Posted by Laurence Monkhouse on March 19, 2008 at 13:43:45 from 82.27.20.160 user Laurence_.
In Reply to: Evil Nancy in SW? posted by Pam Adams on March 18, 2008 at 23:27:48:
The Swallows have had real adventure, sailing a real ship across the actual ocean, and surviving all kinds of dangers. The Amazon Pirates have had no such adventures.
Let's really be controversial.
Peter Hunt in Approaching Arthur Ransome describes John as "a serious conscientious boy, perhaps a little weighed down by responsibility...This pragmatism and sense of personal responsibility infuses the whole series of books."
It is this that allows John to lead the Swallows to survival under circumstances that I freely admit that even with 50+ years of experience I would have found terrifying.
What, I wonder, would Nancy have done under the same circumstances? She is certainly a competent dinghy sailor, but is she capable of taking the wider view? Consider, for example, the sheer thoughtlessness which loses the war with the Swallows in SA - losing to the very tactic she herself hoped to employ. Her lack of attention to the passage of time in SD - although everybody shared the blame for that. Her helplessness in PM in refusing to even try to find the items in Captain Flint's study which Timothy had listed and most of which Dick found clearly labelled.
I really do question whether Nancy would have coolly assessed the situation as John did, and chosen the course of action which would go against all instincts but which was the only one which would give any chance of "surviving all kinds of dangers"
Come on - you Nancy supporters! What would she have done?