Posted by Ed Kiser on January 21, 2005 at 18:26:25 from 64.12.116.6 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Re: What is your favourite Ransome quotation? posted by Pam Adams on January 21, 2005 at 17:06:01:
"We learn that John will be master of a ship someday."
With these characters, we feel that they take on a degree of Reality that goes beyond any concept of fictional story writings. There is that feeling of "what happened to them?" We keep searching for more of the continued story, to try to find the answers to that question. Surely, there is more to come. Did Timothy marry Nancy? Did John marry Peggy? Who would up with whom? We keep hoping, and in the meantime, our imaginations run wild. History tells us that the period of history known as WWII was soon to follow the times of these young people, and somehow, they would be caught up in it, so we desperately want to know - what happened to them? We care. We want to know. But, somehow, the reality comes to finally sink in, that these are but fictional characters, who only slightly resembled those real people after which the author made his model. Fictional characters just stop with that last page - and we do not want to accept this. To talk of Roger's work with medical science in the area of asthema does not count, as commendable that is, because that is about someone else, a real person. That is not OUR ROGER, who wanted to know when told to put on TWO of everything if that meant to put on two ties. These dear friends of our childhood, they remain that, and have for themselves no future, except to become dear friends of our future generations, who with our careful guidance, can be led to become acquainted with these wonderful people, and to make them in their own generation, their childhood friends even as they were for us. In that sense, the future of these explorers and pirates lies in our hands, in our ability to pass them on to the next generations. That is their future. Perhaps we should be glad that they did not have to go on to that awesome time that we remember as WWII, that time that Winston Churchill once referred to as "the recent unpleasantness." So, if we wonder, "did they die in the war?" We know that answer, and that is "NO, they did not - they never went to that period in time." Let us rejoice they were not a part of that horror, but can remain forever young, forever in our hearts as those perpetual friends of our childhood.
Ed Kiser, South Florida