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Drowned Ammet
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"Mitt was not sure he knew what a free soul was – it never occurred to him that his mother had no idea either – but he thought it was a splendid thing to be."
Revolution, righteous anger, gods and prophecy and the most common name in Holand.
Transcript available here. Next week we'll be finishing out our first season with Spellcoats!
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Transcript
Introduction and Initial Thoughts
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another week of eight days of Diana Wynne Jones. And today we're talking, I'm Rebecca Frameau. And I'm Emily Tesh. And today we are talking about Drowned Ammit, the second book of the Dale Mark Quartet. And we've just been talking about how nervous we are to talk about this one because there's so much in it and there is so much to talk
Complexity of 'Drowned Ammit'
00:00:21
Speaker
about.
00:00:21
Speaker
Yeah, by sheer coincidence, it's been two weeks since we last recorded, so we spent two weeks, in fact more like three weeks, just constantly talking about Drowned Amet in Discord, and we have a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings. Yeah, we did learn a lot of things to say. But there's always more to say about Drowned Amet.
00:00:40
Speaker
So let's sort of start with a basic overview. This is a sequel. It's the first sequel that Diana Wynne Jones has published. And she is famous later for her series, especially the Crestomancy series and the Howl series.
Shift in Protagonists and Themes
00:00:56
Speaker
ah But I think the Delmarque quartet is so interesting as a series because it doesn't do anything you would expect a fantasy quartet to do.
00:01:06
Speaker
no and it doesn't do anything that you would expect a sequel to do there are no returning characters that's not true there's one in one scene and then he disappears and he's never named yes a pre-turning character and character in that he when we meet this character he's before he ever shows up in carton quitter and only by having read carton quitter would you realize that he's significant at all right so in fact Let's sort of do the overview. Book one of the Delmarc Quartet is about Morrill and his family and Morrill's discovery essentially that he is a music wizard and how he uses that to prevent a war between North and South Delmarc.
00:01:49
Speaker
And you think, wow, cool set up. What's Marul going to do next? Now, he's a wizard. What about all his friends? It turns out they were kind of living the myth of the Asian, the rightful heir of Dale Mark and Menalia Bridge, who is like the the mythical princess ah figure in the myth. What's going to happen? Yeah, you never hear about that. Yeah. Great questions. Diana will not give us the answers to most of those questions ever. um Instead, this book plunges us deep, deep into urban South Delmark, into the the city of Holland with an entirely new protagonist who's grown up there, who has none of the ties or connections to the North that Morrill does, ah but who dreams about revolution in the South in a much more intense way than Morrill ever did.
00:02:37
Speaker
I think yes, the connections between ah Carton Quiddah and Drowned Amit are overwhelmingly thematic rather than plot related because both of these are stories about a young man, a boy ah who is in South Dalemark and It's noticeable, Carton Quiddah also mostly takes place in the South. The North is a fantasy, a daydream about freedom rather than ah like a real place that moral goes for most of the book. And that's even more true in Drowned Amet, where we never go to the North at all, but we do discuss it, the idea of the free North.
Industrial Setting vs Traditional Fantasy
00:03:11
Speaker
but And then both of these are books about this boy in South Dalemark in this oppressive society,
00:03:19
Speaker
Dreaming of how things could be different. Yes, but it's also there's a huge ah Just in terms of like the description of the setting and place and the feel of the book The fact that cart and quitter is a fantasy of the road. It's there in a cart. They're going to small towns it has a lot of the sort of feel of the head of fantasy books that were around in the 50s and 60s and 70s. It's beautiful and green. And they go into villages and they buy food and then they're on their way again, they're wandering. Holland is very much a very particular place. It's a city, it's full of people. It's urban people work in the factories and fisheries. Right. It's early industrial. This is really clear as well that Holland is not like
00:04:06
Speaker
ah medieval city in any way. It's not when you think of a fantasy book with a city in it, you do think of that sort of default faux medieval faux European setting. Holland is certainly I think quite European in feel but it's an early modern city.
00:04:21
Speaker
it is a city with gunsmiths, it's a city with um traders and merchants moving in and out and big warehouses on the waterfront, um a city where the waterfront has been built up and there are multiple harbors, ah a city of industry, business, visibly a city on its way to being modern.
00:04:45
Speaker
Yes. And actually, one thing we didn't really talk about much, I think in the two weeks, is technology. But the change in tech, this is a ah city on the verge of technological change and that guns, particularly, which are something that have been very rare and exclusively in the hands of the wealthy and people who are, I think it's it's ah just the nobles, are being given to the police over the course of this story.
Technology and Social Change
00:05:11
Speaker
ah Right.
00:05:12
Speaker
I find it really interesting as well like the central role played by ah the character Hobin who is a gunsmith who becomes our protagonist mitt's stepfather and we discover he's the best gunsmith in South Dalemark and you learn that he has invented what's very clearly described as rifling and you learn that he has invented the revolver and you've got these increasingly sophisticated guns and at the same time you over the course of the book it becomes clear that at first guns are being used as a kind of
00:05:45
Speaker
a tool for hunting and only in the hands as you say of the nobles and then at one point the Earl decides to give his soldiers his police and there is like a um what's the word an ambiguity about whether they are soldiers or police five and love ambigu yeah And he decides to give them all guns, thinking that this will make him the most powerful Earl in South Denmark. What happens is all the other earls in Denmark go, wow, we better give all our guys guns too. It's a very literal arms race. Right. And this is very clearly the beginning of massive social change. And in fact, the gunsmith character is the one who says I think most because, convincingly, most persuasively, there is going to be a revolution. He sees it coming.
00:06:31
Speaker
The revolution does not happen in this book, but we are constantly thinking about it. Yes. And as much as, so we talked a little bit last time in Carton Quitter, how, you know, we looked at the Dale Mark Quartet and we're like, this is like Dog's Body, a book that's deeply influenced by everything that's going on ah in Northern Ireland at the time, in the 70s at the time that Diana Wynne-Jones is writing these
Mitt's Motivations and Rebellion
00:06:53
Speaker
books.
00:06:53
Speaker
And then Cart and Quitter were were like, well, there's a little bit of that in there. It's definitely influenced. It's also influenced by Welsh fantasy. It's influenced by a lot of other things. But I think you look at Drowned Ammet, and this is very much a book about, it's a book about a boy who picks up a bomb and goes to a festival. And we spend the first half of the book going, why does he do that? No, we spend the first half of the book watching him decide to do that. And then we spend the back half of the book going, and why did he do that? As he starts to ask himself that very same question.
00:07:23
Speaker
Right, this is a book about a boy who throws a bomb into a religious parade and it's set in this sort of industrial waterfront city and to me this is a Belfast book, ah this is a book dealing with not the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, there's no hint of sectarianism in the story, those there's none of that sort of internal religious conflict, um and there's not really a hint of sort of nationalist conflict either, but it's a book about fighting for freedom, what you choose to do to fight for freedom, what freedom means for you, or what you think it means.
00:08:02
Speaker
And it's a book about very much about when a whole community is involved on various sides of that struggle for freedom. So one of the first things that happens in this book, well, actually, I do, I guess before I want to dive into that, I think I maybe do want to do a little bit of a close read of the very beginning of the book. We start young, we start with Mitt when he's like three or four years old. He's two, because the very first thing that jumped out at me is that when Mitt is two years old, he learns to swim.
