Novel response
The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden is a perfect novel for children who are struggling in adapting to a new environment, and teenagers who judge people according to their appearance, and not their true character. Through the portrayal of the little girl, Marry Lennox, and the new house she lives in, I was able to learn a lot about her, as the story unravels with new adventures. The overall tone of the novel is neutral, unless the author describes someone with emotion words, such as excitement, yelled, etc. Even though this book is a rather easy book to read, its richness in the word choice and the vivid descriptions helps to revive the quite monotonous tone of this novel. This novel is more like an adventure book, but it seems more dictatorial to me, as it has taught me two very important rules in life. With an unbiased information, I was able to make clear distinctions between all the characters.
Mary Lennox is a spoilt, unloved child who had her own way in everything. Her life continued as normal, until malaria broke out and she was forced to move to her Uncle’s house, in the English moors. Each preceding chapters were descriptions about the secret garden she found in her uncle’s house, so after the first few chapters I read, I was curious about how the story would continue, as each story seems to fade away. However, as I read on, I started realizing something – that every few chapters, there is a main theme to the story. For example, when Mary first spoke to her uncle, whom she described as old, hunchbacked, and mean, turns out to be a really nice person. Another example would be when she heard rumors about how mean and bad tempered her uncle’s son, Colin is. She was proven wrong when she finally met him and spoke to him. Mary was even told by the gardener that she, him, and Colin are three selfish, ‘bad’ looking people; at first Mary agreed, but later she realized that none of what the gardener said was wrong—the people were actually nicer than they actually looked. Through all these experiences, the first lesson Mary learned was that she couldn’t just depend on the person’s appearance and rumors to judge about that person.
Throughout the novel, the author compares and contrasts between two parts of the world Mary had lived in– India and English moors. The author tries to portray how important it is for someone to assimilate to the culture of the country of current precedence in order to live without difficulty. When Mary first moved into India, she was struggling about what was expected from her new servants, and she was mad at how people regarded her as less important than when she was in India. No matter how hard she tried to make her servants listen to her, and follow the Indian customs, none of them compromised with her; thus, she had no choice but to follow the culture of the new environment with the help of her new servant, Martha. She even tried to speak in Yorkshire! Colin also faces a similar trouble, because he himself was stuck between being at home, and also exploring the outside world. The author slowly describes how Mary helps Colin to relieve himself from the stress he is in by helping him to conform to the new environment. There also seemed to be a symbol: the bird. The bird itself was flying around the garden, communicating with Mary and the gardener, and also looking for a best spot to build its house. The bird probably found it hard to adapt because the gardener would always change the layout of the garden, which makes it seem like a different environment for the bird. This symbol seems to clearly link the trouble Mary and Colin is going through, by showing how tough and important it is to adapt to the environment.
Indeed, all this can be linked to the theory of ‘survivals for the fittest’ and also the phrase ‘don’t judge the book by its cover’. Since this book is narrated in a third person point of view, a reader will definitely be able to distinguish the troubles of each character without any bias, and also the main themes in this novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment