CCBC-Net Archives
Names in Walk Two Moons
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: NODELMAN at UWPG02.UWINNIPEG.CA <NODELMAN>
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 15:09:49 -0600 (CST)
My first response to the idea that the names in Walk Two Moons might be significantly meaningful was just to wonder what exactly was said or done in the novel to suggest this possibility. I'm a suspicious reader, I'm afraid, and I'm not convinced that it's always a wise strategy to try to read names as symbols: so just why is it a wise possibility here, I asked myself. The best reason I could think of was the name Mrs. Cadaver--now if THAT name doesn't ask to be read symbolically, nothing does.
But then it occurred to me that of course Mrs. Cadaver's name turns out to be an absolute misrepresentation of who she really is. She is the only one in the bus crash who DIDN'T become a corpse. So, while the girls extrapolate from her name and assume all kinds of murderous events in her life, none of them turn out to be true. In fact, her life is defined in terms of two occasions in which she must deal with corpses, not with being one. Her name does NOT represent who or what she truly is, but just the opposite.
Nor is she the only one. Sal's name expresses her allegiance to the wrong place--not to the group of Native American people who were her ancestors, but in fact, and in a wildly misleading way, to a city in Spain. Her name does not tell the truth about her (indeed, even the name Seneca would have been a lie--but that's another story). Sal's mother insists that her own name MUST tell the truth about her--one truer than what people choose to call her--and her insistence on that leads to her death: she says she is NOT Sugar, and ends up being no longer the Chanhassen she claimed to be (and anyway, isn't Chanhassen actually a dinner theatre??). Mike Biddle is not in fact a natural son of the Biddles, as the girls first assume from his name. Tom Fleet may not have been fast enough in getting the poison out of the snake bite. Mrs . Cadaver is not only not a cadaver, but was once a Birkway-and, it turns out, twin to the totally different Birkway that the girls have put into an entirely different category--the different names hide a shared past. Similarly, consider the variety of Finneys in the book, and the variety of Winterbottoms: the same name disguises a variety of personal quirks and characteristics.
Meanwhile, Prudence is not Prudent, despite her name--she depends absolutely on her mother's prudence. Phoebe is not Peeby nor is she either birdlike or much reminiscent of the goddess Diana. The names Birkway gives the children in Sal's class as he reads out their journal entries are not their real names, and they know it. As for Mrs. Partridge, well, I don't know--but she says she wasn't always a Partridge. Just about the only thing in the novel whose name rings true as a description of its essential reality is Old Faithful.
On the other hand, Gooseberry is not actually named Gooseberry, nor is Chickabiddy actually named Chickabiddy
(just as Sugar is not actually named Sugar, nor Peeby Phoebe)--and yet these names do seem more appropriate to their reality than the theoretical actual names that supposedly define their essence: in terms of Gooseberry and Chickabiddy, both berries and chickens in this book seem always to be related to love and kisses. I'm still guessing about Peeby.
My conclusion: names here are most significant for the lies they tell and the truth they hide--and that ties them in with the books' central concern with how little we know about other people's interior lives, how often it is different on the inside than it seems to be from the outside, and how much we need to work at developing understanding of the life inside the false exterior, the person inside the misrepresentational name. Not only are the characters' names not symbolic--the point often seems to be exactly that they're not. (Nicknames might be another matter?)
On other matter altogether: when exactly is Walk Two Moons supposed to be taking place? I assumed in the present--but absolutely none of these children seems to have a TV set or a commercially popular toy or any firm grasp (or even any knowledge) of popular children's culture. And if there is a mall or a fast food place in the book, I didn't notice them. Is this meant to be some sort of Utopian world of contemporary childhood for nostalgic adults? Is it possible that children in America today could really live so much apart from Disney and MTV and Taco Bell? (They don't even mention such things in their journals--unlike the real children I know). I can't deny I enjoyed this utopian view of childhood--but it does bother me that I enjoyed it. It seems to mean that I prefer this kind of gentle nostalgic world to the actual reality I know the vast majority of North American children live in. There seems to be some dangerous reality?nying in that. I wonder how child readers respond to it--does anyone know?