00:08:29
Speaker
because he fell into a dike, so he lives in a um sort of patch of drained land, um which is drained by dikes and reclaimed from the ocean. He falls into a dike, he nearly drowns, he has to teach himself to swim to get out because nobody's there to help him. Right, since no one was there to help him, he had to help himself. um But he thinks of his childhood as very happy nonetheless, despite the fact that his parents are not there to fish him out of the dike. And one day he gets sort of ah ah a smell, a sense of a perfect place, somewhere unspeakably beautiful, warm and peaceful, and he wanted to go there.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yes, it was a land. It was not far off, just beyond somewhere, and it was Mitt's very own. He set off at once to find it while he still remembered the way. And he starts trudging away along the dykes and is two years old or three years old, um and immediately gets intercepted by a soldier who will be ah relevant later in the book, um who is like, well, you're a three-year-old child and you shouldn't be wandering off alone by yourself. But my own daughter just did sort of the same thing. So Fine, I'm going to pick you up and return you to your parents.
Mitt and Milda's Struggles
00:09:38
Speaker
And it turns out that this soldier is the youngest son of the Earl of Holland, Duke Navis, and his parents are sort of simultaneously ah reluctantly grateful and resentful to have incurred an obligation to this aristocrat for returning their child.
00:09:57
Speaker
And meanwhile, Mitt says, Mitt does not forget his perfect land. He says, remembered it though a little fuzzily next time the wind dropped, but he did not set off to look for it again. It was plain to him that soldiers only brought you back again if you went. It made him sad. And I think that's a really interesting way to start off a book about revolution, about trying to overturn your society to look for a better one. Right. It starts with a child's dream of a better place.
00:10:26
Speaker
Which interestingly is another thematic link to Carton Quiddah. Morrill's dream of a better place, a better north, ah is part of what motivates him throughout the book. And in Carton Quiddah, quite explicitly, Morrill's dream is pure fantasy, it's not true. And its lack of truth is what weakens it and ultimately reveals it as not good enough to sustain the the magic that he wants to do. he yeah He has to come up with something true before he's powerful.
00:10:54
Speaker
And in the same way, I think the um the utopian vision, the the dream of a perfect land at the start of the book, where soldiers instantly bring you back if you try to get there, um is always sort of question marked. yeah What's the word I'm looking for? Unbalanced, unreliable, there's something a little bit off.
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, and explicitly, when, you know, Mitt has this, thinks of this as just kind of a sense of feeling of mystical awareness of the perfect land, but Diana Win Jones describes it as like a specific combination of real sense, like real things.
00:11:32
Speaker
that ah he's interpreting as this vision of perfection. And so like there is something real there. Sorry, I'm trying to find the specific quote. Yeah, the smell was cow dung and peat and trampled grass mixed with smoke from the chimney. Beyond that was the smell of fresh things growing. Cow parsley, buttercups, a hint of may and strongest of all, the heaven-like scent of willows butting.
00:11:55
Speaker
While at the back of it, there and not there, so that Mitt almost missed it, was the faint, boisterous bite of the distant sea. But Mitt was too young to think of it as smells. So it's it's real stuff, it's real stuff that that's good and beautiful, and it's also cow dung, and it's all there, but it's being interpreted by this child as something that's sort of, it's just mystical, that's not part of the everyday world in which he lives.
00:12:17
Speaker
right it's uh mitt is almost too young to make sense of what's real and what's his daydream and they get fuzzed together um and i think the the suggestion is that for the first half of the book mitt is never quite clear in his ideas of what's real and what's just his childish perception, his fantasy. Mitt is a child for most of this book. It is important in fact, we know from the previous book that at age 15, you are old enough to be hanged. Mitt's revolutionary action all takes place before he's 15, explicitly because he is too young to be hanged for it.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yes. And it's all a kind of device. So what happens is after this incident, when after this idyllic childhood, there's an incident with a bull, which we'll get back to later, who attacks their tax collector, their rents are raised. ah They are sort of made the victim of this petty abuses of power that forces Mitt and his Mitt's father to go look for work in the city and then Mitt and his mother moved to the city.
Influence of Family and Society
00:13:24
Speaker
then Mitt's father joins a revolutionary society and is disappears, is arrested presumably or killed presumably as the result of some sort of revolutionary action. What Mitt and his mother believe is that he's been betrayed by his friends, who is the revolutionary society who turns him in. And so Mitt and his mother decide they're going to get revenge on all of them, on the Earl and on the revolutionary society in one fell swoop.
00:13:52
Speaker
Right, so Mitt's plan is not just to ah be part of a revolution that overthrows the oppressive society he lives in, it's also to punish everyone who's in the oppressive society with him for being part of it. So there's no one who's exempt in Mitt's opinion ah from the need to be punished for wrong. And he has this recurring nightmare from the time his father disappears of the young man, a character called Candon, who comes to bring the news of what's happened and who dies outside their apartment door. ah Mitt doesn't see it properly, but he can tell that like, Candon has been very horribly injured and is dying very not in a very like painful way. And he dreams of him falling to pieces. And in the morning, there's nothing left of Candon, he disappears like mitt's father disappears, there's just a stain on the floor outside their apartment door.
00:14:44
Speaker
And the whole apartment building knows what's happened throughout what's going on. the Everyone around Met, everyone in this society is sort of bound up in this conspiracy together. um But they also can't help each other openly. There's also this feeling of paranoia, of mistrust. Someone sold Met's father out. Someone could sell any of them out if the pressures are too high, ah if you know if they're too scared of the police.
00:15:08
Speaker
ah Right. So this again is it's very interested in a society of unjust arrests ah of people informing on each other of people of a community being turned against itself. ah by the ah cruel imposition of power from above and there's so many descriptions of like there's a sequence where Mitt is in a street where everybody is stopped and asked their business by the soldiers and this silence that falls over the street as everybody regardless of what they're doing there and whether it's legitimate or not everybody is equally terrified. Yeah and Mitt doesn't so throughout this this first half of the book
00:15:47
Speaker
Uh, Mitt and his mother engage in this frequent kind of dialogue. They don't have a revolutionary theory, which we may have no idea what's really meant by revolution. Right. He goes to the meetings of the free-holdlanders because he has to, because he wants to ingratiate himself with them to get in on, you know, to allow them to go in on his plan so that he can then turn on them and he falls asleep. It's so hard to keep himself awake.
00:16:11
Speaker
But they have these dialogues, ah you know, there's there's this this part ah where he's having he's talking with his mother about why this happened, why his father was arrested, how he could have been turned in. And it says, Milda was forced to laugh. It was quite beyond her to explain why everyone in Holland lived in a dread of soldiers and even greater dread of harsh-head spies. So she said, oh, man, you're a real free soul, you are. You don't know what fear means.
00:16:34
Speaker
It seems such a waste one had in the free-holanders have done for us between them, it really does. Mitt realized that by talking in this sturdy way, he had managed to comfort his mother. He had sent the hateful crease of worry out of her face, and better still, he had made Mill to comfort him by calling him a free soul.
00:16:51
Speaker
Mitt was not sure he knew what a free soul was. It never occurred to him that his mother had no idea either, but he thought it was a splendid thing to be. And then for the next 10 years of his life, he goes around saying things like, can't the poor people get together and tell the rich ones where they get off? And his mother says, you're such a free soul. And none of them ever goes in neither of them knows how to go deeper than that. Right. And it it's really clear, I think, that Mitt's commitment to revolution isn't even really about avenging his father. He says it is.
00:17:20
Speaker
It's about his relationship with Milder, his mother, who is very, very unhappy, especially early in the story. And Mitt can tell she's unhappy. And when he acts like a free soul, when he uses this sort of revolutionary language, when he stands up for himself, when he says he'll look after her, then she's comforted and she smiles. And everything Mitt does is to try to comfort Milder. In fact, almost to try to parent Milder.
