Final Thoughts on Black Swan Green

The last 4 chapters of Black Swan Green: "Knife Grinder", "Goose Fair", "Disco" and "January Man," has left me utterly frustrated, to the point where I don't want anything to do with this book. It seriously pains me to even write this blog post. I've come to the conclusion that I will not be assigning this book to my future classes. I may recommend it to students because there are some lovely, well put together chapters in the beginning half of the book, but as far as assigning this as required reading - definitely not.

Just like every chapter, the book ends with somewhat of a cliff hanger. And I'm so disappointed by it's anti-climactic nature! Also, I still don't truly know if I like Jason as the protagonist of this book or if I believe him as a reliable narrator. I want to know for sure if he's a mental case or not and the book doesn't explicitly say if he is or isn't. Grrr! Sure, I'm glad things, for the most part, went well for him. He was able to overcome the bullying situation with the help of fate, even though it's really dark and cruel to think fate wanted Wilcox to lose his leg, and self-confidence or sheer stupidity depending on how you want to view the way Jason dealt with Neal Brose & friends. Plus, he got to make out for the first time with Holly Deblin.

However, not everything turned out positively for Jason because his parents get a divorce and each of the Taylor family go their separate ways: Taylor with his mom to Cheltenham, his dad & Cynthia (the mistress) go off to live in Oxford and Julia moves to Edinburgh. Although, his parents' split may be a good thing since they didn't have the best relationship AND Jason gets to move out of Black Swan Green and start a new adventure. Again whether this is a positive or negative thing for Jason is unclear to me.

I want to end this post by bringing up a quote in the final chapter that both intrigued and vexed me at the same time. "The world won't leave things be. It's always injecting endings into beginnings. Leaves tweezer themselves from these weeping willows. Leaves fall into the lake and dissolves into slime. Where's the sense in that? Mum and dad fell in love, had Julia, had me. They fall out of love... The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making. But who says the world has to make sense?" (285). I love this passage because it's so beautifully written. I like the imagery that the leaves bring to my mind. But I also absolutely hate this passage! I think it's put in place to justify the anti-climactic ending of the book. And the message behind it (life is full of ups and downs and you just have to deal with it) just seems so cliche to me.

Good riddance, Black Swan Green...

Jason from Beginning to End

Jason didn't really change. I'm angry because he experienced little growth over the course of the novel. By the end, he has grown up a bit, but I'm left feeling that he might still be pushed around in school.

During his interactions with Mme Crommelynck earlier on, I thought Jason would've grown much more, but by the end, I still thought that he hadn't fulfilled his coming of age destiny.

Also, I think Jason has been selfish. Granted, he's a 13-year-old boy, but this is a coming-of-age story; shouldn't he have learned more about matters of the heart? Shouldn't he have improved somehow? It seems to me that something more could have gotten better for Jason. By the end, he seems to know how to handle his bullies better, but that doesn't mean that they have stopped bullying him. His stammer? It's the same as it was in the beginning of the book.

Perhaps I'm being overly critical of the poor boy, but I find him to be intelligent, but awfully lazy when it comes to self-improvement and self-exploration. By the end of the novel, I feel that Jason is just a bit less naïf than he was in the beginning—that's about all the improvement we see from him.

As an aside, we still don't know if he's crazy or not! I will follow up with another post after I've pondered the novel a bit more (and after I've calmed down from being angry at Jason).

Jason as a Narrator

I find it difficult to post on several chapters at once. I'd rather spend time talking about the themes I've noticed that tie between the chapters (otherwise, I end up summarizing the chapters instead of analyzing them).

I've noticed that after finishing nearly 3/4 of the book (I'm writing this from notes I had taken up until p. 217), I still question Jason as a narrator. (Full disclosure, I question him even after finishing the novel). I cannot tell if Jason is reliable or not. I wrote about this previously, but there is still cause for me to question. One quote that I think leads me further from trusting Jason is found on page 181: "Dad's norey skonks and flobberblobbers're impossible to sleep through. No wonder my parents don't sleep in the same bedroom." Here will see all of Jason's naïveté on display. There is a part of me that doesn't want to believe that Jason really believes this. In fact, he may not; however, he reports to us that that is what he believes. What other lies is Jason telling us?

