Anne of Green Gables review

     Introduce the subject, scope, and type of book

Anne of Green Gables was written by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery in 1908. It is a children’s book of the style of Little Women and What Katy Did.

     Put the book in context

Unlike in Little Women where a comfortable family life is broken up, the heroine here begins the story by finding an adoptive family who initially don’t want her before quickly stealing a place in their hearts.

Briefly summarize the content

Set in Prince Edward Island, Canada, in the time of Queen Victoria, it is the story of Anne (spelled with an ‘e’) Shirley, an orphaned girl of 11, with a liking for flights of the imagination and big words who is always getting into what she calls ‘scrapes’. It charts her adoption into the household of an unmarried brother and sister and her life and friendships in the neighbourhood and at school up until the age of 17.

     Provide your reactions to the book

It was a pleasure to see the positive effect Anne had on the other characters of the book, sometimes, but not always, without intending to. Her imagination and appreciation of her beautiful surroundings are clearly shared by the author, something which did mean that, at times, I found it difficult to separate their two voices. Nonetheless I did like getting to see Canada through the heroine/author’s eyes.

Although I think the author’s voice was a bit confused with Anne’s during descriptions of the surroundings towards the beginning of the book, I thought that it was distinct and separate elsewhere. There were frequent moments where the author would step back from describing the scene and turn to make quite cutting asides to the reader about one or more of the characters’ shortcomings, which I thought a little cruel, but then perhaps it was meant to show the reader that none of these, or indeed any, people are perfect.

To me the later years of Anne’s childhood were a bit rushed, although perhaps this was meant as a metaphor for the way children seem to grow up too quickly in the eyes of their parents. The brother and sister are the two most developed and developing characters in the book after Anne. Matthew’s soft-spoken, gentle, but gradually emboldened personality, and Marisa’s tough, puritanical exterior, with its more and more frequent bursts of quickly concealed mirth are what makes this book really shine.

     Summarize your ideas

The message this book seems to present the reader with is that wisdom of adults and the foolishness of children could equally be seen as the foolishness of adults and the wisdom of children. The author doesn’t stop short of criticizing both age groups, and instead pushes for a meeting in the middle. I think she succeeds in this by allowing the advice to come from the lips of Matthew, “Don’t give up all your romance, Anne.”

Pass judgement

While you shouldn’t expect to escape this book free from some tugging of the heartstrings, for the most part Anne’s adventures are comical and you will find it hard not to be charmed by her just as her new family and neighbours are. I would recommend this as light reading and as something to be read to your children. This is real gem of a book.

An Analysis of "Below the wood the tarn" by george

Before I begin this analysis, I'd like to congratulate George on the publication of another one of his poems "The Bottom Lake" in the poetry magazine Smith's Knoll Issue 49.

Below the wood the tarn

Below the wood the tarn

"Tarn" is given a somewhat ominous feel by being the last word of the title and the first line of this poem. The setting brought to mind by this choice of word for a lake is of mountains in one of Britain's national parks, The Lake District, Snowdonia or in the Scottish highlands or islands.

as still as a hunter

The feeling of foreboding is confirmed by the simile in the second line. It seems likely that the hunter is a human deer hunter based on the likely location but it could be a comparison to an animal predator such as a cat.

waiting.

Separating "waiting" on to its own line gives a feeling that a long stretch of time passes while the hunter waits.

The doe in fog, a sodden net,

The deer is introduced together with another natural force. This metaphor identifies the fog as a fishing net and it is made more threatening by this human quality.

inches lower, dips her head,

As the doe "dips her head" she makes it vulnerable just as when a prisoner bows her head to the axe-man for execution.

ears stretched for steps, safety

The irony here is that the doe listens out for steps from human or animal hunters but assumes she has found "safety" at the end of the line when she hears none.

catches breaths.

This is a bit of difficult line to interpret because of the order of the words, but I think the purpose is to connect the idea of the deer catching her breath to listen for steps and the release of the withheld breath as the sense of safety catches hold.

Hooves as delicate as ladies' hands

At the end of the poem, Nosferatu is mentioned and the doe, with its "hooves as delicate as ladies' hands" could be seen as one of Count Dracula's wives.

grace mud, then press a grasp

Whereas the line starts with the barely there "grace" which makes even the mud the doe is stepping into seem beautiful, this alliterates with "grasp" at the end of the line which is synonymous with "clutch" and rhymes with the similar meaning word "clasp" and which, like those words, implies a firm hold from which the recipient would not easily get free.

so smooth, so welcoming.

There is no snapping of limbs from this predator but rather, its clutch is like a lover's embrace, so gentle that its prey does not realize the trap has already closed.

It's not until she's dipped her cloven

The word "cloven" while referring here to the doe's feet still succeeds in bringing to mind a dual image: first one of a heart cloven in two as the lover realizes she is betrayed; and second one of the Devil's hooves - an image of evil.

feet in deep that she feels the

The assonance of the long vowel sound "ee" in the words "feet", "deep" and "feels" serves to emphasize how deep the doe is trapped as well as to give voice to the doe's cries and the effort she must likely be expending as she struggles to free herself from the mud.

pull, and cannot leap.

The word "pull" suggests the lake has agency and is in the act of pulling the doe deeper as she struggles. The long vowel sound "ee" returns to add power to her "leap", but the doe's usual escape mechanism, which would be to jump out of her predators' grasp, is powerless here and the energy she expends on it is absorbed by the deep mud which pulls her still deeper.