00:17:49
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I think this is our first, maybe not our first example of parentification of a parent, because we've seen that a bit before in Oger Downstairs. And I think this book actually has a weird amount in common with Oger Downstairs and some of its themes. Lily does, it really does. um But right, Mitt acts as Milder's parent. Mitt looks after her. Mitt goes to work very young. um He gets apprenticed to a fishing boat.
00:18:19
Speaker
ah So learns the trade of a fisherman from one of the free hollanders. So he's out all night working and then he works on the stool selling the fish during the day he brings home his money and he hides it because he knows that milder if she sees money will waste it on something stupid. yeah So milder also works. um she sews She sews fine embroidery that's used by the nobles in the palace and there's a lovely like detail of we see early in the book, milder sewing a coverlet.
00:18:45
Speaker
uh in sort of amazing beautiful blue and gold which is then torn up by one of the no yeah wrong to to have having a temper tantrum um so milder works and she does earn money um she earns more than mitt but she wastes it she buys herself a new pair of earrings some
Revolutionary Plans and Family Dynamics
00:19:03
Speaker
pretty shoes a bucket of oysters a mitt who literally works for a fisherman is like i could get you oysters what are you doing
00:19:12
Speaker
the way that they you know that he's he's sort of afraid constantly at the same time he wants her to be happy he's so stressed out but he's also afraid of losing her attention and affection and so they play this game and it is a game of planning out how they're going to get back and everybody they're going to and eventually this sort of coalesces into a wild plan it's a very bad idea of getting a bomb and trying using it to try and assassinate the Erleholund in the religious festival. And then, this is the even wilder part, getting caught and saying that the Freeholders told him to do it so that he can get back at them. It's a very stupid plan. It's a childish plan. Milda is deeply involved in this plan. She comes up with several key parts of the plan. I don't think that she thinks of it as real anymore.
00:20:01
Speaker
The myth does it's you know we've talked a little bit about how in past books you know it's about bringing kids into coots with each other they they you know they come up with kid plans and they you know it's them against the world and that's what brings them together. You're not supposed to be in cahoots with your mother she's supposed to be the person who says don't do that. yeah Right. So many parts of this plan are Milda's idea. Milda is eventually joins the Revolutionary Society herself and has a great time making little speeches at their dark secret meetings about like leading from below and rising up and looking to the north. ah It's clear that she is a very
00:20:38
Speaker
thoughtless woman. um There's a a ah character late in the book like who says you don't need to tell me Milda's got no flaming sense. yeah Which is great. It's a great moment. um But mit I think does adore her. It's never said in so many words, but he works so hard for her. And also he is deeply resentful ah when she remarries a wealthy sensible man who will take care of her.
00:21:07
Speaker
It's furious! Yeah. ah um Looking for the line, there's a thing where he talks about, you know, after after she marries Hoban, who is the gunsmith, and he talks about how the this sort of weird revolutionary plan that they've put together is really the only thing that he and Milde have to bring them together at any point because now he's not providing for her, her new husband is providing for her. um he's What he's providing is just sort of the relief of the revolutionary game. Right, there's there's nothing else left of their relationship. And in fact, Milde has more children, she has mett acquires two baby half sisters who he feels very weird about, because they love him and laugh at him and he doesn't
00:21:56
Speaker
know what to do when someone gives him a baby sister. And Milder continues to waste money now buying expensive furniture for their nice new house. But all they really have in common still is sneaking around behind Hoban's back to do this very stupid revolutionary plan. Yes.
00:22:15
Speaker
Um, it's, it's really like it's it's a really rich character portrait of Matt and of this person who is telling you that he has great ideas and um an impeccable plan and you the reader are like, no, no, you don't, you're 14, please stop. I'm gonna say I am gonna say that like, to me, this book is such a masterclass in that point of view control that Diana Wynne Jones has sort of been working on all through this decade.
00:22:41
Speaker
because Mitt's own point of view is that he is like the bold young revolutionary, the free soul ah who is going to avenge everyone and kill all the bad guys and so on and so forth. And you the reader are like, Kit, Kit, this is bad. This is a mess.
00:22:59
Speaker
And I think we ought to say that this book actually influenced both of us. Oh, yeah, teen terrorists. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is a book about why does a teenager become a member of a terrorist movement? And Jones's answer is that it's very deeply rooted in psychological relationships and community relationships, which is not to say that MIT does not also sincerely want to do something to make the or full society you grew up in better.
00:23:30
Speaker
He does, that but the bomb, the bomb is not the thing. Yes. And we're going to get, when we get to the second half, there's some really interesting conversations that reflect back on this moment, on this decision of how and why you do that. Um, and you know, whether, how you can make a society better, what, what responsibility is to do it.
Hildy and Themes of Powerlessness
00:23:49
Speaker
But before we get that, we have to talk about the other protagonist of this book. Uh, Hildy. Yes. Who is Diana one Jones's first female protagonist?
00:23:59
Speaker
or a co-protagonist is she I think you can make a case for what was it Jess back in Wilkins tooth but she's barely a character yes so and you can make can make a case for Kathy as a co-protagonist in Dog's Body but she is never point of view character He'll make a case even for Gwendolyn, but she's not point of view. We're not getting, you know, this sort of personal psychological insight. Yeah, okay, here's my theory. Hildy is Gwendolyn. Okay, so Hildy is a little girl from a very privileged background. She's the granddaughter of the Earl, the daughter of Navis, the youngest son whom we met in the prologue when he rescued Mid.
00:24:38
Speaker
So she is the Elle's granddaughter, she has a younger brother who is ah adoring and very easily bullied, a relationship which seems to me to be almost an exact mirror of Gwendolyn and Kat, and she is a little monster. She F.
00:24:55
Speaker
Everyone in the Earls family is sort of portrayed as having inherited some part of the qualities that make him both a powerful domineering figure and the monster responsible for the state the homeland is in. What Hildy has from her grandfather the Earl is his temper.
00:25:13
Speaker
She has a filthy temper and she throws these tantrums repeatedly in the first half of the book, ah which she expresses by taking the stuff around her, sort of the valuable things that are in the palace, the beautiful objects she owned, that beautiful blue cover look that Milder had to sew working for weeks.
00:25:31
Speaker
She takes the stuff and she destroys it. She tears things up, she smashes them with the poker, she jumps on things. And this is how she expresses how miserable she feels and how angry she feels about being a little girl stuck. Yes.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah, so the inciting incident, the the moment that we really meet Hildy is when she's just been betrothed. um All of the the girl cousins are being betrothed to various lords around South Denmark. Hildy at this point is, I forget exactly how long she is, she's but nine nine nine years old, because then she gets the boat for a nine year old.
00:26:07
Speaker
Yes, that's right. um And so she learns about the betrothal and she goes home. She goes back to her room. She throws an enormous temper tantrum. But what she says, she has a conversation with her little brother. She goes and she sits in the mirror. She left the mirror unsmashed on purpose. I am a person, she said at last, aren't I?
00:26:27
Speaker
Yes, said Inan. What happened, Hildy? And not a thing, said Hildy. What's happened is I'm betrothed, and nobody told me just like a thing. Do you think I should sit quiet and not mind and be a thing? The girl cousins are betrothed, too. They'll make a fuss, Inan predicted. Have you been forbidden to go sailing? No, said Hildy. We're getting a boat out of it. You have to get between the islands somehow. I think I shall go to the library now. oh So it's about this, that the anger that she has is about this sort of deep personification of being a little girl specifically who's being used as a tool. Right. it This sort of made me think about a sort of wider point about writing children's books. Actually, I think you cannot be an adult writing books for children without having a point of view of what childhood is and what it's for.