I begin to think that much of what Jason reports to us is embellished. Perhaps the bullies aren't as bad as he says they are. Perhaps he exaggerates what they're doing to him. I find it difficult to take Jason's word about anything.

However, there are those other times when Jason seems very adult for his age and as a reader I'm pushed in the direction of believing what he's saying. It's all rather confusing, honestly.

I suspect that most of you have the same reaction, but I'd love to hear what you think (especially since our digital projects are coming up soon).

Reflection on Solarium

Because of my strong feelings about "Solarium," I felt a singular post on the chapter is warranted.

Solarium is my favorite chapter of the entire novel. In part, this is because I feel that much of the whimsy of the first chapter resurfaces here. In "January Man" (chapter one), there is a sense of mystery which surrounds the House in the Woods. There is a bit of the same that surrounds the vicarage. What's more, Mme Crommelynck is a mysterious figure as well. She offers Jason advice about his poetry. This advice translates into life lessons, in my opinion.

I don't think we see anyone give Jason such extensive advice about life other than Mme Crommelynck. Though she seems to focus on Jason's poetry, one can tell that she is searching to get at a deeper meaning as well. She speaks a lot of beauty. Though she seems to be against Jason using beautiful words in his poetry: "Beautiful words ruin your poetry," she seems to believe that beauty is a positive thing once refined: "A touch of beauty enhances a dish, but you [Jason] throw a hill of it into the pot!" (147).

The entire exchange about beauty interested me because of its contradictions. This advice is coming from a woman who was once beautiful, but now has faded. It is ironic that a crone should be lecturing a young boy about beauty. On the contrary, it seems fitting that someone who has lost her beauty to be the authority about things which are beautiful.

Mme Crommelynck's opinions and theories about beauty seem to be quite complicated, but by the end of the chapter, I felt that they came across beautifully. By Jason's second meeting with her, her temperament seemed to have changed and she was much more likable. Again, the dichotomy between ugliness in beauty is demonstrated by her temperament.

Also, as a side note, Mme Crommelynck is my favorite character from the novel. She is a very rounded character. What's more, we can see her diversity from just one chapter. Jason, on the other hand, seems to be a bit more flat and predictable.

Reflection on the First Half

I realize that I haven't been prompt in posting to this blog. Part of that has been because of complications with work which have made this a slow read for me. The other part is because I find it difficult to post chapter-to-chapter. Rather, I would like to discuss themes of the novel that tie into several chapters, not just themes from one chapter or another.

I'm sure you've all noticed how the narratives of each chapter is unrelated to the next; there is no story that continues from one chapter into another. In groups, we've discussed this quite extensively and this was one of the most important realizations from the first half of the book for me. I've posted about the first several chapters already, but I'd like to discuss a few more things as we begin working on presentations with this book.

I've asked myself why the author would choose to make each chapter somewhat of a short story. Short stories tend to end the moment after the story climaxes. I feel that each chapter has its own climax but that the novel as a whole does not. This is in-line with the notions that a short story should be little more than build up and climax leaving the reader to make assumptions for him or herself. What then, is the purpose of constructing a novel in this way?

From the chapters of the first half of the novel, I can say that though the chapters do not share a concurrent narrative, they do share similar themes, characters, antagonists. I would like to offer that these antagonists (such as Hangman, maggot, the bullies, as well as Jason's reaction to each of them) are perhaps the real narrative of the story—that is to say, it is through the stories change every chapter, these 'antagonistic themes' do not.

Jason of course is the protagonistic force of the novel. Through his interactions with the antagonistic themes, we as readers can more clearly see a development of plot occur. The scenes, the places, the events—these have little to do with the development of Jason as a character and protagonist.

I feel that this is common in many novels. When I think of the Harry Potter series (I use the example because I feel that it's readily familiar to most), it isn't the scenes and places that affect Harry the most, but rather internal conflict. What makes Black Swan Green different is that the narrative is intentionally broken, bringing the 'core' of the novel (Jason's inner turmoil) to the forefront.

