April Snippets

The month is growing old, but here is my Snippets post at last!  March and April have been fairly productive months for me, but the trouble is that these chapters are part of or approaching the climax of The White Sail's Shaking, so it's difficult to share many snippets.  But I'll see what I can do.

april snippets

He was holding a pocket watch, tilted to catch the light on its open face, the chain dancing back and forth like a pendulum between his fingers; it seemed to have mesmerized him, for he had no attention for anything else. He watched it as a cat watches a mouse hole, unblinking, unwavering, with a faint occasional smile on his mouth.

- the white sail's shaking

“I came to see how your knee is, naturally. Heerman says it’s healing, but one can always hold out a hope for infection. There isn’t any, I suppose?”

Tip gave back a grimace of a smile. “None. Sorry to disappoint.”

- the white sail's shaking

The Constitution stood out, though, with her shrouds a tangle of mist and the sun a brilliant gold on her stern windows, her guns just now gone quiet. The bomb ketches beyond her were silent as well and so, too, were the Tripolitan batteries. An eerie, twilight hush had fallen over everything, as though the harbor held its breath; Tip could hear the gulls starting to cry once more.

Then the breath was released.

- the white sail's shaking

Some of the desperation must have leaked into his words, for Charlie’s backward glance was only half mocking. “I’ve my gun crew to command. I’ll come down when the fighting’s over.” 

Yes, Tip thought, but when the fighting’s over, it will be too late.

- the white sail's shaking

Tip stopped and looked up without turning around, gazing forward at the pale expanse of the schooner’s deck and the darker sea beyond, a haze of either sleeplessness or moonlight on his vision. So beautiful, he thought superfluously, hardly knowing whether he meant the night or the sea or the schooner, only knowing that whichever it was, its beauty made him ache.

- the white sail's shaking

Father, I miss you.  On nights like this I know I'll never see you again, and I feel like my heart will break.  

I miss you.  I want you to come home.

- sunshine and gossamer

Details of the room caught her eye in brief flashes. There were books everywhere; the opening door had raised a breath of dust from them. The air smelled sour, almost green. She saw a man in shirtsleeves and the back of his tawny head before he turned, and then she saw nothing but a pair of grey eyes.

She screamed.

- tempus regina

Reimagination

This past Friday most of my family - my brother, sister, brother-in-law, and cousin, to be precise - went to the theater to see "The Hunger Games." However, my sister-in-law and I not being theater-going people, we opted to stay behind and watch "Treasure Planet" with my six-year-old niece and three-year-old nephew. (I do realize that some of you are thinking, "Good heavens, she gave up The Hunger Games in favor of watching Treasure Planet? Is she crazy?" This was the general assessment among my siblings, too, but that's alright.)

"Treasure Planet," silly children's movie though it may be, is one of my favorite films and was my first introduction to Treasure Island. For years the only reason I knew anything about Stevenson's classic novel was because of "Treasure Planet." Having recently read the book for myself, and not having watched the movie in some time, I was interested to see how closely this re-imagining of the story kept to the plot itself. After all, my reputation is staked as being very much opposed to re-interpretations of classics and I would have to be appropriately outraged if too many liberties were taken.

Because changing a story's setting from sea to space and an island to a planet, not to mention replacing half the characters with aliens, isn't a large liberty at all.

At any rate, we settled in with our pudding parfaits to watch the movie. The first part of it was spent in freaking out over whether or not my niece was going to freak out: she was none too sure about the aliens, although Silver's cyborg eye was much appreciated. My nephew, on the other hand, was all for the movie because he had been impressed with the idea that there were going to be rockets. I don't think the solar-powered "space-ships" quite measured up, but he was excited by them, all the same. The guns got his attention, too; he gave me a water pistol and got a Nerf gun for himself, so we were prepared to take on anything that might come through the screen. The conversations went something like this:

James: "Are you weady?"
Me: "Okay, I'm ready!"
J: "Don't be weady, 'cause they're not firing yet."
M: "Okay, I'm not ready!"

or...

James: "I think he dwopped his gun!"
Me: "No, he just put it back in his belt."
J: "SHOOT! SHOOT!"
M: "They're not shooting, they're talking!"
J: "...Are they gonna shoot?"

B.E.N., the robot interpretation of the marooned Ben Gunn, was another hit with the children, although James didn't quite grasp the idea that he was a good guy. Thus another conversation...

James: "If that wobot comes through the scween, I'm going to SHOOT HIM."
Me: "But he's a good guy!"
J: "...Yeah, but if he comes through the scween, I'm gonna SHOOT HIM!"

In the end we all had a good time - even my niece, although she was rather alarmed at the idea of going to bed afterward. I think my sister-in-law and I had the most fun out of the four, as we were better able to understand what was going on. And I came away with an appreciation for what the producers had done with Stevenson's story. Certainly not everyone agrees with me (people tend to roll their eyes when I mention the movie), but I find "Treasure Planet" to be one of the few instances where the movie-makers have made improvements on the original story. While reading the book there were only two things I wasn't thrilled with: Jim himself and how he relates to Silver. Jim is fairly typical: a decent and well-mannered boy who gets into an adventure and, through it, is forced to become a man. The development of his friendship with and respect for Silver is more stated than shown, perhaps because the voyage to Treasure Island is passed over so swiftly in order for the adventure to really begin.

The screenwriters of "Treasure Planet" changed both these things. In re-imagining the story, they made it less a straight-up adventure (which is what Stevenson wrote) in favor of adding nuances to the characters themselves. Jim Hawkins becomes a rebellious teen, bent on proving himself by finding Treasure Planet; Silver becomes the father-figure Jim has never had. In this the producers were probably pandering to sentimentalism, but the fact is that it works for the story. It gives both characters more dimension and makes the discovery that Silver is a pirate more cutting for Jim. In the process, the movie is made more emotionally engaging.

Re-imagining any story is a tricky business: any major changes, even to subplots, tend to alter the whole thrust of the story. Though "Treasure Planet" is one of the few cases where I have enjoyed these alterations, I still have to admit that those alterations have indeed been made. It is no longer the unfettered, fast-paced adventure that Stevenson tended to write, but rather the sentimental and complex story that most people nowadays enjoy. Pulling Sherlock Holmes out from among the fogs and rattling coaches of Victorian England and plopping him down in the modern world of Google and mobile phones drastically changes the whole atmosphere of Arthur Conan Doyle's mysteries (sorry, Mirriam!). Adding green fog and seven swords to The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader' turns the whole plot on its head.

Such changes can still be quite enjoyable, and I can't say otherwise. Still, it is interesting (and perhaps even worthwhile) to consider what the authors themselves would think if they could see what has been done with their works. Would Lewis like green fog? What on earth would Doyle think of the internet? And would cyborgs and solar-powered ships totally befuddle Stevenson? What would I think - what would you think - if, years down the road, my story were so drastically altered for the sake of its audience? Perhaps the question is pointless; and yet I think there is a point to taking the original authors into consideration whenever we're faced with some new re-imagining of their work. After all, they were the ones who wrote it to begin with. They deserve, at the very least, to be remembered and given credit for that.