00:27:20
Speaker
and what the experience of childhood is about. And it's it's in a way, a children's book is the one kind of book that is never going to be truly own voices, you might say, ah because small children do not have the skills to write books. So a book written for a child is is very, very seldom going to be by a child. And adults looking back on childhood have that distance and that gap in experience. and What a lot of adults thinking about children children's books, thinking about the purpose of childhood, conclude is that childhood is for learning things.
00:27:57
Speaker
Right? This is a really common point of view. um've I've been a teacher. The idea that children are in with the learning is a popular one. And I think it's the idea that lies under like the problem book, which we've looked at before as like a 70s fashion in children's literature, but it's still a thing
Mitt and Hildy's Shared Anger
00:28:13
Speaker
now. Here's a book about a problem for you. Yeah. Enjoy. um Because the idea is the children are going to learn.
00:28:21
Speaker
about the problem and how to cope with the problem. Jones's perspective is quite different. I think in Diana Wynne Jones' books, childhood is not about learning how to be a person. Childhood is about being a person, yeah who right now is experiencing injustice.
00:28:41
Speaker
and has to cope. Childhood is about living with injustice. And that sort of that moment of Hildy looking at herself, I'm a person, nine years old, she's a person. Mick, the child who is deciding to throw a bomb into a parade, he's a person.
00:28:59
Speaker
yeah and and admit No, go for it. No, you first. I was just going to say the thing that Mitt and Hildy have in common is this overwhelming anger at the way, the position that the world has forced them into and their powerlessness within it.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And for Hildy it's because of her gender and for Mitt it's because of his social class, ah but both of them are trapped. And there's something really true about their anger, like there despite the actions that they choose to take, which may be violent and thoughtless and cause harm. but Their anger is a force that can't be denied. When Hildig is confronting her father, Navis, about her betrothal, he happens to be reading, this is actually one one of the other slim links between this book and Carton Quitter, he's reading the add-on, who is the sort of legendary poet, warrior, king of Dalemark. And the add-on says things like, truth is the fire that fetches thunder, which sounded unpleasantly like a description of Hildreida.
00:30:01
Speaker
oh And I think that's a description of both of them. Yes. Truth is the fire that fetches thunder that both of them have a truth, which is that they are angry and righteously angry about the way the world is and the way they're being treated. And both of them also have this capacity for violence, which in a Hildy is almost presented as comedy, like this is this little girl smashing things up. But it's not comedy. It's awful. This is how she feels inside. And the same way for Mitt, his capacity for violence is then used by his mother.
00:30:32
Speaker
by the free hodlanders ultimately who do go along with his bomb plan to try and assassinate the earl. Well, but it's coming from a very, very real anger. And the one other link I want to make with Hildy's anger, even though it's presented as comedy, her smashing up her room a little bit. The other thing this echoes is not just Gwendolyn's tantrums, but Kathleen's tantrums at the end of Dog's Body. It's not a tantrum, it's her her moment after being a good little girl throughout the whole book, when she learns that her father is dead, has died in revolutionary action. Her moment of righteous anger when she smashes up Duffy's studio. Yes!
00:31:08
Speaker
So it's the explosion into violence is not a child behaving badly, it is a child doing the only thing they can do in response to overwhelming injustice.
00:31:20
Speaker
Yeah, but in this case it's more, you're right, and it's it's it's more complicated by the fact that Hildy has this privilege, even though she is powerless, but she is also living in a palace, she's surrounded by fine things. When she throws a tantrum, that's the result of somebody else's painful and painstaking and poorly paid labor.
00:31:39
Speaker
Um, and we're aware of this. I think this actually comes in both directions. You know, when we get to Mitt and Hilde encounter each other, uh, on the boat, both of them sort of bring their preconceptions from their own particular prejudices and piece of privilege
Mitt's Assassination Attempt and Escape
00:31:53
Speaker
about the others. Yes. So I'll say.
00:31:55
Speaker
Hildy is classist, and Mitt is misogynist. Although I find Mitt's misogyny actually quite funny, which maybe I shouldn't, because it seems to echo Diana Wynne Jones's own feminist journey, which was I thought I hated all women, but it turns out it's mostly just my mother. Yeah, 100%. It's it so interesting as well, this book actually has the dedication for my mother.
00:32:21
Speaker
ah bankers If my child wrote a book like this and dedicated it to me, I would be like, what did i do I need to pay for your therapy? I'm so sorry. I think the answer is yes. The answer is very clearly yes in this case. Although I will say, um Milda is not a good mother, she's irresponsible, she's thoughtless, she's got no flaming sense, but she's not actively malicious.
00:32:51
Speaker
she's not a monster this is a book in which on the balance of things milder is not the parent most to blame for yeah that's which honestly i think is another sort of thematic link to carton to quiddo where you have these two parents one of whom is hard to love, but objectively, less to blame. Yeah, yep. And La Nina, I mean, I think La Nina and the Carton Quitter, we see her most in Navis, who is Hildy's father.
00:33:24
Speaker
who is part of this, who is also sort of powerless in this royal family. He's the youngest son. he Unlike the others, he occasionally sometimes tries to do good for the populace in this sort of distant and absent-minded way. There's a moment when, um as a response to terrorist threats,
00:33:44
Speaker
The royal family has all the tenements on the waterfront just knocked down and all the people turned out of them. And Navis is the only one who thinks, shall we build them somewhere else to live? And that's the sort of thing that you get, that he's not quite as bad as the rest of this family. That and that he brings him at home at the beginning. He is the soldier who finds this child wandering the Dykes and returns him to his parents.
00:34:08
Speaker
But whenever Hildy encounters him, he's cold, he's withdrawn, he's uninterested. He's sort of emotionally, again, because he's also in an unpleasant situation in his family. And instead of lashing out with violence like Hildy does, he's just removed himself from everything and everyone including his children. It's this emotional shutdown of deep unhappiness. And I think it's clear that it's deep unhappiness. And there is like, in the back half of the book, when he's reunited with his children after thinking they're probably dead, there's this moment of deep emotion when they all embrace. And you can see that Navis actually loves them very much, but he's not done a good job of showing it. Right. And like Lina, he's cold, but honorable. He does, I think, kind of represent some of the virtues that you can find in the Southern aristocracy in a way that the rest of the family and the rest of Holland with their big rages don't necessarily echo. Yeah. So, so the opening movements of the book are mixed sort of realisation that he
00:35:07
Speaker
wants to be a revolutionary and do this insane double plan to punish everyone who's ever wronged him in any way. Oh my God. um And meanwhile, Hildy's opening movements are about her rage of being betrothed, her helplessness and what she gets out of it, which is a boat. Hildy gets a boat that's meant for her and her brother to share. And it's a nice big boat with room for a crew because they're only children. So other people are meant to say that for them.
00:35:34
Speaker
And then we're in terms of Act Two. like Oh, I do want to say real quick before we get into Act Two, just the one the contrast between Hildy and Inan and Gwendolyn and Kat is that Hildy does love Inan very, very much. He's the most important thing in her life. She is, you know, he's more powerless than she is because although she's a thing, she has a value and you and doesn't even have a value. He's the grandson that is of the most useless grandson of the most useless son. ah And so getting him a boat is the thing that she gets out of her engagement. Right. Hildy says to him, you're the only person in this palace who's nice.
00:36:12
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So I can't believe we're nearly 40 minutes in and like we've talked about the first live chat. I'm not kidding. We have so much to say about Drowned Ammit. So act two, short version. Mitt does his insane plan. It turns out it was an insane plan.
