Franco acknowledged Carpentier as magical realist, as well. Furthermore, she believed that magical realism was limited to Latin America and negated Roh’s part in the discussion on the term. Contrary to Franco, in his 1969 essay Valbueana Briones referred to Roh as the first person to use the term magical realism. The year 1975 marked an important turning point in the discussion on magical realism and the marvellous real. Although many critics deemed Carpentier to be a magical realist, he disagreed. In 1975, he presented a paper “The Baroque and the Marvellous Real” in which he distanced himself from magical realism. Subsequently, critics began to differentiate between Roh’s magical realism and Carpentier’s marvellous real along the line of the former expressing a phenomenological and the latter an ontological view (Reeds 2013, 55-64).
Magical realism as a literary genre is often mistakenly assumed to be a form of fantasy. Critics who analyse magical realist novels as fantasy interpret and treat the narratives differently from the way a magical realist critic would. A fantasy critic would perceive extraordinary events as fantastic elements within a realist story. On the other hand, a magical realist critic would interpret the same events as ordinary elements within a realist narrative. This subtle difference demonstrates just how faint the distinction is between the two terms (Bowers 2004, 23, 24). The theorist and critic Tzvetan Todorov bases his definition of fantastic literature on the reader hesitating about whether to accept the extraordinary events as natural or not. If the reader decides to perceive these events as not real, the work belongs to the genre of fantasy. However, if the reader “decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we say that the work belongs to another genre: the uncanny” (Todorov 1975, 41). In her study Magical Realism and the Fantastic: Resolved Versus Unresolved Antinomy, Amaryll Chanady followed Todorov’s conclusions and compared magical realism and the fantastic in great detail. She identified the main difference between the terms:
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In contrast to the fantastic, the supernatural in magical realism does not disconcert the reader, and this is the fundamental difference between the two modes. The same phenomena that are portrayed as problematic by the author of a fantastic narrative are presented in a matter-of-fact manner by the magical realist. (quoted in Bowers 2004, 25)
The term magical realism is often closely associated with postmodernism. During the 1940s and 1950s, it was altered and reformed repeatedly in both Europe and the USA in such a way as to convey different meanings and cover different fields. However, most critics agree that the term acquired its most common meaning, which is still in use today, in connection with the prose fiction of the USA (D’Haen 1995, 193).
According to D’Haen, magical realism is a means for “authors not sharing in, or writing from the perspective of, the privileged centers of [“Western”] literature for reasons of language, class, race, or gender” (1995, 195) to take part in the dominant discourses of “Western” literature. Furthermore, these authors can also use magical realism in order to give a voice to the “ex-centric and un-priviliged” (D’Haen 1995, 195).
2.3 Main Characteristics of Magical Realism
Magical realist texts tend to present familiar things in non-familiar, even unusual ways in order to emphasize their magical properties. In this way, they are using what the Russian Formalists referred to as “defamiliarization”. By using the latter, magical realist narratives try to radically emphasize the realistic elements that have become almost invisible because of their familiarity (Simpkins 1995, 150). One of the signature characteristics of magical realist fiction is the constant switching between two separate modes which never fully manage to position themselves into any kind of hierarchy (Slemon 1995, 410).
In her article in Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community (1995) and again in her detailed study Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative (2004), Faris constructs the main characteristics of magical realism and explains them in great detail.
Contrary to Faris, Reeds argues that two main notions define magical realism: the “neo- fantastic” and the “recasting of history”. When both aspects are combined, as in the work of García Márquez, they form magical realism (2013, 29, 77). The “neo-fantastic” was a term
9 coined by the critic Jaime Alazraki in 1975 in order to name Todorov’s understanding of how the fantastic evolved in the 20th century. In his definition of magical realism, Reeds claims it is based on Todorov’s notion of fantasy in the 20th century and critiques Faris for forming her definition of magical realism on Todorov’s understanding of the 19th-century fantasy. In neo-fantastic literature, the reader comes across a fictional world where rules apply that differ from the rules of reality, but where magic can become just as real as anything else. The key feature of Alazraki’s “neo-fantastic” is the way that the fantastic events are naturally incorporated within the narration. The reason for this is to present a reality either too difficult or impossible to express by using realistic narration (Reeds 2013, 84, 130).
Secondly, the “recasting of history” in magical realist texts is defined as adding marginalised or ignored voices to the established ideas of the past by using fiction. However, historical events are not presented differently, but rather portrayed from the point of view of previously overlooked voices. In order to elucidate a voice from the past, an author needs to create a cultural context in which various, perhaps even contrasting values are incorporated into the narrative. Without this context, the voices cannot be expressed, and the representation of historical events would be limited (Reeds 2013, 104-106).
Reeds marks García Márquez as the originator of magical realism by applying magic to the recasting of history. His novel One Hundred Years of Solitude reflects his effort to engage with his region’s colonial history and the latter’s effects by using early experimentation with the neo-fantastic. This way, the basis for magical realism in this novel is formed (2013, 130).
2.3.1 Understanding Magical Realist Characteristics According to Wendy B. Faris
Wendy B. Faris was among the first to present a thorough analysis of the defining characteristics of magical realism. In her two studies “Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction” (1995) and Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative (2004), she gives a concise list of primary and secondary features that, on the one hand, try to distinguish magical realism from other contemporary literary genres and, on the other hand, try to position it within postmodernism. Additionally, she suggests a set of narrative techniques that are distinctive of magical realist literary works.
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In her studies, Faris devised five primary characteristics of magical realism in order to define it against other contemporary genres, such as surrealism. For a text to be a magical realist, it needs to include the following:
1. the text contains an “irreducible element” of magic; 2. precise details indicate the presence of the phenomenal world; 3. readers may have doubts while having conflicting understandings of events; 4. readers may experience the merging of two realms; 5. the readers’ usual perceptions of time, space and identity may be disturbed (Faris 2004, 7).
To begin with, the “irreducible element” marks the extraordinary, magical phenomena in magical realist fictions. This is something that cannot be explained with the empirical knowledge constructed mainly in Western societies. Readers, especially those from Western societies, may experience difficulty in trying to come up with logical explanations for these extraordinary events and characters. The narrative presents the magical or extraordinary phenomena the same way as it would the ordinary ones, often by using detailed description. They are also tightly interwoven into the realistic narrative. By presenting the “irreducible element” on the same narrative plane as ordinary, mundane occurrences, the narrator proves he/she believes the extraordinary happenings in the text actually occur. In addition, characters rarely give the magical phenomena any special attention (Faris 2004, 7).
A magical event may disrupt the ordinary logic of cause and effect. It is difficult to determine whether a magical happening has caused a certain event to happen or vice versa. In magical realist fictions, magic can also function as satire or political commentary (Faris 1995, 168).
Secondly, there is the strong presence of a phenomenal world in magical realist fictions. Realism is portrayed by the use of detailed, realistic description. This way, a fictional world that resembles ours is created. That is how magical realism distinguishes itself from fantasy or allegory. However, the use of detailed magical elements also distinguishes it from realism.
Furthermore, by focusing on reference instead of description magical realist fictions may contain what Faris refers to as “idiosyncratic recreations of historical events” (Faris 1995, 169). Historical realistic narratives may incorporate alternate interpretations of officially established historical accounts. Additionally, significant historical events may have a literal
11 effect on the characters and the latter may experience the events bodily (e.g. in Midnight’s Children, Saleem is born at the same time as India becomes independent) (Faris 1995, 169).
Thirdly, readers experience what Faris refers to as “unsettling doubts” (Faris 2004, 17). They hesitate between two contradictory understandings of events. There are various reasons for the readers’ hesitation. To begin with, it may originate from the implicit clash of cultural systems within the narrative. Some readers may hesitate more than others, depending on their belief system and narrative traditions. Furthermore, magical realist scenes may appear dreamlike. Readers can therefore interpret them as dreams, although they are not. In addition, readers may be in doubt or in awe over a magical phenomenon which, again, leads to them hesitating. In most magical realist fiction, though, the magic is clear, and the narrator accepts it with no reservations, causing the readers to barely hesitate (Faris 2004, 17).
Fourthly, magical realist narratives merge two realms or worlds, blurring the boundaries between them. As Faris described it, “the magical realist vision exists at the intersection of two worlds, at an imaginary point inside a double-sided mirror that reflects in both directions.” Ancient and traditional worlds may be merged with the modern ones. The world of the living and the world of the dead my spill into each other. The boundary between fact and fiction may be blurred as well (Faris 1995, 172, 173).
