Transition Year Extended Essay
Michaelmas Term 2013
by Sofia McConnell
Theme: Fantasy
Books:
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Magician by Michael Scott
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION:
The Transition Year Extended Essay is a dreaded thing by all those going into the Fourth Form. It seems hard to believe that we are capable of writing an essay of 3000 words about only three books. I’m still feeling a little dubious as I am only just starting the essay now and yet I realize there is so much more to write about than I had expected. Studying these three books has been really enjoyable, two of the three are currently two of my favourite stories and so I have really enjoyed studying them so thoroughly and getting in between the lines. I chose these three books because I thought they would be fun to study and compare as all three are so completely different, I knew it would be a challenge but I also knew I would enjoy it. By the end of the essay I hope to be a lot faster at typing, I hope that it will encourage me to study other books I read in much more depth and I hope my English skills will have improved.
STORY LINES:
Wicked by Gregory Maguire was written in 1995. It is based on the life of the Wicked Witch Of The West from Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. It is well written and an exciting read, Maguire writes about the witch’s life from start to end. When the green-skinned, sharp-toothed baby, Elphaba is born to Frex, an often-absent Unionist missionary and the beautiful, philandering Melena there is much discontent, she is considered a mistake, unwanted, and thus, with the help of Melena’s tough and resilient old nanny Elphie is raised, the resentment toward her in her youth causes her to be prickly, sharp-tongued but in no way evil. In their last years at university Elphie, her younger sister,, and her roommate Galinda, a wealthy, slightly pretentious and beautiful girl, are spellbound by their strange and frightening head mistress. Each is given a section of land to protect, hence the name “Witch of the West”. The three girls find that their lives have somehow been laid out so that each will end up in these positions, despite their attempts to circumvent these duties. From eco-terrorism to ruling a castle inhabited by herself, her nanny, her Grimmery, a bunch of flying monkeys and a boy that could be her son to a scandalous love affair with a married tribesman from her university, we follow the lows and highs of Elphaba’s life.
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was written in 1865. It is possibly the battiest and most wonderfully ridiculous novel ever to be written. It starts off in a placid, quiet setting, a young girl (Alice) sits under a tree with her sister who is reading a novel, when suddenly she spots a small white rabbit wearing a waist-coat and carrying a pocket watch in his hand, muttering to himself, “I’m late”. Curious, Alice stands and follows the rabbit, when, all of a sudden, he disappears down a very large rabbit hole, Alice, her curiosity now taking hold of her, follows and after crawling for a few minutes she suddenly drops, she falls, and falls, and falls and carries on falling for quite a long time, but obviously, as none of this book is boring, she has quite an interesting time, at last she reaches ground level and finds herself in a room full of doors. After a series of size-changing, potion eating, crying, and being washed out of that strange little room by her own tears we are taken into what Alice calls Wonderland. This is where we get to witness the amazing, impressively huge imagination of Lewis Carroll, a Cheshire cat, a wise, old, smoking caterpillar, a baby that turns into a pig, a Queen of Hearts and best of all a trio of loonies, a hatter, a hare and a sleepy dormouse.
Finally the Magician, so different to the previous two as it is set in a completely different time, filled with modern technology, politicians, and a lot more evil than the others. This particular book is set in Paris, it takes you on a journey with two twins, Josh and Sophie Newman, the twins spoken about in a sacred prophecy in the book of Abraham the Mage, a mysterious book that contains incredibly powerful and terrifying spells. The book is based on the dangers and excitements that Josh and Sophie face, from their “awakenings” to the different colours and scents of peoples auras, from Scathach or “The Shadow” the warrior princess, to the immortal Joan of Arc, terrifying monsters, Mars, God of war, giant spiders, sphinxes, Azkaban and many more exciting and extraordinary adventures that lie in wait for them.