00:36:29
Speaker
um so i think actually like most of act two you spend kind of eyes like reading through your fingers like oh god don't do it this is so bad um mitt does his insane plan and it goes more or less perfectly to begin with like he successfully disguises himself as one of the boys who takes part in this religious parade joins in the parade carried his bomb down to the waterfront which has been cleared completely cleared, um all the tenements are gone, all the people are gone, there's a lovely big open space for the festival to take place. And the core of this festival is the Earl has to carry a life-sized dummy made of straw, a life-sized man figure, and the name of the figure is Poor Old Amet. ah Poor Old Amet is thrown ritually into the sea with traditional ritual words, go now on the winds road and return sevenfold.
00:37:24
Speaker
And it's from this ritual that Hildy's boat gets its name, the Winds Road. and and The Winds Road is also Anglo-Saxon poetry again, it's a kenning for the sea. yeah So, Mitt successfully gets to the moment where ah Earl is standing on the waterfront about to throw the dummy in and Mitt throws a bomb at his feet.
00:37:46
Speaker
And there's a moment of stillness as he just stands there. Now, if I was normal, this would be when I would run away, but I've got to get captured to turn in the free hold of this.
Realities of Revolution
00:37:55
Speaker
So they just stare at each other. And while they're staring at each other, Navis, who is taking part in the festival carrying poor old Amit's wife, a figure made of fruit, ah who's known as Libby Beer,
00:38:08
Speaker
Navis leaps forward and kicks the bomb into the harbour and that's it that's the end of Mitt's assassination plot the bomb goes off underwater uh nobody is injured and Mitt's just left there about to be captured and he runs away he suddenly realizes he doesn't want to be caught and he runs for it but just as he's about to do that somebody from a great distance very accurately, shoots the Earl and he drops down dead, pretty much at Mit's feet. So there is an assassination. It's just not me. mentally do it And in fact, ah I am going to spoil it now. The assassination turns out to have been planned by the Earl's older son, who wants to inherit the clearing of the waterfront.
00:38:57
Speaker
ah the removal of all those tenement buildings, presumably was actually aimed at creating that ah conditions for that perfect shot from a distance. Yeah, and it's an incredible piece of writing. You're seeing it simultaneously. She's sort of swapping really quickly back and forth between Mitt's point of view and Hildy's. As Mitt's in the thick of it, she's trying to figure out what's happening. And Hildy is watching from a great distance. Her father almost saved the day and thinking that she should be proud of him. But in fact, she's just sort of embarrassed because he looks very silly. And then this very sort of almost anticlimactic moment when had crumples down to the ground.
00:39:37
Speaker
And meanwhile, Mitt's thinking, half my life, and it's wasted, the unknown marksman cheated me, Hildy's he's had is dead and says she has seemed to have no feelings about that at all. And Mitt thinks the one thing that did not seem to be happening was the revolution that the free hollanders had confidently expected. Right. So the whole idea of this assassination plot was you kill the earl and there'll be an uprising. And that does not happen in any way, shape or form. The people of Holland do not rise up against their rulers at any point in this book. Hull successfully, in fact, very successfully inherits. And the sort of palace drama is going on in the background through the second half of the book. And
00:40:21
Speaker
what becomes really clear, Mitt runs away and he suddenly rises, doesn't want to be caught and he is not caught and it was so obvious to me reading that the reason he is not caught, although he doesn't acknowledge it, is that the people around him are protecting him. Strangers on the street, complete strangers, the ordinary people of Poland, they saw this boy try to kill the Earl and although they're not rising up in revolution to support ah the emotion behind that attempted murder, they are also going out of their way to make sure that he's not caught. So at one point, the soldier grabs Mitt, but he grabbed Mitt's jacket, not Mitt himself, and the jacket rips.
00:41:04
Speaker
it falls down. But he has time to get up again before they get him. ah He runs through the crowd. He thinks no way I meant to be trying to get caught and turn in the free hollanders. So he runs back into the crowd the other way. And the soldiers are sort of siphoned off down the street where they thought he went. Mick goes and tries to stand somewhere he'll be really really noticeable and get caught that way. And he finds he's mysteriously surrounded by tall people and no one notices.
00:41:30
Speaker
so And then at this point he does understand that there's a moment where he he sees the Earl's second son, the middle son, Hartshad, who is effectively the royal torturer, and he realises no, he can't bear the thought of being caught, he's terrified.
00:41:45
Speaker
And there's a really, really tense sequence of him running away. And again, and again, it's the ordinary of people who hold on to help him who save him. This community that it has been scornful about from the beginning of the book, where he sees himself as a rural person, not a city boy, when he sees the Hollanders and their failure to fight back against the earls as um a lack of free spirit, the free spirit that MIT has, and he's so proud of in himself.
00:42:12
Speaker
this community is a community he's part of and has been part of. And he is one of these people and they try to help him. Yeah, it's there's this really, I mean, it's sort of awakens to him this sense of just being one, there's almost solidarity, because two things happen. Solidarity, that's the word. Yes, because I'm gonna say, ah if Carton Quidda is about the artist as the ultimate outsider who doesn't belong anywhere,
00:42:39
Speaker
I think Drowned Ammit is about the revolutionary as the ultimate insider. You have to be part of the community to be the revolution. And Mitt's failure to understand that is the core of his failure in the book. Right, because he's been thinking about himself as separate. You know, ah there's this passage in the old days, it used to make him amused and rather scornful the way even respectable people went in fear of hard chance soldiers and made him think he must be the only free soul in Holland.
00:43:07
Speaker
But now he did not seem to be a free soul any longer. And as he's thinking that he's running away and the people of Holand that he's scored are protecting him. And then he realizes at this moment, he thinks, I wonder if there's something wrong deep inside of me. He thought it don't surprise me.
00:43:24
Speaker
And then he he tries to go and turn himself in again. And he realizes that not only is he afraid, he doesn't even want to. He's he's stopped because he's not even tempted. Mitt could not tell himself he would rather die than go to Serial's house. He knew he would rather do anything than die. But he was still not going there or to Didio. And these are the free hollanders that he's been trying to to turn in. What do you think they are then, friends? Mitt asked himself derisively.
00:43:50
Speaker
It seemed as if they were. Right, Mick keeps making friends by accident. He joins communities by accident, he doesn't respect the communities he's part of, he doesn't understand them. But when it comes down to it, he can't betray them. And he and in fact, he's not even tempted to try.
00:44:08
Speaker
So he ends up yeah going home. And he goes first. But one important thing happens first. He's given a little Libby beer by a woman who's trying to be kind to him and to cheer him up. She says, it's good luck. Take this little figure, you know, this little fair festival figure of Libby beer. You might need it. Right. And a moment later, she's questioned by soldiers and she says,
00:44:28
Speaker
ah of Yes, I saw him. He was here on this street. He went off that way. And the whole street is silently not looking at MIT while the soldiers just walk straight past him. And it's only when the soldiers are gone that a voice of a man he never actually gets a look at says, Now run, lad. Yeah, it's a really powerful moment. That sort of moment of yeah solidarity community to rescue this child who has tried to fight back.
00:44:56
Speaker
yeah Uh, and then it goes home. Anyway, Nick goes to hope in the gunsmith and he and milder were under the impression that their game and their plan to blow up the had was a secret and hope it's like you two are so fucking stupid. There is no way that I could have missed you sneaking about doing this nonsense. Here is my plan to get you out and save your life. The difference between my plans and your plans is that my plans actually work.
00:45:24
Speaker
And it's revealed that Hobin has, ah if you like, a sober understanding of what revolution is.
Mitt's Character Growth
00:45:33
Speaker
That Hobin is secretly making guns, um which meant the whole time he was like stealing little bits of gunpowder for the bomb from Hobin, had no clue this was going on. And Hobin gives him ah the revolver he's invented and said, take this with you, use it just to keep yourself safe. Don't do anything else with it, you would idiot.