Lastly, the readers’ usual perception of time, space or identity is disrupted. For example, the readers’ sense of time in One Hundred Years of Solitude is undermined with rains lasting for almost five years and an insomnia plague that causes the past, and hence the meaning of words, to be erased (Faris 1995, 173).
Next to the five primary characteristics, Faris also suggests a set of secondary characteristics. With this set, Faris intended to establish magical realism within postmodernism rather than to differentiate it from contemporary literary genres. The set includes the following characteristics:
- metafictional elements (e.g. mise en abyme); - a particular kind of verbal magic; - childlike or even primitive narrative; - repetition and mirroring; - metamorphoses are rather common; - magic may be used against the established social order;
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- the presence of ancient systems of belief and local lore; - a Jungian rather than Freudian psychological viewpoint is prevalent; - carnivalesque or extravagant language (Faris 1995, 175-184).
To begin with, magical realist texts frequently contain metafictional elements. They give comments on themselves and may even contain a mise en abyme, i.e. a story within a story. Next, a magical realist text may contain a special kind of verbal magic. Plays on words, especially metaphors, are presented literally. For example, the idiom “blood is thicker than water” is illustrated in One Hundred Years of Solitude when José Arcadio Buendía shoots himself and a dribble of his blood makes its way through the town to his mother Ursula’s kitchen. Furthermore, magical realist narrative may appear fresh, childlike, or even primitive. Astonishing happenings are mainly depicted in a matter-of-fact way, often with no comments. The narrator accepts them as a child would, without any doubt or questioning (Faris 1995, 175, 176).
Repetition and mirroring may be presented either symbolically or structurally. As a narrative principle, they often form a “magic of shifting references” (Faris 1995, 177). For example, in Midnight’s Children, Saleem’s life mirrors that of the new Indian nation, formed at the same time as he was born. Mirroring may be indicated by the doubling of characters and stories, which may only appear to be the same. Such is the case in The White Hotel, where the same story is reiterated through reflected personalities. Structural mirroring may also be reinforced by reflecting surfaces in the story, particularly windows. Ghosts or people who seem ghostly can also be perceived as two-sided mirrors that are located between two worlds, one of the living and one of the dead. An alteration of this characteristic of repetition and mirroring is the occurrence of reversals, described as “plot-mirroring” by Faris. Although it is commonly present in all literature, it appears with particular frequency in magical realist texts. In some parts of The White Hotel, for example, Freud turns from the one who is analysing to the one who is being analysed. These patterns of reversal may imply a lack of human control over events. What we think we control, in fact controls us (Faris 1995, 177, 178).
Furthermore, metamorphoses are a common occurrence in magical realist narratives. In the realm of organisms, they represent a merging of two worlds (Faris 1995, 178).
In order to contradict established social orders, magical realist texts often use magic and are in many cases written as critiques of totalitarian regimes. Latin American magical realist
13 writers, for example, criticized North American dominance over their hemisphere; Rushdie wrote Midnight’s Children to oppose Indira Ghandi’s autocratic reign. Ancient systems of belief and local folklore can often be found in magical realist stories, which are usually set in rural settings and rely on rural inspiration, though there are some influential exceptions, such as Midnight’s Children (Faris 1995, 179, 180).
Additionally, a Jungian perspective prevails in magical realist texts over a Freudian one. According to Faris, “the magic may be attributed to a mysterious sense of collective relatedness rather than to individual memories or dreams or visions” (1995a, 183). Also, since magical happenings in magical realism cannot usually be interpreted as hallucinations or fabrications, they may point toward the existence of spiritual worlds, to which, in turn, Jungian psychology is open to while Freudian psychology is not (Faris 1995, 183).
Finally, the language in magical realist narratives is often extravagant and overflowing. A carnivalesque spirit is common, and magical details are not used sparingly (Faris 1995, 184).
Next to the primary and secondary characteristics of magical realism, Faris describes the four most common narrative techniques with which the genre intertwines the extraordinary with the ordinary. Firstly, an abundance of realistic details is used to describe a fantastic event. The more realistic the details, the more marvellous the phenomenon. By accumulating realistic details around such an event and by predominantly using realistic narrative, this narrative technique makes the extraordinary happening appear even more fascinating and incredible. Secondly, the narrator presents magical phenomena without providing explanation or comment. They are accepted by the narrator as a child would accept them, without doubts. This detached and matter-of-fact narrative technique is therefore often characterized as childlike or even naïve. Similarly, the narrator may present the doubts of other characters, but shows none of his/her own, making the reader hesitate about which stance to take. Thirdly, the space of the text and the time of its telling are vague and difficult to determine exactly. In addition, by using unusual tenses, such as the future perfect tense, and by making the narrative circular, the novel detaches the reader from the set notion of linear time progression, making the time of the story even more uncertain. Finally, the fourth most common narrative technique gives magical realism a dreamlike quality. In some magical realist fictions, it is difficult to distinguish irreducible elements from dreams, hallucinations or reverie. Because of this similarity, magical realism can be viewed as dreamlike. Although it is troublesome to determine which events have actually happened
14 and which are imagined or dreamed in many other contemporary narratives as well, in magical realism dreams do not stay limited to individual psyches, but rather materialize themselves in the outer world (Faris 2004, 90-100).
2.4 Magical Realism in Film
Magical realism is usually not considered to be a category of film. Certain characteristics of the mode, however, may be recognised in many films and may be analysed as such (Bowers 2004, 104). Fredric Jameson is one of the first and few critics to explore magical realism in the realm of film. In his essay “On Magic Realism in Film,” he analyses the following three films with the approaches used by visual art critics: a Polish film Fever (1981), a Venezuelan production La Casa de Agua (1984) and the Colombian feature Condores no entierran todos los dias (1984). Though all three films are historical, Frederic considered this to be one of the three features “constitutive of a certain magic realism” (1986, 303). The other two features include the different colour of each film, which establishes a source of a unique fascination, and a simplified narrative that focuses especially on violence and, to a lesser degree, sexuality (1986, 302, 303).
Furthermore, Bowers describes the possibility of analysing films as magical realist stories presented through the medium of film in this case, and approaches similar to those employed in analysing magical realist literature may be used. Additionally, film adaptations of magical realist novels offer an opportunity to observe how the incorporation of visual elements and the transfer from page to screen affect the magical realist narrative (Bowers 2004, 105).
2.5 Magical Realism in Children’s Literature
Bowers believes that there are many instances in cultural items produced for children, particularly in literature and television, that can be identified as magical realist. Although she asserts that fairy tales are not magical realist, since the stories take place in a realm of reality different from our own, she believes that children get used to accepting these narratives as being somehow connected to their own reality. Therefore, she argues that “magical realism provides a perfect means for children to explore the world through their
15 imaginations without losing a connection to what they recognize as the ‘real world’” (2004, 100).
Magical occurrences in the narratives of children’s literature usually take place in realistic settings and only for limited periods of time. This way, children are given the opportunity to explore disruptions in their everyday world while still feeling secure knowing that magic and extraordinary happenings can be contained (Bowers 2004, 100).
The first to come close to the idea of magical realism in children’s literature in English was the late-Victorian English children’s writer Edith Nesbit. Her writing defied the adult moral tone used in other children’s books before hers and is therefore considered revolutionary. She based the behaviour and language of her characters on what actual children would do or say, making her stories appear much more realistic. By doing so and including some magical elements in the lives of her child characters, her writings may potentially be treated as magical realist. However, the aspect that prevents us from doing so is her commenting on how adults are not able to recognize the ordinary nature of magic (Bowers 2004, 100, 101).
In the opening chapter of Five Children and It, Nesbit addresses the child reader:
“You may leave the book about quite safely, for no adults and uncles are likely to write ‘How true!’ on the edge of the story. Grown up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof.” (quoted in Bowers 2004, 102)
Nesbit’s type of narrative of an ordinary family and an animal with human behaviour was the most commonly used format in children’s fantasy writing in the mid-twentieth century in the United States and Britain. For example, the stories of A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond and Stuart Little by E. B. White both include animals behaving like human children and are living with a human family. In the second half of the twentieth century, many stories took a step away from Nesbit’s example and started including adult characters in the magical events. These adult characters, though, were usually portrayed as innocent in order to contrast other adults, thus offering hope and a sense of safety for the child readers (Bowers 2004, 102, 103).
