Re: Are the D's the real heroes? -why no Ds in ML?


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Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on October 12, 2003 at 12:10:36 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.

In Reply to: Re: Are the D's the real heroes? -why no Ds in ML? posted by Peter Ceresole on October 12, 2003 at 10:36:51:

This is getting very interesting!

The classic rootless cosmopolitan searches desperately for roots! I know, because I am one. Grew up in the Middle East, spent much of my life in the Far East, my two sons were born 8,000 miles apart, one in his mother's country and one in his father's. You would not believe how "glued" we are to one corner of East Suffolk!

The D's are one sort of cosmopolitan but the Altounyans, on whom the Swallows were apparently modelled, were another. AR, thinking of his market, made the Walkers distinctly less exotic than the Altounyans.

The D's are looking for attachment to location, in the Lakes and the Broads, as are their offstage parents.

The Swallows are also looking for attachment to location in the Lakes, but in WDMTGTS they actually find it, and perhaps one reason for the Swallows running out of steam after SW is that AR had indeed settled them at Pin Mill, with Daddy on hand - another contributor has remarked that Daddy takes all the fizz out of things as soon as he appears, despite being a completely sympathetic character.

Just a thought - the books are almost all seen through the eyes of the cosmopolitans - the "rooted" characters - the Blacketts, Tom Dudgeon, the Mastodon and the Eels are not the characters through whose eyes we see things. There is a notable exception - Bill, Joe and Pete, in BS, and I think this, and the extant chapters of CITN, shows AR trying a new direction. Writing from the perspective of working class children (whose parents and uncles and aunts would not buy the books for Christmas!) was a very new notion in 1939.


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