00:45:53
Speaker
And then he tells Mitt to go and get on a boat. Yeah. And he asks, and this is the first time that someone sort of asks Mitt, I wish you'd tell me what made you start on this freedom fighting nonsense, Mitt. Was it your father or what? I suppose it was, Mitt admitted. It seems like confessing to one spot when you had the measles, but it was the best he could do. Right. And I hope we actually say, have you ever thought about what kind of man your father was?
00:46:17
Speaker
what kind of man abandons his wife and child to fend for themselves in order to, and then it's not quite clear what exactly Mitt's father did. But we're gonna get there. Oh yeah, we're gonna get there. There, 50 minutes into this, we have covered half the book. Right. The most complicated half.
00:46:39
Speaker
All right. I love Drowned Hammet. I think Drowned Hammet is S tier. Like if you ask me to rank the Diana Wynne Joneses of the 1970s, this one is at or very near the top, but it is a complicated book. Honestly, I think in some ways, if it's a failure at all, it's a failure as a children's book. A lot of people I know bounced off it as children because it's really, really complex.
00:47:05
Speaker
It's so dense. We take notes when we're doing this and normally I end up with like eight, seven or eight pages of quotes that I want to maybe pull out and refer to. 18. 18 pages of quotes. It's like half the book in my notes down here. It's incredible. It's such a good book. So halfway point in the book. Mitt trying to escape from the consequences of his very stupid plan that he did with his mother. He is on a boat and by purest chance the boat he ends up on is the Winds Road. Hildy and Inan's boat.
00:47:35
Speaker
At the same time, back in the palace, Hildy, so frustrated by Navis' inaction or lack of reaction to her grandfather's assassination, and so sick of how nasty everyone in the palace is, and she discovers her uncle Harle celebrating and getting drunk because the old man is dead.
00:47:55
Speaker
ah She and Inan decide to run away and give everyone a good scare. And her idea is ah that they'll sail out and then come back in the evening and everyone will go, oh, thank goodness, where were you? um But so she's very shocked as their boat is sailing out of the harbour that people behind them are shooting at them. A myth down in hiding down in the cabin thinks, well, that they these kids don't know, that the soldiers are looking for me.
00:48:22
Speaker
yes and he's not right He is not right. As part of the palace drama, Hull is not just getting rid of his father, he's also getting rid of all potential rivals. um So we do discover, in fact, that Hull is nearly successfully kills off all male members of his family. Navis just escapes, Inan and Hildy escape by pure luck because they were going to do this this prank on their family to complain about how weird everyone's being. Niamh And like I think one of the the most fun structural things about this book is how it seems, again with this point of view control, Hildy and Anand, in contrast to Mitt, who has suddenly just come into the realization that he's doing something momentous, that it's not a game.
00:49:01
Speaker
Hildian and then still think it's a game while they're running away. But in fact, their situation is just as dire as Mitt's. And they are just as much caught in sort of the various wheels of these various uprisings and power struggles in Holland. Right. So they're out to sea and Mitt emerges from the cabin ah ah aware that he's outnumbered and thinks, right, I've just got to be really scary because I've got to get them to take me north. And he's like, I'm going to be a rough, tough city boy. They theyll they won't see through it.
00:49:31
Speaker
Remember he's 14? Hildy is actually described as bigger than he is. Oh, her because she's well-nourished and he's scrawny and skinny and hasn't eaten very well. Right, she's taller and she's fatter, ah whereas Mitt is so skinny that later on he's able to climb out a window through some iron bars, which neither of the other two can do.
00:49:49
Speaker
ah So he's trying to be this big tough intimidating man and Hildian Innan are trying not to laugh. and It's really actually really funny in spite of the tension of the situation. It's funny and tragic and then there's this sequence where that he rudely demands food from them and they give him food and he eat he they they they've stolen some pies from the palace feast.
00:50:09
Speaker
and they watch him eat like 17 pies in a row and then he looks up and belches and things hurt that intimidated them with how tough and evil I am and they're just like we didn't know anyone could possibly
Mythical Elements and Community
00:50:19
Speaker
be so hungry.
00:50:20
Speaker
So for the very first time, Hildian Inanar brought face to face with what their privilege means, what they've been insulated from, what kind of life a boy on the waterfront might be living. And they're defensive, you know, they're defensive, and they're not scared. They're a little bit, I mean, you can see the classism come out in the way they look and think about it, even as their sort of consciousness is beginning to awaken a little bit as well. And it's like all the physical stuff on the boat, the boat has a toilet seat that is painted with poppies and this toilet seat that is painted with poppies, this gilded toilet is brought up over and over again which I think is such a great kind of Diana Wynne Jones detail. It is sort of sort of symbolic though that Mitt physically has to climb through the palace sewers to get to this boat. yeah like He arrives on the boat stinking covered with mud from the palace sewers and they've got a beautiful little toilet painted with poppies and it's got a golden seat. I can see why he's fixated on it.
00:51:19
Speaker
Meanwhile, Hildy and NN are saying, well why should we help you? why should we take they'rere They're trying at first to sort of overpower him. They're like, well we'll get him really drunk, and we'll get him asleep, and then we'll turn the boat around. um The other problem is that NN does not know how to sail the boat as well as he thinks he does and knows how to sail the boat much better. So there's this sort of... Right, because Mitt was an apprentice fisherman from when he was about NN's age, so he's actually worked at this.
00:51:41
Speaker
Whereas CNN loves the sea, is passionate about his boat, but has always had a crew of professional sailors actually managing the thing. right But eventually it comes to the point where they have to have a real conversation about it, about whether they're going to take Mitt North and help him escape, or return him to face quote-unquote justice for his attempted assassination attempt. And this is the one you sort of really get at the heart, I think, of the book's question. Because Inan asks Mitt, why did you do it? There must have been lots of people in Holland far worse off than you. What made you be the person who threw that bomb? And Mitt has to think about it.
00:52:19
Speaker
Right. Mitt can't answer the question. He tries. He really tries. What he comes down to is, have you got the quote? ah Yes. So 24 hours earlier, Mitt could have given all sorts of answers. He could have told them at least that it was to be revenged on Serial and Ham. But he had gone out of his way not to be revenged. And he had run and run and run. He did not know what he thought he had been doing. He was reduced to answering with another question. Could you have seen things so wrong and not think you ought to do something about it?
00:52:49
Speaker
This in its turn was a home question to Inan and Hildy. They had indeed seen things wrong. All Inan had done was wish he could whirl a rattle in Had's face. All Hildy had done was tear a bedspread and make empty threats. Then they had gone out sailing, a piece of defiance which would throw them in the way of this boy. And he had not only told them more things that were wrong, but had demanded that they help them.
00:53:10
Speaker
With Inan, said Hildy. I know, said Inan. All right, we'd better take you north. Hildy, could you go to the four seals again? Mitt was rather taken aback. He knew he had not given Inan a reason. He felt dishonest and shamed. What would happen to these two in the north? Oh, right. And there is an underlying um incident to Inan and Hildy's strong reaction to the idea of taking Mitt back, which is they have on one occasion seen sort of close up just how cruel their family is.