For a moment in her fear she sees

That the doe sees a reflection in this moment suggests she becomes frozen in her fear and the water's surface becomes still like a mirror.

a doe beneath her, looking up,

The doe like a sheep would likely see her reflection as that of another deer.

one shoulder arched,

The doe's own arched shoulder, frozen in the motion of her attempted escape, takes on a sinister aspect in her mirror enemy.

like Nosferatu as she tugs.

One of the greatest fears we have of other humans is that they might wish to eat us. Nosferatu, or Count Dracula, is the embodiment of this fear. In a deer this seems even more unnatural as it never eats flesh. Once again it is a human, or at least a vampire, that the deer's arched nemesis is being compared to. It is this that lends the greatest threat to her situation in the reader's mind.

A Review of "The pull" by george

I've chosen to turn my attention to poems after re-writing a couple of lines for a requester on Mechanical Turk who wanted his poem to be put into iambic meter.

This brought me to the conclusion that I'd like to start reading and reviewing poetry again (something I used to enjoy at school) Since the author of the poem below, my friend and former classmate, George, has been brave enough to link me and others to his blog, I thought I'd start there.

The pull

As a title this delivers a completely different image to my mind than to the one the poem contains; immediately what sprang to mind was university students going out on “the pull”, but I wonder whether the author didn’t intend to parallel this romantic “pull” with the more spiritual draw of an historical place of worship.

I guess that they designed it thus:

The author surmises in this line that architects had sat down to plan the effect their building would have on people.

Four holes in the dome, one woman

Numbering the building’s four apertures and then placing the one woman at the end of the line in this way suggests that the designers made it not just of stones but of people. The dome here brings to mind the domes of the mosques and churches of the Mediterranean.

Not there to clean but stir up dust, embodying

Dust here may symbolize the building’s history and the word “embodying” gives a physical form to that history.

The beam by which the morning visitant

The beam of light through clouds or in this case through stirred up dust is often a symbol of God’s light reaching down from heaven Here the choice of the word “visitant” brings to mind the word “supplicant” suggesting this light is some form of answer to a prayer.

Is struck; through another gap at evensong

The word “struck”, sitting as it does as the second word of the line and being followed by a semi-colon, brings the poem to a halt as the beam of light would no doubt cause its recipient to stop for a moment in wonder.

It slopes to stroke the censer and the priest,

The introduction of the censer and the priest confirm that this is a Catholic church or cathedral. The choice of the words “slopes” and “stroke”, the alliteration and consonance of the letter ‘s’ combined with the assonance of the letter ‘o’ in this line suggests a softer evening light when compared with the morning ray which “struck” the visitant.

“Stroke” is a very anthropomorphic word and either the light itself or the designers of the church are seeking to make contact with or perhaps just to soothe the priest.

Scribing something in a language I can’t read.

The alliteration from the previous line carries over to the first two words of this one maintaining the meditative mood. The poet thoughts seem to take a more regretful turn in the second half of the line with his admission that he can’t read the language the priest is writing in and is the first three such admissions of an incapacity to do something.

The use of the archaic word "scribing" provides a bridge to the past and the priest’s predecessors in this building, scribes, who in Medieval times would have written in Latin and Greek, both languages which connected them to an even earlier period in time. This would also have been when the building’s designers were alive.

Like some galactic starship’s S.O.S still echoing

The “echoing” of the S.O.S. parallels the echoes one hears in a large building. The wooden beamed roof of a Western church is somewhat reminiscent of an upturned boat and the author may have heard it described so. The white domed interior of an Eastern church, in contrast, bears a very striking resemblance to the dome on the top of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the popular science-fiction series Star Trek.

The word “still” suggests the S.O.S. has been echoing for a long time and so it is a link to the lives of a now extinct alien race and their one cry for help in Morse code. Perhaps the author sees the designers of the church as trying to reach out through history and have their souls saved.

In space when all the crew are dead, it carries

The word “dead” intensifies the author’s thoughts. This focuses our attention on the last word of the line, the fact that the ship still “carries” something.

In its emptiness a pull that I can’t shake

This is the second reference to something the author can’t do – this time it is shake the “pull” of the poem’s title which is the draw of the long-dead crew’s message still transmitting through the ages and what the previous line was building up to.

And weighs me down to sit and try to voice

The force of the ship/church’s pull must still be strong even as an echo because it causes the poet to sit down and try to breathe life into it again with his voice.

The ringing letters of these walls: to someone

Both the echo and the unreadable language make a return here in the “ringing letters”. This replaces the quiet but insistent language contained in the Morse code of the S.O.S. with the waves of sound produced by church bells echoing back and forth with great beauty but no ready meaning. Except that the “ringing letters of these walls” do have an intended recipient: “someone/Earlier than me”.

Earlier than me, something means, something means.

The regret is back in force here as if the author feels he has come along too late to be that person to whom the ringing letters “something means”. The repetition of the latter phrase has two purposes: it is a physical representation of the echo the author detects; and it is the author’s frustrated mutterings as he attempts to decipher the message.

And all that I can feel is the stain that I can’t see

The “stain” is a reference to the invisible letters and another admission of something the author can’t do.

Or care enough to make the world, as this building

This time the author suggests that in fact he doesn’t care enough to attempt the things he has claimed he couldn’t do.

Does, something gentler, more meaningful than me.

Instead of looking for meaning or a message anymore the poet concedes that the building has achieved much more than he could ever achieve or wish to. In fact, this could be extended to the church’s original designers who perhaps had no conception of the effect it would have on so many people. In the end it is the building that he gives credit to for making the world a gentler more meaningful place.