Perry Nodelman nodelman at uwpg02.uwinnipeg.ca
Received on Sun 16 Jul 1995 04:09:49 PM CDT
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 15:09:49 -0600 (CST)
My first response to the idea that the names in Walk Two Moons might be significantly meaningful was just to wonder what exactly was said or done in the novel to suggest this possibility. I'm a suspicious reader, I'm afraid, and I'm not convinced that it's always a wise strategy to try to read names as symbols: so just why is it a wise possibility here, I asked myself. The best reason I could think of was the name Mrs. Cadaver--now if THAT name doesn't ask to be read symbolically, nothing does.
But then it occurred to me that of course Mrs. Cadaver's name turns out to be an absolute misrepresentation of who she really is. She is the only one in the bus crash who DIDN'T become a corpse. So, while the girls extrapolate from her name and assume all kinds of murderous events in her life, none of them turn out to be true. In fact, her life is defined in terms of two occasions in which she must deal with corpses, not with being one. Her name does NOT represent who or what she truly is, but just the opposite.
Nor is she the only one. Sal's name expresses her allegiance to the wrong place--not to the group of Native American people who were her ancestors, but in fact, and in a wildly misleading way, to a city in Spain. Her name does not tell the truth about her (indeed, even the name Seneca would have been a lie--but that's another story). Sal's mother insists that her own name MUST tell the truth about her--one truer than what people choose to call her--and her insistence on that leads to her death: she says she is NOT Sugar, and ends up being no longer the Chanhassen she claimed to be (and anyway, isn't Chanhassen actually a dinner theatre??). Mike Biddle is not in fact a natural son of the Biddles, as the girls first assume from his name. Tom Fleet may not have been fast enough in getting the poison out of the snake bite. Mrs . Cadaver is not only not a cadaver, but was once a Birkway-and, it turns out, twin to the totally different Birkway that the girls have put into an entirely different category--the different names hide a shared past. Similarly, consider the variety of Finneys in the book, and the variety of Winterbottoms: the same name disguises a variety of personal quirks and characteristics.
Meanwhile, Prudence is not Prudent, despite her name--she depends absolutely on her mother's prudence. Phoebe is not Peeby nor is she either birdlike or much reminiscent of the goddess Diana. The names Birkway gives the children in Sal's class as he reads out their journal entries are not their real names, and they know it. As for Mrs. Partridge, well, I don't know--but she says she wasn't always a Partridge. Just about the only thing in the novel whose name rings true as a description of its essential reality is Old Faithful.
On the other hand, Gooseberry is not actually named Gooseberry, nor is Chickabiddy actually named Chickabiddy
(just as Sugar is not actually named Sugar, nor Peeby Phoebe)--and yet these names do seem more appropriate to their reality than the theoretical actual names that supposedly define their essence: in terms of Gooseberry and Chickabiddy, both berries and chickens in this book seem always to be related to love and kisses. I'm still guessing about Peeby.
My conclusion: names here are most significant for the lies they tell and the truth they hide--and that ties them in with the books' central concern with how little we know about other people's interior lives, how often it is different on the inside than it seems to be from the outside, and how much we need to work at developing understanding of the life inside the false exterior, the person inside the misrepresentational name. Not only are the characters' names not symbolic--the point often seems to be exactly that they're not. (Nicknames might be another matter?)
On other matter altogether: when exactly is Walk Two Moons supposed to be taking place? I assumed in the present--but absolutely none of these children seems to have a TV set or a commercially popular toy or any firm grasp (or even any knowledge) of popular children's culture. And if there is a mall or a fast food place in the book, I didn't notice them. Is this meant to be some sort of Utopian world of contemporary childhood for nostalgic adults? Is it possible that children in America today could really live so much apart from Disney and MTV and Taco Bell? (They don't even mention such things in their journals--unlike the real children I know). I can't deny I enjoyed this utopian view of childhood--but it does bother me that I enjoyed it. It seems to mean that I prefer this kind of gentle nostalgic world to the actual reality I know the vast majority of North American children live in. There seems to be some dangerous reality?nying in that. I wonder how child readers respond to it--does anyone know?
Perry Nodelman nodelman at uwpg02.uwinnipeg.ca
Received on Sun 16 Jul 1995 04:09:49 PM CDT