This type of children’s literature, modelled on Nesbit’s writings, led to an increase in magical realist television drama and film for children after the 1970s. One of the first to include such content was the British Broadcasting Corporation, which adapted Nesbit’s novels for
16 television and made the Paddington Bear stories into a cartoon series. Additionally, many dramas written for children have adopted a magical realist tone. Highly sophisticated film technology allows for the non-human characters or magical elements to be portrayed remarkably realistically (Bowers 2004, 103, 104).
Even nowadays, there are instances of magical realism in children’s or even young adult literature. One such writer is Isabell Allende and her young adult novel La Ciudad de los Bestios (City of the Beasts), which is marked as magical realist in A Companion to Magical Realism (Swanson 2005, 170).
Neil Gaiman’s Coraline has in most studies been considered as either fantasy or fairy tale. However, a 2016 study explores the possibility of the novel’s being magical realist in the realm of children’s literature. The study concludes that many characteristics typical of magical realist fiction may be found in Coraline as well, such as the presence of magical elements in a realistic setting, matter-of-fact narrative and the revelation that the other mother’s world is not the child’s own world, but a part of the earthly realm (Hosseinpour and Shahbazi Moghadam 2016, 88, 99).
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3 Magical Realist Elements in A Monster Calls and The Ocean at the End of the Lane
In order to depict elements of magical realism in A Monster Calls and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the following analysis makes use of the magical realist characteristics that Faris suggested in her article “Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction” and Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative.
3.1 Real-World Setting and Characters
Detailed descriptions of magical phenomena and objects amplify the existence of an extraordinary world in magical realist stories. According to Faris, these descriptions are “the realism in magical realism” (2004b, 14). An epitome of this characteristic is Lettie using non-magical broken toys, such as “doll’s eyes and heads and hands, cars with no wheels, chipped cat’s eye glass marbles” (Gaiman 2013, 148) in order to create a magical barrier that Skarthach of the Keep cannot pass to trap her in the narrator’s house. A similar example is the “snip and stitch” (Gaiman 2013, 127) technique that Old Mrs Hempstock uses to change the memories of the narrator’s parents. The technique is described as if Old Mrs Hempstock were merely mending the narrator’s nightgown. The effects, though, are magical in nature.
The narratives in both novels are based on a real-world setting with protagonists as ordinary characters. Conor, the thirteen-year-old protagonist of A Monster Calls, lives a realistic, rather ordinary life. Although he deals with the hardships of everyday life, there is nothing magical about it. His parents are separated, his father living in America with a new family. He lives with his mother, who is battling cancer. He is bullied at school and has no friends. One night, however, a magical element enters his life in the form of the yew tree monster who helps him accept the probability of his mother dying.
The setting in The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the countryside of Essex in the late sixties or seventies. The narrator lives in a big house with his parents and younger sister. Similarly to Conor, he too lives an ordinary life and has to deal with its hardships. He has no friends, as well. His only pet, a small kitten with no name, is run over by a car. The man responsible for its death gives him a new cat, but it is a poor substitute for his beloved kitten. He often
18 gets lost in books, mostly reading ones that once belonged to his mother and have main characters who fight against communist “enemies”.
Furthermore, the Hempstock women, who have magical abilities, are portrayed realistically and perceived as real by the narrator and the readers. Often, they are described doing everyday tasks, such as milking the cows: “We stopped at a small barn where an old woman /…/ was standing beside a cow. Long black tubes were attached to each of the cow’s teats. ‘We used to milk them by hand,’ she told me. ‘But this is easier’” (Gaiman 2013, 26).
3.2 Fantastical Elements
3.2.1 The Irreducible Element
Both A Monster Calls and The Ocean at the End of the Lane contain what Faris refers to as an “irreducible element” (Faris 1995, 7). In the former, the element is based heavily on English folklore and Celtic traditions, whereas in the latter it seems to be more imaginary and make-believe. Furthermore, the irreducible elements in The Ocean at the End of the Lane are capable of causing magical happenings in the real world. In A Monster Calls, though, the irreducible element’s capacity to carry out magical occurrences is limited to showing the stories as it tells them.
The extraordinary beings and events in both novels are presented the same way as other, non-magical ones. In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the origins of the Hempstock women and their farm are never explained. Though they always claim that they came from the “old country” (Gaiman 2013, 1), they never clarify where or what the “old country” was. Thus, the narrator and the readers accept them “as a given, accepted but not explained” (Faris 2004, 7).
In A Monster Calls, the irreducible element is signified by the yew tree monster. One night, Conor O’Malley witnesses the yew tree on the hill next to his house transforming into a monster. The latter introduces itself as an ancient being that has existed as long as the land (Ness 2016, 65). After Conor asks it, what – or rather who – it is, the monster claims to be present in all the living creatures and to be the driving force of the world:
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“I am the spine that the mountains hang upon! I am the tears that the rivers cry! I am the lungs that breathe the wind! I am the wolf that kills the stag, the hawk that kills the mouse, the spider that kills the fly! I am the stag, the mouse and the fly that are eaten! I am the snake of the world devouring its tail! I am everything untamed and untameable! […] I am this wild earth, come for you, Conor O’Malley.” (Ness 2016, 50)
At first, Conor believes the monster is just a part of his dream. However, it immediately becomes clear that it is not so. After disappearing, the monster always leaves something behind, either leaves or berries. One time, it even causes a sapling to grow from the wooden floor in Conor’s living room: “From a knot in a floorboard, a fresh, new and very solid sapling had sprouted, about a foot tall.” (Ness 2016, 85)
The reason that the monster appears is Conor, who, as the former claimed, has summoned him. The monster tells him that it is going to tell him three stories. After that it is going to be Conor’s turn to tell a story. Conor originally thinks that the monster has come to help him get rid of the issues he is facing in life, to destroy his demons. He is convinced that it would make his mother’s illness go away, especially after finding out that yew trees have incredible healing powers and that they are used in the medicine his mother was prescribed as the doctors’ last resort to try and save her life. However, his last desperate hope is shattered as he finds out the medicine from the yew trees does not work. After Conor’s mother tells him this, and they have “the talk”, in which she implicitly says her farewell, Conor goes to face the tree. It explains that the purpose of its coming walking was not to save his mother. “I did not come to heal her, the monster said. I came to heal you” (Ness 2016, 205).
The irreducible element in The Ocean at the End of the Lane is portrayed by “fleas” and “varmints”, as old Mrs Hempstock calls them (Gaiman 2013, 52, 162). The “flea”, occurring in the story the most, is Skarthach of the Keep (i.e. Ursula Monkton). She is first introduced after the death of the opal miner when odd occurrences concerning money begin to happen. First, the narrator receives a letter, informing him that he has won twenty-five pounds in Premium Bonds his grandmother gave him at his birth. He is excited, because he has never won anything. Later the same day, the narrator’s family’s gardener digs up a jar of old coins in the garden. The following night, the narrator wakes from a nightmare, choking on a silver shilling. The narrator’s neighbours also begin experiencing strange dreams and encounters regarding money. Lettie Hempstock soon explains to the narrator that these strange
20 happenings were the result of somebody trying to give people money. It turns out, this somebody, or rather something, is the “flea”, Skarthach of the Keep, unnamed at the beginning of the story. The narrator describes the “flea” as “some kind of tent […] made of grey and pink canvas” with “deep holes in the fabric” where its eyes should be (Gaiman 2013, 53). She tries to make people happy by giving money. After encountering the “flea”, Lettie begins singing in an unknown language and the “flea” is quickly defeated – or so it seems. Instead, she uses the narrator to leave her world by putting a wormhole in the sole of his foot and disguising herself as a worm. The narrator, however, discovers the wormhole. He tries to remove the worm, but is not entirely successful since it snaps off before he can pull all of it out. He flushes most of the worm down the drain in the bathroom. The hole in his foot immediately begins closing, and he no longer gives it any further attention.
The following day, Ursula Monkton appears as the narrator’s family’s new housekeeper and nanny. The narrator immediately dislikes her and feels uneasy in her presence. Her grey and pink dress reminds him of the “flea”, by the way it flaps where there is no wind (Gaiman 2013, 71). It quickly became evident that Ursula is no ordinary person. She knows exactly where the narrator is at all times, even though he is certain she is not watching him, and she can seemingly teleport or at least travel incredibly quickly: “Ursula Monkton was standing just inside the black door of the house to welcome me in, although she could not have got past me. I would have seen. Her hair was perfect, and her lipstick seemed freshly applied” (Gaiman 2013, 77).
The narrator soon realises what Ursula really is: “a cardboard mask for the thing that travelled inside me as a worm” (Gaiman 2013, 79, 80). In the following days, he is not able to escape her because she knows his every move. One rainy night, after almost being drowned by his father, he finally manages to run away. However, Ursula or rather “the thing that called itself Ursula Monkton” (Gaiman 2013, 109) immediately finds him running through the neighbouring fields. She is described as if she is floating, bothered by neither the wind nor the rain. She tries to take him back, but Lettie turns up, forcing her to retreat, and takes the narrator to the Hempstock farm. There, Lettie, together with her mother and grandmother, comes up with a plan to make the “flea” return to the world she came from. Towards the end of the story, Lettie finally reveals the “flea’s” true name, Skarthach of the Keep (Gaiman 2013, 160). She, in turn, transforms back into her original form and tries to leave, but is unsuccessful. Eventually, she is devoured by the hunger birds.
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The hunger birds, also called “varmints” by Lettie’s grandmother, refer to themselves as the “cleaners” (Gaiman 2013, 162, 172). They are bird-like creatures that seem to come and “clean” whenever a fantastic being enters the non-fantastic world. The narrator describes them as being jet black and having wings, yet they are not birds, but older. Their black jaws are filled with needle-sharp teeth, and their eyes are burning (Gaiman 2013, 168, 169). Counting them seemed impossible; “perhaps they were from a place where such things didn’t apply, somewhere outside of time and numbers” (Gaiman 2013, 171).
Apart from the “fleas” and “varmints”, the Hempstock family and their farm can be considered as irreducible elements, as well. The Hempstock women seem to have a way of knowing everything even though they possess no means of having that kind of knowledge. One such example was their knowing the exact details concerning the opal miner’s death. They knew how and why he died. Lettie’s mother knows exactly why the opal miner committed suicide and is able to explain in detail how he ran into some issues with gambling and money. In addition, Lettie is able to recite the letter that the opal miner left behind, word by word. Furthermore, the Hempstock women also seem to be immortal. Old Mrs Hempstock even claims to remember when the moon was made, and we get the feeling that she has been alive since the big bang: “She said she could remember the really old country. She said the really old country had blown up” (Gaiman 2013, 1). This is confirmed when the narrator is in Lettie’s ocean of infinite knowledge, and he discovers that her grandmother has witnessed the last Big Bang, as she will do with the next one as well.
Next to the Hempstock women themselves, the duckpond behind their farmhouse is another irreducible element. The pond, called an ocean by Lettie, hides an extraordinary characteristic beneath its surface. It is filled with infinite knowledge:
“The second thing I thought was that I knew everything. Lettie Hempstock’s ocean flowed inside me, and it filled the entire universe, from Egg to Rose. I knew that. I knew what Egg was – where the universe began, to the sound of uncreated voices singing in the void – and I knew where Rose was – the peculiar crinkling of space on space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which would mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next Big Bang, which would be, I knew now, nothing of the kind. In knew that Old Mrs Hempstock would be here for that one, as she had been for the last.” (Gaiman 2013, 191, 192)
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3.2.2 Merging the Realms
Apart from the irreducible element, both novels also show evidence of the fusing of two realms. To begin with, A Monster Calls combines the yew tree monster’s world with Conor’s. The world where the monster comes from is never explicitly mentioned, though the monster implicitly indicates its existence by saying: “The barrier between things was thinner, easier to pass through” (Ness 2016, 76). In addition, the monster mentions dragons, giants and witches in the first story. We may look upon this from two different perspectives. Firstly, the story takes place in medieval times when people genuinely believed in the existence of these extraordinary creatures. Dragons and giants were present in various legends that people believed to be true. Historically, many women were accused of being witches, though they were not, and burned at the stake. Perhaps, the yew tree monster tried to bring the mentality of the people into the foreground. Secondly, the creatures may have indeed been real and are, perhaps, part of the same world as the monster.
On the other hand, the merging of two realms is much clearer in the Ocean at the End of the Lane. There, the non-fantastic world, which resembles ours and in which the narrator lives, is merged with the fantastic one with the “fleas”. The latter is a part of Hempstock farm and, according to Lettie, her family brought it with them when they came from the “old country” (Gaiman 2013, 52). The fantastic world is described by the narrator as a place where the sky “was the dull orange of a warning light; the plants, which were spiky, like huge, ragged aloes, were a dark silvery green, and looked as if they had been beaten from gun-metal” (Gaiman 2013, str. 53). It is in this world that he and Lettie first encounter the “flea” Skarthach. However, this is not the only fantastic creature they meet. They also come upon a “manta wolf”, a floating brown and furry rug-like creature with a mouth filled with many tiny sharp teeth (Gaiman 2013, 50).
The building where the Hempstock women live seems to have fantastic properties as well, despite the fact that it appears to be just an ordinary farmhouse. The moon, for example, is enchanted by the grandmother to always shine fully on a particular part of the farmhouse. As Lettie explained, “Gran likes the full moon to shine on this side of the house. She says it’s restful, and it reminds her of when she was a girl. […] And you don’t trip on the stairs” (Gaiman 2013, 140).
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Some strong indications that the narrator’s world is not only world in existence can also be found when he is submerged in Lettie’s ocean. There, he finds out that his world is only a small fraction of what exists in the universe:
“I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger. I saw the world from above and below. I saw that there were patterns and gates and paths beyond the real. I saw all these things and understood them and they filled me, just as the waters of the ocean filled me.” (Gaiman 2013, 192)
3.2.3 Disturbed Perception of Time and Space
In both novels, the readers may have difficulties with their perception of time. The fantastic elements have the characteristic either to manipulate time or to remain unaffected by it. In A Monster Calls, time seems to flow more slowly or even to stop when Conor is with the monster. The monster always appears at the same time. While it is explaining to Conor who it is, what its intention is and telling him the first story, quite some time seems to have passed. After the monster leaves, however, and Conor finds himself in bed again, the time remains the same.
The Hempstock women seem to defy time as well. They are untouched by time and give the impression that they have been alive for a long time. They are always ambiguous about their actual age. Old Mrs Hempstock, Lettie’s grandmother, for example, claims to remember when the moon was made, and Lettie insists she is eleven years old:
“’How old are you, really?’ I asked. ‘Eleven.’ I thought for a while. Then I asked, ‘How long have you been eleven for?’ She smiled at me.” (Gaiman 2013, 40)
As the narrator returns to Hempstock farm after forty-something years, he meets old Mrs Hempstock and Ginnie Hempstock, who still look the same as they did when he was seven years old. In addition, the narrator is greeted by a black cat with a white spot over one ear. It turns out to be Ocean, the cat he pulled from the ground after he and Lettie were returning from the enchanted forest where they met the flea Skarthach for the first time. He brought her back to Hempstock farm after he and his family moved out of their house by the lane.
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Furthermore, in A Monster Calls, readers may have an obscured perception of identity, as well. The monster’s second story ends with the story version of the monster destroying the parson’s home. Conor’s monster begins to destroy the building as well and invites Conor to do the same. He first tells the monster what to do, but quickly joins the destruction. Together, they smash everything they can get their hands on. When nothing is left to break, Conor realizes it is no longer the parson’s belongings they are destroying. He finds himself in the middle of his grandmother’s living room, surrounded by the results of his havoc. Almost all of his grandmother’s precious and expensive items are destroyed. Although Conor’s hands are hurting and are covered in cuts, he has no recollection of doing so much damage on his own. To the readers, it is unclear whether he really did everything on his own or if the monster had something to do with it as well. Similarly, when Conor ends up assaulting Harry, his bully, while the monster is telling him the third story, readers have difficulties discerning Conor’s actions from those of the monster. Although Conor’s schoolmates see him attacking Harry, and, again, his hands are bruised and hurting, Conor still remembers the events as if he were the bystander, and the monster was the one punching Harry.
“Never invisible again, the monster kept saying as he pummelled Harry. Never invisible again. There came a point when Harry stopped trying to fight back, when the blows from the monster were too strong, too many, too fast, when he began begging the monster to stop. Never invisible again, the monster said, finally letting up […] It turned to Conor. […] And it vanished, leaving Conor standing alone over the shivering, bleeding Harry.” (Ness 2016, 182, 183)
3.2.4 The Presence of Ancient Systems of Belief and Lore
There are several indications of an underlying English lore in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. First, the “fleas” on Hempstock farm are located in a forest. In European folklore, forests are often seen as mystical places where magical happenings may occur and where one can find fairies, witches or fantastic beasts. The creatures in the forest on Hempstock farm seem more ancient, though, especially since the farm was supposedly mentioned in the Doomsday book and has probably existed even well before the latter was written. Second, the fairy ring hints at the presence of English folklore, as well. Although a circle in the grass near the narrator’s house is called a fairy ring only jokingly, it still protects the narrator from the hunger birds while he is standing inside it.
