Posted by Peter Ceresole on September 10, 2005 at 22:53:38 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Characters of the Eels posted by Jon on September 09, 2005 at 21:57:42:
I don't think Ransome intended to do much with them aside from their role as "extras". After all, he even named them "Tweedledum" and "Tweedledee"
But he had such a whale (eel?) of a time with Daisy that she was clearly a character that really caught his imagination. He seems to have had that affinity with his 'girl' characters; Titty, Nancy, Dorothea come to sharper life than any of the boys except possibly for Roger- and if you've seen Roger Altounian in the short movies available on the web, you can see what a lively and positive character he must have been when very young, exactly the thing to get a novelist going.
The exception would be John in WD. That's the nearest thing to an adult portrayal in the AR series, more complex than the other books. It makes WD feel different; it really has a hero, and one AR makes you believe in. But in the other books it seems to me clear that AR felt closer to his girl characters.
As it is, the portrayal of Roger as a mechanically inclined enthusiast was prophetic- Roger Altounyan served in the RAF during the war and went on to do splendid scientific work. When AR first wrote him up as a Roger walker, all that was far in the future.