12/7/2022 0 Comments Howls moving castle characters![]() The nature of his contract with Calcifer has made it impossible for him to truly love someone until he meets Sophie, and the horrific fate of the Witch of the Waste, her will and life essence almost entirely consumed by her demon, is a chilling reminder of where he could have ended up without Sophie's involvement.Yet despite all his flaws, underneath his blustery front Howl does genuinely care for other people and about doing the right thing. Howl may be dashing and charming, but he is also a cad, a skirt chaser, vain, sulky, selfish and prone to 'slithering out' of things. The two leads work so well because they are drawn with believable flaws, and their relationship feels all the more well earned because neither character idealises the other. But while it has a wealth of memorable supporting characters, the book truly belongs to Howl and Sophie. The ending only works as well as it does because, while all the loose ends are nicely tied up and various character pairings are implied, all of those characters have been given enough depth and agency to show that they have an existence outside of their pairings. One of the things that makes 'Howl's Moving Castle' so compelling is how well-drawn and fully-realised its characters are. Later on it is revealed that one of the doors of the moving castle opens on to Howl's hometown in Wales, and there's a fantastic sequence in which Sophie visits Howl's family, and we see what would be normal and mundane distorted into something Fantastical and mysterious through her eyes. Ingary and its surrounding lands exist in a separate dimension to ours, but rather than showing it to us through the eyes of a protagonist from our world, as would happen in your standard portal Fantasy, we experience the world through Sophie, who has lived in Ingary all her life. Calcifer, despite being a demon, is not evil, and Sophie's bargain with him is not a Faustian pact that dooms her, but allows her to save Howl and Calcifer and release herself from her curse. Sophie, instead of being rescued by the dashing male hero, rescues Howl and winds up freeing herself from her curse in the process. Jones gleefully inverts all the Fantasy tropes she can get her hands on. Many stories flirt with the idea that nothing is ever as it seems, while providing us with characters and situations that fold out in a tired and predictable way. 'Howl's Moving Castle' sets up all these resonant, comfortable fairy tale elements only to joyously subvert them. The nature of magical curses being what they are, neither Sophie nor Calcifer and Howl are able to tell the other what the curse they are under is. Once there she strikes up a bargain with Calcifer, Howl's fire demon, who says he will release Sophie from the Witch's spell if she breaks the contract binding Calcifer to Howl. Compelled to seek her fortune, she takes shelter in the magical moving castle which roams the hills above the town and belongs to the wizard Howl, who is rumoured to devour the hearts of pretty young maidens. 'Howl's Moving Castle' tells the story of Sophie Hatter, who works in her mother's hat shop in the town of Market Chipping until one day she is cursed by the Witch of the Waste and turned into an old woman. But it is a mature enough tale to leave its characters emotional space at the end, even as it satisfyingly concludes their character arcs. ![]() ![]() 'Howl's Moving Castle' still respects the structural demands of the fairy tale indeed it is so elegantly designed that every thing that happens in the book ties up with that meticulous tidy logic only found in fairy tales. From its choice of protagonist, the eldest daughter, usually doomed to fail in order to set up the success of the more usual youngest daughter heroine, to its deconstruction of its male romantic lead and the inversion of the damsel in distress rescued by the dashing prince, Jones takes joy in questioning the assumptions and generalisations that fairy tales tend to be built on. However it isn't afraid to play with these tropes and turn them on their heads. It is clearly a book that comes from a deep love and understanding of fairy tales and what makes them appealing. Diana Wynne Jones goes for broke, creating the wonderful land of Ingary, a world rich in wizards, evil witches, fire demons, mermaids, animated scarecrows, people who turn into dogs and magical castles. 'Howl's Moving Castle' is a fairy tale that plays with the conventions and tropes of fairy tales.
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