CHARACTERS:
The main characters of the three books differ hugely, Elphaba, from Wicked, the most significant character in the novel, is snappy, prickly and enjoys solitude, she isn’t necessarily rude, only at times she does not even consider that her actions are embarrassing or offending another character, often the case is that she doesn’t really care, Elphie is not understood by most, she has a small circle of people with whom she allows herself to grow close but more often than not she aims to distance herself from others. She is curious and often questions the way in which the world works. Elphaba’s one fear is of water, she never, throughout the whole book (well of course apart from at the end) allows water to touch her skin. She is a fierce believer in Animal rights, (Animals, as opposed to animals, are blessed with a voice and the ability to be intellectuals). We also know that she has love to give, Fiyero, the married tribesman who she first met at university, becomes her lover, he understands and loves her fiercely and she returns the feelings. She is honourable, when Fiyero dies it is somewhat because of her, he is trying to protect her during her terrorist years and is murdered because of it, after some years in the equivalent of a nunnery she travels to the home of his wife and sisters-in-law and spends the rest of the wife’s life trying to explain why it is she has come trio them. In comparison to the other main characters in my books Elphie is less friendly, more bitter and prickly.
Alice is a curious, open-minded and very different little girl, she takes talking animals completely in her stride without even battering an eyelid and at no point in the book does she get frightened which is pretty impressive considering she meets a giant turtle, a gryphon, three mad characters, and plenty of talking animals, she only gets slightly nervous when in the presence of a queen who enjoys more than anything sending her guests to the executioner. Alice thinks that the only reason all this is happening to her is because she has traded places with another of her friends and expects it will all be over very soon. Alice is a completely diffe3rent kind of character to Elphie, when Elphie is a child she is quiet and shy, she likes her solitude, one way in which they’re the same is that they both seem to have slightly more sensible views on the world than most children, and most adults at that. Alice is quite a sincere little girl, very honest, exactly the same as Elphie in that way.
Josh and Sophie Newman are like most American teenagers nowadays, used to talking about the other sex, songs, new films and so on, a life of fighting dangerous, magical creatures and carrying two pieces of paper that would provide cures for every disease in the world, repair the O-zone layer, make earth a paradise and also make all humans into slaves for the rest of eternity, is completely unexpected. Josh is a “computer geek” he loves technology and is very skilled at handling it, he is incredibly brave, despite what his sister Sophie may think, he loves Sophie a huge amount and when her powers are awakened before his he is envious, at the same time as being incredibly sad that it seems to drive the two of them apart. Sophie is much more trusting than Josh, unlike him she loves and trusts the alchemist and other immortals that are taking care of them in Paris. The two protect each other, they love each other and often know what the other is thinking, as twins do, both wish that nothing had happened to upset the normal routine of their lives. All four characters are the same in that they’re all very sensible and that you grow to love each and every one of them while reading the books. Other than that they are all completely different. One thing that all the writers have done very successfully and that I consider really important in books is that all the main characters are likeable; this allows you to enjoy the book so much more.
WRITING STYLES:
Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Wicked are both well written, more so than The Magician which is a much more modern story and has a more modern style of writing. Wicked probably has the most complicated plot of all the stories, to be able to understand it you have to follow very closely, unlike Alice in Wonderland which was written for a much younger audience than Wicked. Unlike the story it was derived from (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), Wicked is written more for adults than for children, parts of it tend to get quite crude and vivid, it contains a lot of adult language and content, there is violence and a few sexual situations. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written for young children and older adults, it is very easy to follow if you are open-minded and don’t question all the incredibly curious things that happen in the book. The Magician is neither as complicated as Wicked nor as simple as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the book makes you concentrate more on the story rather than on the writing. It was written for teenagers and older children who wouldn’t really think about the writing anyhow. Alice in Wonderland and Wicked are timeless, both could be enjoyed now and also a hundred years ago, although possibly Wicked would have been strongly frowned upon. The Magician however is much more contemporary novel, it most likely would have been considered drivel that long ago, most likely wouldn’t even be published. All three are written in the third person and the present. Each writer went with the times, as can be expected, that is easy to see in these three books. Judging from these three books you would imagine writing is getting worse with time. The oldest book seems to be the best written.