00:53:40
Speaker
ah to people it wants to hurt. And this is actually the only appearance in the book of a character from Carton Quiddah, which is Kialin, the young aristocrat from the north who was brought south by a in a shipwreck, ah whose whole crew is captured, whose older brother, along with all the other men, they're all hanged, and only Kialin escapes in the cart.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yes. And but Hildy and Inan have seen this and they have actually seen Kialin and they have seen their uncle turn on this 14 year old boy and kick him. And it's that moment thinking of bringing Mitt back to their uncle who they know without ever fully being able to explain how they know it. They know he's a torturer. That is the moment yeah I think we can't we can't do it. And then Mitt's answering questions like what's going to happen to them in the north? He's seen what happened to the sort of aristocratic shipwrecked children who came to the south.
00:54:36
Speaker
is really going to be different. And it's I mean, I think that this is almost the question that she's put like, I think this is a question that's being posed to the reader posed to the audience. What is the answer to seeing things wrong? You know, Mitt doesn't have a great answer. Throwing a bomb in a parade is not the answer. But doing nothing is also not the answer. Is there an answer? They don't come out of this conversation with a resolution. No, but they don't come out of this book with a resolution. ah But it is the core question. You're right. So while they're at sea,
00:55:06
Speaker
they have something wonderful, something magical happens to them and this is actually the first moment that the book sort of swerves into myth. Up till then it's been, it's yeah, secondary world but it's been a very grounded fantasy indeed, barely fantasy at all by some measure, ah but while they're out at sea they find just floating poor old Ammit. Drowned Ammit. And they the man from the title, they're the the figure thrown into the harbour as part of the festival. And because they're Holenders, they know it is good luck to find poor old Ammit and bring him aboard your boat. So they immediately fetch him in, they tie him to the prow. They actually, because Mitt has this little Libby beer that a woman in Holland gave him, they attach her to the stern. And they're like, wow, what a lucky boat we are! And this also brings them all together, like suddenly
00:55:54
Speaker
They are the three of them bonded by the fact that they are on the luckiest boat in Holland. They're in cahoots. This is an appropriate sort of cahoots. It's angry children banding together. Right. um But then on a mythic level, they are suddenly in the wind's road with the gods or these divine figures behind and before them guiding the boat.
00:56:15
Speaker
And just after that there is a storm and it's a great sequence, it's a great piece of writing. ah It's beautiful. Slowly
Climax and Cultural Mythology
00:56:24
Speaker
throughout the the storm which the boat, Mick describes the boat as having suicidal urges, like it's a pleasure craft meant for children to cruise along the coast and they are out in the deep ocean in a big storm, the boat keeps trying to capsize.
00:56:37
Speaker
and poor old Amit and Libby Beer come to life and these figures made out of straw and fruit turn into people, a man with flying hair and a beautiful woman and these figures they keep glimpsing them in the storm, ah helping to steer the boat, stopping it from overturning and all the while the ship is surrounded and the children are very clear on this is not a vision, this is what is happening, the ship is surrounded by grey horses ah who are figures who are associated with Ammit every time we've heard about him, um the horses of the sea. But we're also told that the stories are told of doomed sailors seeing the horses as they're about to drown. Yeah. And once again, this is not the first time, you know, we've talked about this book as being a follow on to Dog's Body in some ways. In Dog's Body, water is death. ah Sirius over and over again is presented with the river the the fear of the river, the force of death.
00:57:31
Speaker
a well-being ground ever. yes and here the that I think it must be a favorite word. The well-being of the ocean is something Jones comes back to. and the The ocean is death and the storm is death. It's very clear that the kids are very close to dying and it's only the help of the gods, this lucky boat that keeps them alive ah through this ah long night of agony. and They do, in a way, experience a kind of spiritual death.
00:57:57
Speaker
psychic death together there. and should see um they They come through the darkness and they come out changed. And they save each other's lives. ah you know mitt and There's this this really key moment I think in the middle of the storm, when Mitt realizes that he's the person who knows the boat best and he has to take responsibility for being in charge of saving the boat. um It was as if he'd run away from himself and left the inside of his head empty. Mitt knew this would not do. It was no use thinking an end could manage by himself. He had to run after himself inside his head and bring himself back with one arm twisted up his back before he was able to pick up an armful of soaking sail and stagger with it to the hatch. He thought as he pushed and kicked it down and clapped the cover on and banged the bolt home that there really was nothing left of the old fearless Mitt anymore.
00:58:44
Speaker
he had never been in charge of a boat before and he wanted to whimper because cereal was not there. So it's like, you know, he spent half this book thinking I'm free and I'm fearless. And it's only once he stops thinking of himself as free and fearless once he acknowledges that he is afraid and he wants help, he wants an adult, he wants someone to take responsibility from him, that he is able to actually take responsibility and be part of this community and save these other kids. Right. It's almost he's taking on the role of the adult in the room. right He is older than ah Inan or Hildy, he knows more than they do thanks to this life he's had to leave where he was working from a very young age. um He's the only one who can save the boat but also he doesn't think he can. but he says He thinks to himself that there's no point telling Inan that these storms go on for days because we're not going to make it through the night.
00:59:33
Speaker
um yeah and So he wants an adult to help him. An adult does come help him in a way, or more than an adult. ah Because Emmett and Libby Beer are there helping them. It's like he calls out for a father figure. Cyril is, you know, Mitt has a lot of father figures. Cyril is one of them. um And Emmett and Libby Beer? Yeah, no, Cyril, the fisherman he's apprenticed to does talk about Mitt and says, I've got no son of my own. So it's clear that like,
01:00:01
Speaker
it wants Once a father and a father comes, a father comes to help him. Yeah. Cyril and Hoban are both previously to this father figures that he has sort of not recognized as father figures who've been like fighting over the chance to take him and apprentice him and teach him things. And he's like, ah, I'm going to send him to school. And it was just like, eh, I don't need that.
01:00:21
Speaker
Because he's flying because I'm gonna get arrested. Exactly. When I'm 14. Right. um So they come through the storm, they're really proud of themselves. They find after the storm, they say they're out in deep ocean, they've got no idea what to do next. And at this point, they hit a turning point because they discover another boat, a shipwreck boat with only one person left alive on board. And that person clearly has no clue what to do.
01:00:47
Speaker
So they rescue this man at sea, because what else can you do? And now we're talking about Mitt's father figures. ah We come to perhaps the Ur father figure, his actual father. Yes, so this is the reveal. Mitt has spent his whole life plotting to avenge his father, Al, and they have the same name. They're both Al Hammett, which is a common name. The most common name in Holland, which is really important, I think.
01:01:11
Speaker
So Mitt has spent his whole life plotting to avenge Al because he believes that Al was betrayed by the Freehollanders. He had it the wrong way around. Al betrayed them. Al was the spy in their mitts who handed them over ah to the Earls people.
01:01:28
Speaker
Al got out of there just fine and used it as an excuse to dump Milder, who has no flaming sense. He's the one who says that. Dump Milder, dump his inconvenient kid. ah He and go off elsewhere because he has another family. He's got another wife and three more kids in a different, ah a different, a different Oldham in South Denmark.
01:01:48
Speaker
Yeah. um And then carry on with his career, which is a professional informer. Al is someone who joins ah groups of revolutionaries and then encourages them to do crimes that he can then report them for and get rewarded for as well as doing that. And he explains all this to me at one point. He's like, listen, you need to have more than one game. That's the way to do
Father-Son Relationship and Revolution
01:02:11
Speaker
it. So poor versus the rich, but the rich versus the rich as well, because they pay better.
01:02:17
Speaker
because the other thing Al is, is the best marksman in South Dale Mark. And he reveals that he instantly recognises Mitt's gun, the revolver Hoban gave him. That's one of Hoban's specials, he says. Because he's a gunman. He is in fact the gunman who assassinated the Earl, where Mitt failed. His father did it. That shot from a distance. That was Al. Everything Everything that Mitt tried to do and wanted to be, Al has done already. He's joined up the freeholders and broke them up. He's killed the Earl and he's done it in the most selfish and tawdry way possible. Like all of this stuff that Mitt has been telling himself makes him a free soul and a principled person.