[6] disco, january man

Are things looking up in this chapter?  It sort of seems like it, to me at least.  Jason starts fighting back, bullies are dealt with, Holly Deblin proves to be more than just an ally.  Jason might not be a cool kid, he might not even be back to his middle-of-the-pack standing, but he’s not “a human punchbag” (276) anymore.  His first kiss makes an interesting contrast to his experience with Dawn Madden back in “Bridle Path.”  
The chapter ends, rather unsurprisingly, with the revelation that Jason’s parents are getting divorced-- though his father can’t quite manage to get the words out.  It leaves us to wonder how he’s going to deal with it-- we’ve seen the hints of this since the first chapter, but Jason seems to be (intentionally or legitimately) oblivious.  
Bringing things full circle, ‘january man’ answers a lot of the questions the others have raised.  We finally get the whole story behind Jason’s father’s affair, which I must admit is not entirely what I expected it would be.  Jason gets ready to move out of town.  Black Swan Green gets a swan.  We learn that the Sour Aunt isn’t dead, the House in the Woods isn’t really a house in the woods, and in the process of leaving, of becoming an outsider, everything suddenly seems a lot smaller and less important.  
What really rounds the story out for me is Jason’s Oxo tin, and all the items within it.  Not only do they remind us of the earlier chapters-- some questions are answered by the contents.  I had to smile, particularly, at the Christmas card from Mme. Crommelynck-- she’s possibly my favorite character, and I was glad she didn’t forget him.  
As far as endings go... well, as Julia says to close out the novel, “it’s not the end.”  I still have some unanswered questions.  I’m not clear on how sane Jason is, I’d like to know what happens to some of the other characters in the story, I still can’t work out how he got out of the House in the Woods.  I’d like to know how Jason’s relationship with his cousins will be affected by his experiences throughout the last few chapters.  But, of course, that’s all we get, from january man to january man.

[5] maggot, knife grinder, goose fair

Though the 'Maggot' chapter starts with Jason being teased for going to the movies with his mother-- something he’d been panicking about in the last few pages-- it quickly becomes obvious that there’s more than that affecting his standing.  His stuttering has become common knowledge, and there’s the matter of his (presumably) crossing the Spooks at the end of that chapter.  Obviously, bullying is the main focus of this chapter.  Interesting points included, for me: the “allies” he encounters in terms of teachers, Moran, and potentially Holly Deblin; the ambiguous history of bullying in the school, as represented by the hanged student in the old gym; and once again, a repeated line: “Cigarette smoke billowed out like fog in Jack the Ripper’s London,” on 212 and 39.

As things get worse at school, they get weirder at home, we learn in the next chapter. A television is a pretty big gift.  Jason tells us explicitly, “Dad never gives things like this for no reason, not just out of the blue.”  Yet, he doesn’t seem to speculate on why.  Does Jason realize how bad things are between his parents?  Is he naive or in denial?  

Gypsies are a big theme in this chapter; again we get a scene from two sides, as in ‘Souvenirs.’  We’re told that each group (the townfolk and the gypsies) wants the other “to be gross, so the grossness of what they’re not acts as a stencil for what they are.”  (229 and 240)  I’m not surprised that Jason becomes a sort of observer/ambassador for the gypsies.  Throughout the book he’s been on the outskirts of popularity at best, and as the story progresses he seems to identify more and more with marginalized social groups.  
It’s not a huge surprise, either, that the gypsies prove to be allies of a sort in the “Goose Fair” chapter, though the focus shifts to a more personal moral struggle.  I found myself wondering again how much of what happens, happens only in Jason’s imagination: lines like “A mile-long neon Chinese dragon wove through the Goose Fair and bit my jeans pocket.  Luckily, no one else saw it” make me doubt his sanity a little bit.  
Ross Wilcox’s accident at the end of the chapter made me think of a popular saying in my family-- “No good deed goes unpunished.”  Ross Wilcox has been an awful person, throughout the novel; he’s a bully and a brat at the best of times.  Jason finally decides he can’t be responsible for getting him in trouble with his violent, abusive father-- but Wilcox ends up suffering anyway.  How do we feel about this?  How do we expect Jason to react?