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Protecting Marie: Father and shapes -Reply
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From: Nina Lindsay <nlindsay>
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 08:36:00 -600
Katy, the triangle imagery is fascinating, and I would think very deliberate, as the chapter headings and title seem very deliberate. Also, in his display at the CCBC, Kevin Henkes mentions the skating imagery in the book (Fanny has a dream in which Dinner is skating and carrying a tray -- There is the family skating scene where Ellen makes a figure 8, which is also the sign for infinity --The end of the book takes place at the pond).
The chapter headings "Without", "With", "Within" intrigue me -- they seem on a very basic level to fit the mood of the story, although I haven't been able to come up with any explanation for them. (Not that they necessarily need explanation.) Calling on the triangle imagery, "Without" seems to evoke that image of a broken triangle that Katy mentions -- the connection between Fanny and her Father is missing, so what might be a "triangle" of three people is really just a jagged line, unable to enclose anything -- thus, "Without" -- Fanny feeling always outside of her father's life. In "With", another member enters the traingle: Dinner. There is no longer triangle imagery, but rather a feeling of four beings (3 people, 1 dog), clustered together -- not necessarily yet comfortable with one another, so not having made any connections, but nonetheless together, "With". Finally, in "Within", I get the feeling that Fanny is beginning to understand how each member of the family relates to one another, and, (back to triangles again), she can feel enclosed, or embraced, by the three family members surrounding her: Ellen, Henry, and Dinner. "Within".
I like the dream of Dinner skating -- when you skate, you leave a line in the ice, and I see Dinner drawing lines, connections, from person to person. I also love the image of Ellen making the sign for infinity -- a sign that, when you connect your first mark to your last, makes an enclosed symbol, but one that means "everything possible" (or, as Fanny coined it,
"internity"). This then leads to the last scene, and the final sentence,
"the options seemed limitless". There is at once the feeling of being
"Within", and of being in limitless space.
The triangles, the skating -- I like the fact that the imagery is so potent, yet it doesn't feel forced, or as if it's forcing the reader into an interpretation. I get the feeling Henkes never necessarily had a single interpretation in mind. The story itself is at once a drawing in and an opening out -- enclosing, describing, connecting -- but in each connection made, a myriad of possibilities spread outwards.
Nina Lindsay Student University of Wisconsin, Madison School of Library and Information Studies nlindsay at mail.soemadison.wisc.edu
Received on Fri 26 Jan 1996 08:36:00 AM CST
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 08:36:00 -600
Katy, the triangle imagery is fascinating, and I would think very deliberate, as the chapter headings and title seem very deliberate. Also, in his display at the CCBC, Kevin Henkes mentions the skating imagery in the book (Fanny has a dream in which Dinner is skating and carrying a tray -- There is the family skating scene where Ellen makes a figure 8, which is also the sign for infinity --The end of the book takes place at the pond).
The chapter headings "Without", "With", "Within" intrigue me -- they seem on a very basic level to fit the mood of the story, although I haven't been able to come up with any explanation for them. (Not that they necessarily need explanation.) Calling on the triangle imagery, "Without" seems to evoke that image of a broken triangle that Katy mentions -- the connection between Fanny and her Father is missing, so what might be a "triangle" of three people is really just a jagged line, unable to enclose anything -- thus, "Without" -- Fanny feeling always outside of her father's life. In "With", another member enters the traingle: Dinner. There is no longer triangle imagery, but rather a feeling of four beings (3 people, 1 dog), clustered together -- not necessarily yet comfortable with one another, so not having made any connections, but nonetheless together, "With". Finally, in "Within", I get the feeling that Fanny is beginning to understand how each member of the family relates to one another, and, (back to triangles again), she can feel enclosed, or embraced, by the three family members surrounding her: Ellen, Henry, and Dinner. "Within".
I like the dream of Dinner skating -- when you skate, you leave a line in the ice, and I see Dinner drawing lines, connections, from person to person. I also love the image of Ellen making the sign for infinity -- a sign that, when you connect your first mark to your last, makes an enclosed symbol, but one that means "everything possible" (or, as Fanny coined it,
"internity"). This then leads to the last scene, and the final sentence,
"the options seemed limitless". There is at once the feeling of being
"Within", and of being in limitless space.
The triangles, the skating -- I like the fact that the imagery is so potent, yet it doesn't feel forced, or as if it's forcing the reader into an interpretation. I get the feeling Henkes never necessarily had a single interpretation in mind. The story itself is at once a drawing in and an opening out -- enclosing, describing, connecting -- but in each connection made, a myriad of possibilities spread outwards.
Nina Lindsay Student University of Wisconsin, Madison School of Library and Information Studies nlindsay at mail.soemadison.wisc.edu
Received on Fri 26 Jan 1996 08:36:00 AM CST
