Great Northern & Characters as Adults


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Posted by Mike Dennis on August 07, 2008 at 08:31:41 user MTD.

Two threads of late have set me thinking about what the AR books mean to me - GN as an end of series book and speculation of what happened to everyone as they grew into adulthood (something Malcolm Saville does in his Lone Pine series, but that is a memory from teenage years and I haven't read any since).
For me GN is one of the books I have only read a few times, it felt laboured and only recently I have realised that I am not that keen on any of the books that introduce other child characters that are not part of the main groups and don’t reappear in the series - PM being the worst offender (when I tried reading it again recently - and failed again - I noticed that there is an illustration of Jackie(?) where AR has actually drawn his face, am I right in thinking this was the only time he did this with a character?) Usually these extra characters always come across from the page as one dimensional 'add ons' that are no more than a plot device, whereas everyone else we get to know in depth; you feel that you really know them.
As for 'What happened next...' To me the books are a snapshot of a moment in time, hence we can overlook language and attitudes that today are quite rightly offensive - at the time they were normal behaviour for most people. The characters always remain children. As I have mentioned before in posts, my own brother was killed when he was 10 and I was 7; though I am now in my fifties he is still my ten-year-old brother. My late mother and her parents often speculated on his possible adult life, and this became a great irritation for me. I feel the same way about AR's characters, we see a small part of their childhood lives as if we have been given privileged access just for a moment; but we have never been allowed to see any more. The series does not ‘end’ it is just we have not been shown anymore about their lives.



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