Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Irony in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

I cant stop thinking of the irony within this book since I finished it last week. In most fairy tales the things that fairies foretell wind up boding very ill for the person they mention. In this story the reverse is true. The prophecy is that Stephen will become a king and the wizards will fail to bring magic back to England. In the end, Stephen does indeed become a king but this time prophecy turned out pretty badly for the fairy instead of the human. Also instead of failing to bring magic back to England I think the wizards actually succeeded except it was not entirely their doing but that of the raven king.

Also on a slightly different topic did anyone else notice the reference to Link when in one of enemies dreams he saw a bunch of funny men on rabbit's backs preparing to go to war? I thought it was pretty cool to pick up on that one. Anyway more later in class.

3 comments:

Amy said...

I definitely noticed the rabbits! I got so excited when I read it that I marked it to mention on the blog, but you beat me to it!

lsbass said...

I'm pretty sure from now on I find a little bit of Link everywhere. I mentioned this in my post, but what was with the prophecies and the way they turned out? Is it that they just weren't true or that people can change fate? Just curious...

ReneeRivas said...

I thought the way she pulled together that prophecy was the most brilliant part of the entire book. That was awesome.