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In A Monster Calls, the presence of English folklore, joined to Celtic traditions, is much stronger than in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Both can be found in the yew tree monster. When Conor asks it, who it is, the monster answers that it has had “as many names as there are years to time itself” (Ness 2016, 49). It continues to list what it was known as in the past: “I am Herne the Hunter! I am Cernunnos! I am the eternal Green Man!” (Ness 2016, 50).
Herne the Hunter is a ghostly apparition closely connected to Windsor castle in the English county of Berkshire, or rather Windsor Great Park. The story of Herne the Hunter first originated in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor (1597), where the ghost of Herne is described as wearing antlers while rattling chains and scarring cattle. It is, however, impossible to know whether Shakespeare’s allusions to local folklore are accurate. In a pirated text of 1604, Herne the Hunter is presented differently. He was depicted as taking the form of a semi-stag, and mothers used him to scare their children. After being mentioned in Shakespeare’s play, Herne became widely known. In the 19th-century, Jacob Grimm even suggested that, because of the epithet “the Hunter”, Herne had once been thought of as leader of the Wild Hunt. Herne’s story does not, however, go along with the legend of the Wild Hunt. In the second half of the 20th century, modern neo-pagans claimed that Herne’s name is derived from Cernunnos, which is not accurate (Westwood 2010).
In the Celtic tradition, Cernunnos is a name used for the representations of the antlered god of fertility, life, animals, wealth, and the underworld. In art, it was depicted as a man with antlers of a stag, usually sitting cross-legged and sometimes carrying a pouch with coins. Often, the god was associated with animals (Green 1996, 147, 148).
The Green Man is not solely restricted to English folklore, but it may be found in some variant in different cultures all over the world throughout history. It is typically represented by a face covered or surrounded by foliage, which is often sprouting from the mouth, and an astonishing variety of features may be present as well. It usually appears as a sculpture, carved from stone or wood. No two depictions of the Green Man are the same. There are many different interpretations of what the Green Man represents. The most common is that it symbolizes life and nature. Other interpretations also include theories that it is a symbol of fertility, death and rebirth (http://www.greenmanenigma.com/).
Additionally, the yew tree monster also referred to itself as “the snake of the world devouring its tail” (Ness 2016, 50). A snake eating its tail, also known as the Ouroboros, represents the infinite cycle of life and death. In some instances, the image has also appeared as a symbol
26 of resurrection, because a snake shedding its skin was seen as it being reborn. The image of a snake devouring its tail first appeared as an Egyptian religious symbol and was later used in Greek literature (Hodapp 2010, 62). By presenting itself as the Ouroboros, the monster may be seen as the driving force of the world, an omnipresent deity that helps us and Conor understand the idea of the natural cycle of life and death. This notion is especially clear towards the end of the novel, when it is time for Conor to tell the fourth tale. The tale is in fact Conor’s recurring nightmare in which he cannot save his mother who in turn falls into an abyss of darkness. The monster helps him accept the fact that his mother’s illness is getting worse, and it also helps him come to terms with the daunting probability of his mother losing her battle with cancer, thus making Conor aware of nature’s cycle of life and death.
3.2.5 Unsettling Doubts
To begin with, Lettie thinks of the pond on her family’s farm as an ocean and accepts it as such. The narrator does not accept the pond as an ocean, though:
“’It’s just pretending, though,’ I told her, feeling like I was letting childhood down by admitting it. ‘Your pond. It’s not an ocean. It can’t be. Oceans are bigger than seas. Your pond is just a pond.’ ‘It’s as big as it needs to be,’ said Lettie Hempstock, nettled.” (Gaiman 2013, 151)
Here, the narrator’s disbelief causes a dilemma among readers of whom to believe. When the storyline eventually reveals that the pond is an ocean that hides infinite amounts of knowledge underneath its surface, the readers may feel doubt about how to perceive this extraordinary phenomenon. By choosing to believe that the pond, i.e. Lettie’s ocean, is real, they will perceive the story as magical realist. However, if they see the pond as a phenomenon that they cannot explain or comprehend as something that real, the story falls into the genre of fantasy.
Readers of A Monster Calls may take the yew tree monster as an illusion or, similarly to Conor, a dream. Here, they may experience unsettling doubts about whether to accept the monster as real or not. However, the mementos that the monster leaves behind each time he leaves Conor strongly indicate that it might be real. What supports the latter idea is that the monster seems to manipulate time, since no time passes between its talks with Conor. Conor’s later acceptance of the monster visiting him and hope that the reason for its visits is to save his mother from dying cause readers to accept the monster as real as well.
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Furthermore, because the irreducible elements in both novels are closely connected to European, mainly English, folklore and Celtic traditions, some readers may experience doubt about or hesitate over how to understand the extraordinary events. In A Monster Calls, some readers may have doubts while trying to accept the yew tree monster as a being closely connected to nature. Since the monster claimed it was Herne the Hunter, Cernunnos and the Green Man, the readers who will experience most doubts and hesitation will be those whose cultural systems are either not familiar with these beings or deny their existence.
3.3 Linguistic Aspects
3.3.1 Metafictional Elements
A Monster Calls contains a mise en abyme, illustrated in the three stories that the monster tells Connor. Each story strongly reflects certain aspects of Conor’s life. The first story is a tale of a king who fought many battles to keep his kingdom safe. While doing so, however, he suffered a great loss: all four of his sons, his wife and his grandson’s mother died. The only heir that remained was the grandson, who was still just a baby. The king was left with no choice but to marry the princess of the neighbouring kingdom. His reign then lasted until two years before the heir to the throne was to turn eighteen, when he died. His new wife, whom everybody accused of having killed the king, became queen regent until the heir to the throne came of age. The prince, however, fell in love with a farm girl and later ran away with her. On the way, they stopped to rest under a yew tree. After waking up after a night’s rest, the prince discovered that his beloved had been killed. He immediately accused the queen and turned to the yew tree for help. The yew tree monster came to life. Then, the prince with the help of the villagers stormed the castle and intends to burn the queen at the stake. The yew tree monster, though, prevented this and saved the queen by taking her to a faraway village. It turned out that the prince had killed his beloved himself in order to frame the queen and overthrow her.
This story may be a reflection of the relationship between Conor and Lily. Conor’s blaming her for telling everybody about his mother’s illness may be reflected in the prince blaming the queen for his grandfather’s death. Although neither Lily nor the queen is at fault, they are still seen as being responsible for the situation of Conor and the prince. Conor feels it
28 was Lily’s fault that everybody are avoiding and ignoring him, just as the prince blames the queen for stealing his throne and kingdom.
The second story tells the tale of an apothecary who lived in the time of the industrial revolution. The rapid industrialization of his village and its surroundings made it increasingly difficult for him to find the medicinal herbs and other materials he needed to make medicine. He was also greedy, and he therefore began overpricing his medicine. Consequently, people started seeking more modern alternatives. The apothecary became dissatisfied. In the village, there also lived a parson, who had two daughters. Next to the parsonage was a yew tree, and the apothecary wanted to cut it down, so he could use to make medicine. The yew tree bark could be used to treat all kinds of ailments. The parson did not concur. However, his two daughters became severely ill. He was forced to beg the apothecary for help and was even prepared to abandon his beliefs for his help. The following night, the parson’s daughters died. The yew tree monster came walking and began destroying the parson’s house. As the monster is finishing the story, it invites Conor to join the destruction. Conor does so, and together they destroy the parson’s living room. After almost nothing is left intact, the monster disappears, and Conor finds himself in his grandmother’s living room, surrounded by his own wreckage.
The plot of the second story does not reflect events in Conor’s life as much as the ending does. The monster and Conor destroying the parson’s home, or rather Conor’s grandmother’s living room, may reflect the grandmother trying to keep her life and her daughter’s illness under control, but failing to do so. Grandmother’s house is always spotless. Even though she has a housekeeper who comes to clean her house every week, she still does all the cleaning and house chores herself.