STARTS AND ENDINGS:
Wicked begins in a bedroom, “from the crumpled bed the wife said, ‘I think today’s the day, look how low I’ve gone’, ‘today? That would be like you, perverse and inconvenient’ said her husband, teasing her” – these are the first two lines of chapter one. We witness the banter between a loving couple expecting a child. The story starts in their house in Munchkinland, an ordinary scene in a day of the lives of this particular couple. The next few chapters are not nearly so ordinary as the beginning of the book. First comes a religious revolution that leads to the missionary spending the rest of his life fighting for the God he believes in and doing all he can to spread this God’s message. We learn about the bond of mother and child, even before the child is born. By the fourth chapter the reader is completely trapped in the sheer madness of this supposed parallel universe, we are taken through the perks and downfalls of Elphie’s life, from being born to pitying parents to her death, as a “wicked witch” as she stands on the top of her castle and fights Dorothy, the young girl who she believes has stolen her sisters shoes, finally the tragic moment when Dorothy pours water on the witch and she dies, within seconds. The start of this book is calm, the first chapter makes you believe you’re about to read some gentle, feel-good kind of novel, by the end there is a whirlwind of information flying through your mind, all the spectacular ideas, adventures and thoughts that the story provides keep you thinking for days after reading it.
The start of Alice in Wonderland is the main reason that it seems impossible to put the book down once you have started. The first two or the lines are completely misleading, it seems to be a quiet book about a young, ordinary girl, but suddenly a talking rabbit in a waistcoat appears, after that you have been spellbound, there is no way that you will want to leave the story alone for one second, as it just gets more and more and more ridiculous and adventurous, the end of the book seems to be a bit of a letdown, after all the excitement and adventure Alice simply opens her eyes and brushes a few leaves off her face, the whole book was just a dream, thought in the mind of a little girl, Lewis Carroll however, manages to keep the dream alive for us, makes us believe that maybe this is a real place, only accessible for simple humans like ourselves through sleep, as Alice's sister closes her eyes, she too begins to witness some of the things that her little sister dreamt about only moments before. Both the start and the end of the book make you want to read on.
The Magician begins in a charity auction in Paris; the sleek, rich Machiavelli scans the crowd so as to locate his main opponents as the sale of two Japanese masks begins. We see the situation from his point of view, the respect people have for him, his confidence, then we find out he is immortal which doesn’t really come as a surprise after already having learnt so much about the man’s power and wealth. An incredibly important phone call means that his chance to win the masks is lost, he makes light of this by suggesting he can buy them next century. As he takes the call he talks to John Dee, the English man who he hates with a passion but who he has worked along side for centuries, under the “Dark Elders”. They talk about twins with gold and silver auras, a Warrior, powerful goddesses and an alchemist; the reader is thrown head first into the mystery, the adventure and the magic. The book ends with the alchemist, Nicholas Flammel and the two twins in a train from Paris to London, running from the dangerous immortals that hunt them, running for their lives, the ending is frustrating as it just leaves you hanging, making you long for the sequel.
CONCLUSION:
So, as you can see from reading about these books, fantasy is always the best novel genre, never is it boring and when a book is badly written it rarely matters when the book is a fantasy one as the story takes completely all your concentration. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the books, Wicked and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland more so than The Magician, the latter was a more modern story and this is the only reason I liked it less, personally I find that when you’re reading a book its always more enjoyable if it’s completely different to your everyday life, The Magician wasn’t at all what you’d call “ordinary” but I found that for a fantasy novel there was too much about the real world in it. I also found some bits boring, I don’t mean boring in the way you may imagine, quiet and uneventful, actually the contrary, there is always something happening and so it starts to get quite predictable. I really did enjoy writing the essay despite it being quite stressful at times. I loved studying all the books so thoroughly and I do feel really satisfied now that I have finished.