“His grandma’s house was cleaner than his mum’s hospital room. Her cleaning lady, Marta, came on Wednesdays, but Conor didn’t see why she bothered. His grandma would get up first thing in the morning to hoover, did the laundry four times a week, and once cleaned the bath at midnight before going to bed. She wouldn’t let dinner dishes touch the sink on their way to the dishwasher, once even taking a plate Conor was still eating from.” (Ness 2016, 104)
The living room is filled with precious and expensive items, from the luxurious settee to the glass-fronted cabinet filled with plates on display stands and heavily ornamented teacups. The most prized item in the room is an antique clock, hanging over the fireplace. The clock
29 has been handed down to the grandmother by her own mother. It has a pendulum swinging underneath it and chimes every fifteen minutes. The clock is the first item Conor ruined by holding the pendulum and thus breaking the mechanism, though, that happened before the monster’s second story and is what led to it. After Conor realizes he has broken the clock and stepped away from it, he realizes that the hour and minute hands have stopped at a certain time: 12.07, which was the time the monster usually appeared.
Grandmother’s compulsive cleaning and trying to keep house in pristine order may be seen as her trying to keep her life under control. Perhaps, she is of the mind-set that this way she will also keep her daughter’s illness at bay and that everything will eventually be fine. However, Conor’s rage and his destruction of her most prized possessions may have brought her to the realization of the possibility of losing her daughter, the truly most cherished treasure of her life. She may also have realized that she does not have complete control over her life and that losing her daughter may shatter not just her life, but Conor’s as well. After she finds Conor standing in the living room, surrounded by the smashed china and broken furniture, the only thing that remains standing is the display cabinet. She goes to it, grabs it by its side and sends it “crashing to the floor with a final-sounding crunch” (Ness 2016, 144). Her smashing the last thing standing gives the impression that she wanted to at least have some kind of control over what is happening in her life, even if it means what will get destroyed.
For the third tale, the monster tells Conor of an invisible man. This man was not actually invisible; people had simply become used to not seeing him. “And if no one sees you, the monster said […], are you really there at all?” (Ness 2016, 175) The man grew tired of being invisible. One day, he decided to make people see him, and he called for a monster. As the monster is telling Conor the story, they are at his school. Harry, Conor’s bully, has said to him, “I no longer see you” (Ness 2016, 174). Then, the monster intervenes and knocks Harry over. He in turn begins shouting at Conor, claiming that he saw nothing when looking at Conor. Thus, the monster lunges forward and makes him see. The story with the invisible man does not reflect only this particular encounter Conor had with Harry. Even before, Conor’s teachers and grandmother have refused to acknowledge him. His teachers do not integrate him in their lessons, and they do not expect him to hand in any homework. Conor becomes invisible for them; though, not in the sense of them not being able to see him, but rather their choosing not to. After the incident with his grandmother’s living room, she
30 pretends he was invisible, as well. She refuses to speak with him and seldom even looks at him.
3.3.2 Repetition and Mirroring
Additionally to mirroring in the form of the mise en abyme, instances of repetition may be found in A Monster Calls as well. First of all, Conor’s mother repeatedly addresses the tree as if seeing an old friend in the distance, “There’s that old yew tree” (Ness 2016, 31).
The next example of repetition is the constant reccurrence of a specific time. The monster always appears at the same time, 12.07, either p.m. or a.m. The first time it comes walking, Conor wakes up at exactly 12.07 at night, when the monster calls his name. The second time the monster pays Conor a visit, he gets up from his bed at 12.07 and looks out of the window of his room to see the monster standing in the garden, looking back at him. The next time the monster comes it is time for the first story. By that time, Conor’s grandmother has already come to lend his mother a hand. This time, he is not in his room, because he has to sleep in the living room. Though he only gets up at 12.09, the monster has already been waiting for him, and it even comments on what has taken Conor so long. As the time comes round for the second story, the actual time is not 12.07. Conor is in his grandmother’s living room, and the clock above the fireplace is just about to reach nine in the evening. But before it can do so and begin chiming, he grabs the clock’s pendulum and breaks its mechanism. After fidgeting with the clock’s hands, the second hand falls off, and the minute and hour ones read 12.07. The telling of the third story takes place in Conor’s school during lunchtime, which starts at 11.55 and 12.40. After Harry tells Conor he no longer sees him, the former walks away from the latter and passes “a huge digital clock on the wall of the dining hall” (Ness 2016, 174) which, at that moment, ticks over to 12.07.
At the end of the novel, the reason that time has kept repeating itself becomes painfully clear. After telling the monster his story, the fourth story in the novel, Conor falls asleep in its branches. He wakes up beside the yew tree on the hill next to his house, with his grandmother shouting his name. They rush to the hospital to his dying mother.
“As the monster’s hands gently but firmly guided him towards his mum, Conor saw the clock on the wall above her bed. Somehow, it was already 11.46 p.m. Twenty-one minutes before 12.07. He wanted to ask the monster what was going to happen then, but he didn’t dare.
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Because it felt like he knew.” (Ness 2016, 234)
We can also interpret the repeating of 12.07 as foreshadowing. Because the time is repeated so consistently, the readers get the feeling that the time is signalling something would happen at the end of the novel.
Repetition in The Ocean at the End of the Lane may be seen in the occurrences that led the narrator to Hempstock farm. Both times, at the beginning of the novel and when he first meets Lettie who brought him to the farm, somebody is passing away. At the opening of the novel, the narrator has just attended a funeral and has decided to drive around in his car for a while before going to his sister’s house. After driving around for some time, he realizes that he has been driving towards a house that is not standing any more: his childhood home. After stopping at the new house, he heads down the lane that ends with the Hempstock farm. There, he meets a woman looking like old Mrs Hempstock. After talking with her for a while, he starts to remember Lettie and the duck pond. He heads towards the latter and starts to remember some more. During his recollection of what happened to his seven-year-old self, he describes the events of where he and his dad find their car missing one morning. They soon receive a phone call from the police telling them they have found the car. It turns out that the opal miner who has been staying at their house has committed suicide in their car. The narrator, his dad and the police go to the car where the narrator, after seeing the body, has to wait on the side of the road opposite the car. After a while he is approached by Lettie who brings him to the Hempstock farm.
Another instance of repetition is related to the narrator and him coming to Hempstock’s pond. At the end of the novel, as the narrator is joined by Ginnie Hempstock and old Mrs Hempstock and they are all sitting by the pond, old Mrs Hempstock tells him that he has come to the pond before at least twice. His repeatedly returning to the pond is supposedly Lettie’s doing, because she wants to check that her sacrifice has not been in vain. This repetition indicates Lettie’s magical qualities and how she is able to influence the narrator even though she is not physically there.
“You were here once when you were twenty-four, I remember. You had two young children, and you were so scared. You came here before you left these parts; you were, what, in your thirties then? I fed you a good meal in the kitchen, and you told me about your dreams and the art you were making.” (Gaiman 2013, 229)
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Apart from repetition, examples of mirroring can be found in The Ocean at the End of the Lane as well. The pond, i.e. Lettie’s ocean, is one such instance. Because its dark surface is reflective, it may be seen as a one-way mirror. On the outside, it seems just like a reflective water surface and gives somebody looking at it the impression that it is simply a normal pond. However, underneath its surface, i.e. on the other side of the mirror, an entirely different world is hidden – one that contains a limitless amounts of knowledge and one that an individual cannot exist for long periods of time since it would destroy them. This hidden world is revealed to the narrator and the readers as the former dive into it to get away from the hunger birds. There, the narrator realizes he knows everything.
3.3.3 Verbal Magic
The metaphor “the ocean of (undiscovered) knowledge” has often been used to describe large amounts of knowledge that are yet to be discovered. In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, this metaphor is portrayed literally as the duckpond behind the Hempstock farmhouse. The pond, which Lettie calls her “Ocean”, is a body of water, under the surface of which infinite amounts of knowledge are located. Most of this knowledge is unknown to humankind and will probably remain unknown. As Lettie says, one cannot stay in the ocean too long, since it will destroy them. Also, once one comes out of the water, he/she forgets everything that was revealed to him/her beneath the surface. After the narrator emerges from the pond, all the knowledge he has acquired while in the water disappears. “The ocean was back in the pond, and all the knowledge I was left with, as if I had woken from a dream on a summer’s day, was that it had not been long ago since I had known everything” (Gaiman 2013, 195).
3.4 Narrative Style
Faris describes the four most common narrative techniques that may appear in magical realist fiction. In both A Monster Calls and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, three of the four techniques appear. The narratives in both seem matter-of-fact, and magical events and elements are described casually, without the protagonists expressing much doubt about what they see. Also, the extraordinary phenomena are described with an abundance of realistic details. Lastly, dreams have a big role in A Monster Calls, where Conor at first believes that
33 the yew tree monster is only a part of his dreams. Immediately, though, the berries and leaves that the monster has left behind prove otherwise.
3.4.1 Matter-of-fact Narrative
The protagonists in both novels are children: the seven-year-old narrator whose name is never revealed and thirteen-year-old Conor. The story of The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told from a first-person point of view; on the other hand, the narrative in A Monster Calls is presented from a third person perspective; however, the readers experience the story from Conor’s viewpoint. Overall, the extraordinary phenomena in The Ocean at the End of the Lane are presented casually, without the narrator refusing to believe they exist. More than doubt, the narrator either shows curiosity about the fantastical creatures on Lempstock farm or simply accepts them. One such example is Ocean the cat. The narrator pulls her from the ground by her tail after he and Lettie return from the forest with the “fleas”. Although Ocean seems to be a fantastic creature, the narrator treats her as an ordinary cat. Later, he even adopts her and gives her a name. Additionally, when he and Lettie are on their way to try and dispel the “flea” Skarthach, they come upon a “manta wolf”, a brown and furry rug-like creature that floats in the air. The narrator is scared of it, yet Lettie did not pay it much attention. Consequently, the narrator perceives it as “normal”.
While he and Lettie are in the forest, trying to dispel Skartchach, he lets go of Lettie’s hand and the “flea” uses the opportunity to burrow herself into the sole of his foot in the form of a worm. The following day, he finds the hole and sees something move inside it. He thinks nothing of the bizarre hole in the sole of his foot, but decides he will pull the worm out of it and flush it down the drain. This event is described as if he were doing something ordinary. “It was obviously just something that happened to people, like when the neighbour’s cat, Misty, had worms. I had a worm in my foot, and I was removing the worm” (Gaiman 2013, 63).
Although the majority of the story takes place when the narrator was a child, it begins and ends with him as forty-something years old, remembering his childhood and the odd happenings he witnessed. Thus we could say that the main narrator is an adult who does not doubt the magical events of him meeting the “flea”, her transforming into Ursula Monkton and her eventually being devoured by the “hunger birds” which in turn threatened to devour him as well. When the narrator meets the Hempstock women for the first time, though, he
34 wonders how they know the exact details of the opal miner’s death although they have no means of attaining such information. The Hempstock women being matter-of-fact about their powers cause the narrator to treat them the same way.
I wondered why they were all called Hempstock, those women, but I did not ask, any more than I dared to ask how they knew about the suicide note or what the opal miner had thought as he died. They were perfectly matter-of-fact about it. (Gaiman 2013, 29)
At the end of the novel, the adult narrator is joined by Lettie’s mother and grandmother as he is sitting by the pond. It seems they have not aged a day, although forty-something years have passed since the narrator last met them. The narrator does not refuse to believe who the two women really were.
She looked younger than I was now. I remembered her as vast, as adult, but now I saw she was only in her late thirties. I remembered her as stout, but she was buxom, and attractive in an apple-cheeked sort of a way. She was still Ginnie Hempstock, Lettie’s mother, and she looked, I was certain, just as she had looked forty-something years ago. (Gaiman 2013, 229, 230)
Additionally, since Old Mrs Hempstock tells him that he had been to the farmhouse and pond at least twice before, he believes her, even though he has no recollection of his visits. She tells him that the reason for his visits is Lettie who wants to make sure her sacrifice has paid off. Her explanation is presented matter-of-factly, with the narrator accepting it and even giving his own comments on how she was probably examining him while he was sitting on the bench next to the pond and remembering his childhood.
The yew tree monster is presented matter-of-factly as well. The first sentence of the novel signals that readers should perceive the extraordinary phenomena in the story casually: “The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do” (Ness 2016, 15). Conor, however, does at first not accept the monster as matter-of-factly as the narrative portrays it. He believes the monster to be part of his dream and acts rather presumptuous when he first meets it. Later, though, when it becomes clear to him that the monster is not part of a dream, he begins accepting the monster as a real being.
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3.4.2 An Abundance of Realistic Details
Magical realism accumulates realistic details in order to describe a seemingly impossible occurrence. By doing so, it interweaves the magical world within the ordinary world and thus creates a paradox that is central to this literary mode (Faris 2004, 90)
In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, realistic details can be found in descriptions of most magical happenings. After the narrator returns from the forest with the “fleas” with Lettie, he finds a wormhole in the sole of his foot. He goes to the bathroom, gets a pair of tweezers and tries to pull the worm out of the hole. The event, presented matter-of-factly, is described exhaustively and at great length. A full chapter is devoted to his trying to grab the worm, eventually succeeding and flushing it down the drain. The descriptions surrounding the event are filled with sensory imagery, emphasizing the realism in magical realism even more. By the way the narrator described what he was doing, the task seems perfectly mundane.
When the water was steaming, I extended my foot and my right arm, maintaining pressure on the tweezers and on the inch of the creature that I had wound out of my body. Then I put the place where the tweezers were under the hot tap. /…/ I felt [the worm] flex inside me, trying to pull back from the scalding water, felt it loosen its grip on the inside of my foot. I turned the tweezers, triumphantly, like picking the best scab in the world, as the creature began to come out of me, putting up less and less resistance.” (Gaiman 2013, 63, 64)
Furthermore, Old Mrs Hempstock performed a “snip and stitch” (Gaiman 2013, 127) technique in order to remake the memories of the narrator’s parents after his father wanted to drown him, which was Ursula’s, i.e. Skarthach’s doing. With the technique, Old Mrs Hempstock cut a piece of fabric from the narrator’s dressing gown and mended the hole with a red thread. Though the event has magical consequences, it is presented realistically and in great detail: “Snip! Snip! Snip! went the black scissors, and the irregular section of fabric that Old Mrs Hempstock had been cutting fell to the table” (Gaiman 2013, 129).
At the beginning of A Monster Calls, the transformation of the yew tree into a monster is accompanied by a detailed description that intensifies this magical occurrence. With the use of realistic detail, the magic of the yew tree’s transforming into a monster is portrayed realistically and makes the reader perceive it not as something marvellous, but as something ordinary.
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As Conor watched, the uppermost branches of the tree gathered themselves into a great and terrible face, shimmering into a mouth and nose and even eyes, peering back at him. Other branches twisted around one another […] until they formed two long arms and a second leg to set down beside the main trunk. The rest of the tree gathered itself into a spine and then a torso, the thin, needle-like leaves weaving together to make a green, furry skin that moved and breathed as if there were muscles and lungs underneath.” (Ness 2016, 19, 20)
In the description, the yew tree monster is described as having human-like features: a mouth, a nose, eyes, arms, legs, skin, muscles and lungs. It walked upright on two legs and talked. This way, the readers can visualize the monster easier and may perceive it as a creature that exists, even though it has magical abilities.
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4 A Monster Calls between Genres and Languages
This chapter aims to analyse how magical realism transfers from the original A Monster Calls to the Slovene translation and into the movie. The chapter will first explore how the five main magical realist characteristics as suggested by Faris are either changed or preserved when the medium is shifted from text to screen. Secondly, the chapter will observe whether the magical realistic elements of the English original stay intact when the text is translated into Slovene. The ensuing subsections, however, do not constitute a detailed study. Both can be researched as their own vast areas, especially magical realism in films and film adaptions of novels.
4.1 Magical Realism in the Film A Monster Calls
Magical realism is usually not portrayed in films. However, the characteristics of the literary mode can be transferred to the screen and analysed in a similar way. Below, I will compare the presentation of the five main magical realist characteristics according to Faris in the novel and the movie.
To begin with, the irreducible element in the form of the yew tree monster is presented more matter-of-factly in the movie than in the book. When the monster first appears, it is portrayed as a menacing creature with glowing eyes and a booming voice, and one that destroys everything in its path. In addition, the full moon is shining on the night of the monster’s first visit, giving it an even more mysterious and supernatural aspect. However, Conor accepts its arrival without comment, thus making the viewer accept the monster as ordinary.
At 1:35:30, the scene shows an intimate moment between Conor’s mother, grandmother and him while in the hospital. They are also joined by the monster, throughout the story seen only by Conor. In this scene, however, Conor’s mother looks directly at the monster, who in turn returns the look and nods. It gives the viewers the sense that the monster is not simply a part of Conor’s imagination. In addition, in an earlier scene at 00:33:20, Conor comes home from school to find his mother sitting on the bed in his room and looking through the window at the yew tree. By saying “That tree is amazing. It’s been here for thousands of years”, she hints at the fact that she might know something about the tree and how the monster uses it when it comes walking. This indication is plainly shown in the final scene of
38 the movie. There, Conor finds one of his mother’s old watercolour sketchbooks that she filled up when she was younger. While flipping through it, he finds familiar images: scenes from the three stories the yew tree monster told him. Eventually, he turns to a page with an image of a little girl, his mother, sitting on the shoulder of the yew tree monster. These scenes lead us to believe that the monster may truly be an actual fantastic creature.
Secondly, the characteristic of how magical realism creates a phenomenal world using precise details is difficult to analyse in the movie, since there is no detailed description in a visual medium. However, we can observe the realistic setting of the movie and the incorporation of magical elements into it. This resembles how magical realism creates a phenomenal world with magical elements portrayed as ordinary and normal. The yew tree monster always appears in the realistic world, and it interacts with both the world and Conor as if it were an ordinary part of the former. Additionally, with the help of the advanced CGI used in the movie, the monster itself appears lifelike and is seamlessly incorporated into the realistic setting.
Thirdly, the movie does not necessarily cause the viewers to experience doubts about the monster’s reality, contrary to the novel. In the latter, Conor was strongly convinced that the monster was merely a dream when it first appeared. Though he seems to change his mind rather quickly in the story, readers may still remain doubtful. In the movie, however, Conor does not express disbelief. When the monster first appears, he does not question its arrival and begins talking, and even arguing, with it as if this were something completely normal. Therefore, from the beginning, the viewers believe that the monster is a part of the realistic world.
Fourthly, in the movie the characteristic of the merging of two realms is not portrayed as clearly as in the book. While telling the first story in the book, the monster indicates the existence of a world other than Conor’s, i.e. a magical world. In the movie, however, there is no such mention. Although the monster includes giants, dragons and a warlock in the first story, neither it nor Conor dwell on their existence or origin. Thus, the movie does not place as much emphasis on combining Conor’s world with the yew tree monster’s.
Lastly, examples of viewers having an unclear perception of time and space found in the movie are similar to the ones in the novel; they are, however, presented differently, because of the change in medium. To begin with, an example of how the viewers’ usual perception of time is obscured is Conor’s tampering with his grandmother’s treasured clock. This
39 example, however, is not as clearly portrayed in the novel. In one of the previous scenes, Conor’s grandmother strongly emphasizes that the antique clock in her living room shows the correct time. At 00:36:43 she says, while pointing to the clock, “This is the correct time. Not the one on your phone, or on the computer, not even on the news. It was my mother’s, your great-grandmother’s. Perfect time keeping for over a hundred years.” When Conor returns to his grandmother’s house after spending some time with his father, he goes into the living room where the clock shows that the time is six o’clock. He then moves the clock’s hands by force, making them stop at 12.07. Although that is technically not the time, the monster still appears, giving the viewers the feeling that Conor has somehow managed to manipulate time by changing the time on the clock that is supposedly the only correct one.
To sum up, in A Monster Calls the five main magical realistic characteristics as suggested by Faris remain roughly the same with the change of the medium. The ones located in the book can be found in the movie as well. Additionally, the matter-of-fact narrative style, which is one of the most defining characteristics of magical realism, is present in the movie as well. Conor’s failure to overreact to the yew tree monster helps the viewers to accept the latter as a real creature that might actually exist in Conor’s world.
4.2 A Comparison of Magical Realist Elements in A Monster Calls and Its Slovene Translation Sedem minut čez polnoč
A literary work is defined as magical realist based on its content. The five main magical realist characteristics as suggested by Faris are connected closely with the events in the story itself and are not associated with the linguistic elements of the literary work. Thus, the magical realism located in A Monster Calls should not change when the novel is translated into Slovene. The main aim of the following analysis is not to study magical realist characteristics of Sedem minut čez polnoč in great detail, but rather to support the claim that these characteristics remain intact with the translation.
Overall, the translation does not alter the magical realist aspect of the novel. The most distinct feature of the literary genre, i.e. the matter-of-fact narrative, remains. Also, the irreducible element is presented the same. The only difference connected with the latter is the grammatical gender of the yew tree monster. In the original, the monster is always referred to as “it”. In the Slovene translation, however, the monster is translated as “pošast”,
40 which is a feminine noun, and is referred to as “she” throughout the novel. Since the neuter grammatical gender in Slovene is used less frequently with living creatures than the feminine and masculine grammatical genders, the readers thus get an even greater sense that the yew tree monster may be a living being. Additionally, the monster’s choice to take the form of a tree, combined with the feminine grammatical gender in the translation, may result in Slovene readers perceiving the yew tree monster as the embodiment of Mother Nature, especially when the monster refers to itself as “ta divja zemlja” (Ness 2013, 44).
Furthermore, Slovene readers may experience doubts because of the presence of elements from English folklore and Celtic traditions. These elements cannot be found in Slovene folklore, and readers may not be familiar with them. When the monster presents itself as Herne the Hunter, Cernunnos and the Green Man, these names are translated literally: “Rogati lovec sem! Cernunnos! Večni Zeleni mož!” (Ness 2013, 41). These names refer to beings from English folklore and Celtic traditions, but they are foreign to Slovene folklore. Slovene readers may therefore have difficulty understanding the monster’s origins or perceiving it as a supernatural deity. Similar instances in the Slovene or Slavic folklore could be Zeleni Jurij or perhaps Živa, the Old Slavic goddess of life.
Moreover, the time at which the yew tree monster appears is translated as seven minutes past midnight, which is also the title’s translation. Although the translation is inaccurate, since the monster does not always appear at night, but once comes to Conor while he is at school, it gives the story a stronger mystical sense. Midnight in many folklores is a special and liminal time, frequently connected to the appearance of supernatural creatures.
In conclusion, the translation retained the main magical realist features of the original novel intact. Although there are subtle differences, which were the result of the language change, they do not impact the narrative in any significant way.
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5 Conclusion
Both A Monster Calls and The Ocean at the End of the Lane can be considered magical realist according to Faris’s proposed characteristics and narrative techniques. The irreducible elements in both novels are smoothly interwoven into the realistic narrative. The yew tree monster, “fleas”, “varmints”, and the Hempstocks and their farm are extraordinary beings. However, they are presented in a matter-of-fact way, and the characters and narrators rarely provide any comments on them, making it possible for the readers to perceive them as realistic. Furthermore, two realms are merged, and the boundaries between them are blurred. This is especially clear in the Ocean at the End of the Lane with the forest where “fleas” are on Hempstock property. Although it seems to be its own world, it is incorporated within the narrator’s world, and it is impossible to discern where one ends and the other begins. There are also indications of a world other than Conor’s world in A Monster Calls. The monster hints that there is a world whence it originates and where other magical beings, such as dragons or giants, reside. In addition, the readers’ usual sense of time is shaken throughout both novels. The Hempstock women are vague about their age and give the impression they have been alive since the dawn of time. The yew tree monster also seems not to be bothered by time and seems to be able to make time in the real world stop when it tells stories.
The narration in both novels resembles the most common magical realist narrative techniques. Magical events are presented matter-of-factly, with characters accepting them and rarely giving any comments. The readers are led to acknowledge them as an ordinary part of the story. Furthermore by using plenty of realistic details when magical events are described, the magical realist narratives make these events appear ordinary and normal. This way, magic and extraordinary events become part of the realistic world.
Additionally, A Monster Calls was also adapted into a movie and translated into Slovene. In the movie adaptation, the magical realism is strengthened by having both Conor and his mother interact with the monster. Although originally the monster seems to make itself visible only to Conor, it exchanges a moment with Conor’s mother towards the end of the movie. Additionally, Conor finds evidence that his mother might have met the yew tree monster when she was a child, as well. With the translation, the magical realist elements are mainly retained. The Slovene readers may have some difficulty in trying to perceive the novel as realistic, since the yew tree monster does not present itself with names familiar to them.
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In conclusion, magical realism as a literary genre has a rich and vivid history. It has been subjected to many attempts of literary critics and authors trying to define it. However, none was successful, and consequently there is much confusion surrounding the term’s final definition. There is still much left to be researched on the topic, especially in connection with magical realism in the 21st century. Another vast area that offers many opportunities for research is magical realism in children’s or young adult literature. Magical realism can be seen as an important resource to prepare children for their adult lives. Because magical realist narratives resemble the real world they live in, they can explore them with their imaginations and yet still be in contact with reality. A Monster Calls and The Ocean at the End of the Lane can be seen as such examples. Younger readers may identify with either Conor or the nameless narrator and see themselves in these characters. Some younger readers may face hardships similar to those Conor faces and may find some solace in the yew tree monster. Others may connect with the nameless narrator and may deem Lettie their friend as well.
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