01:02:58
Speaker
it's like he looks at Al and it's just the worst possible version of that. And the ultimate thing that Al then does is once he's on board the winds road he starts bullying the three children so that he can get what he wants from them. He does divide and conquer. It's I think pretty clear that he recognizes Mitt long before Mitt recognizes him. He knows that's his son. He doesn't bother saying anything about it. He takes the gun away from Mitt ah so that he's the person in control. He threatens the others with it. um He makes them basically run around serving him. He sets Mitt to fishing. He forces Hildy to heat water so he can shave. He's a bully. He's a cruel, tough, experienced man threatening children with violence to get what he wants, which is exactly what Mitt did when he first got on the boat and met Hildy and Inan. He behaved just the same way. He wasn't as good at it
01:03:49
Speaker
They loved him, they're genuinely terrified of Al, but it's what he wanted to do, it's the kind of person he was. And what sort of the horror of this book is, for me, is that he has spent all this time trying to avenge his father, trying to do it for his father, trying to become his father, and now he meets Al again. It's like becoming my father is the worst thing that I could possibly do, and I'm well on my way there and I don't know how I escape.
01:04:16
Speaker
And this is another thematic similarity, I think, like something it's it's talking to carton quitter, right? It's saying, you know, it's looking at curtain quitter, which is a book about in a lot of ways, you know, there's that line, you know, never try and become your father, it doesn't pay. ah But also moral is spending that whole book, thinking about what he's taken from his parents, what he what he doesn't doesn't have to learn from his parents when he's following in their footsteps when he isn't.
01:04:38
Speaker
um And this also is even more directly a book about becoming your father or not becoming your father, that moment of choice, what you can take from your parents without having to become them. Absolutely.
01:04:49
Speaker
um And at this point, we kind of move into a different section of the book again. So I think we might actually manage to finish in time-ish. We're over time, but not might wildly over time. So the final section of the book. ah It's dense but very short. Yeah.
01:05:10
Speaker
They arrive in the Holy Islands. So they don't come to the north. They never come to the north. The Holy Islands are a southern Uldum, which is quite different to all the others. um it's Its people are different. In fact, the way they're described with ah brown skin and fair hair is actually the description of the people of the north, usually in Delmarque. But it's clear that they are part of South Delmarque.
01:05:34
Speaker
And the Holy Islands are ruled by their lord, Lithar, who is the man Hildy is betrothed to. He's a about 15 years older than she is. So they arrived there. And it turns out that people in the Holy Islands are a bit strange. yeah i do call out i think I don't think this is intentional. i think she's you know We did mention a little bit the the sort of race relations component of the North and South and everything, and I do i do want to call out that it's not necessarily
Resolution and Mitt's Transformation
01:06:03
Speaker
the the sort of tropes that are being pulled on here as far as they get to
01:06:06
Speaker
ah you know, two el islands full of brown men who revere people with the name El Hammett. Yeah, yeah, there is that. It's a little bit uncomfortable. So but that's what it comes down to. It turns out this name it has El Hammett, which is the commonest name in Holland. And note, incidentally, the similarity between Holland and Holy Island.
01:06:29
Speaker
ah hu The revelation is that Alhamet is a divine name. It is the name of God. In fact, it's the name of poor old Amet. It is a version of his true name. ah So Mitt has this divine name, this connection to the gods, and so does his father. And therefore both Mitt and his father get special treatment in the Holy Islands. Yes. And so when Al arrives and basically is attempting to use his power in the Holy Islands to ensure that Mitt is immediately shot and executed, that Inen is also immediately, or not, I think that, you know, he wants to keep Hildian and Inen alive so he can trade them back to the Earl, the new Earl of Holland for, and and make more money, rich against rich. But the Holy Islanders work around him politely and pleasantly say, I'm sorry, we can't do that, Dave.
01:07:20
Speaker
um Yeah. Because Mitt is not just an alhamit, but he's arrived on the winds road with the gods before and behind. Right. And they do actually say this, the Holy Islanders, and they don't explain what they mean by it or what the significance is. In fact, it is in no way explained until the publication of Crown of Delmarque 15 years later. To be clear, the climax of this book for my money, does not make sense without a book that doesn't come out until 15 years in the future. And I think for this episode, we are actually going to have to break our rules and talk a little bit about Crown. Because Crown is the punchline of Drowned Abbott, and it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy that but it you don't get to understand that the full implications of the end of Drowned Abbott without Crown. um yeah So long story short, because we really are rock quite tight on time,
01:08:12
Speaker
um Eventually, after lots of ah cunning ah tricks by the Holy Islanders to get around Al's attempt to attempt to get rid of him, ah have him bundled into a sack and thrown into the sea, Mitt eventually finds himself on the Holy Island, ah which is sort of the religious central island of the archipelago. um And the islanders say, well, we're marooning him there, no mortal soul lives on that island.
01:08:44
Speaker
Mortal being the key word. Yeah, Mitt meets three people on this island. By implication, none of them are mortal. Yeah, three people and a bull. And I think the bull is also significant. Yeah, oh we have to talk about the bull. um So, Mitt walking across Holy Island first encounters a beautiful woman in a field with a large and angry bull.
01:09:04
Speaker
And the bull is quite intimidating looking, and the woman looks quite like his mother, but also mitt instantly recognises that she's Libby Beer. she's the part She's the figure he knows as Libby Beer, whom he now understands is a goddess, and in the island is known as She Who Raised the Islands.
01:09:20
Speaker
and she gives me some advice, she says don't go this way because there's because a great big bull in the field. I'm going to stop here and I'm going to say let's do a symbolism now. Jones has brought up repeatedly through this book ah the grey horses associated with Ammit and the red bull associated with Libby Beer. You and I spent a while in chat going what is the significance of the bull? The horses I think pretty clearly are death. What's the bull?
01:09:47
Speaker
Uh-huh. And I think the bull is masculinity. Not to use our one of our favorite words again. um But we see, so this is a reflection of the bull at the beginning of the book. um The bull that attacks the tax collector, that kicks off, you know, sort of starts the whole sequence that sends Mitt and Milda into the city.
01:10:06
Speaker
It is powerful. It is angry. It is associated with little beer. It's on the holy island. It's a reflection of ammit. It's also over of old ammit. It's also a reflection of Albert's father. It's associated with much farther with with the sort of early days of his life.
01:10:22
Speaker
And we know that Al also has a link to Old Ammit because of his name. Al and Al Hammett are in some ways the same in the way that, you know, everyone who has the name Al Hammett partakes a little bit of this power of Old Ammit. And so this bull, I think, represents one way for Mitt to go. It's one sort of power of of Ammit, of the father figure of ah of, you know, I don't know if you want to jump in and talk a little bit about what bulls represent. I mean, I wasid and and antiquity well i was some thinking about one of Amit's names, the islander name for him is the Earthshaker, which is also jumping over to some of the myths Jones might have been drawing on it is the Greek and Roman epithet for Poseidon, ah the Earthshaker God of the sea, God of earthquakes, who is associated with the bull.
01:11:08
Speaker
with bulls. Bulls also associated in classical myth with sexual power. ah The Cretan bull, the father of the Minotaur, who was so sexually overwhelming that the queen absolutely had to sleep with it. The bull that Zeus transforms himself into to carry Europa across the sea to find new land.
01:11:28
Speaker
So this idea of violence, sexual power and masculinity all together seem to be to me to be like the the standard mythic associations of bulls and also very much like the the the world that Al inhabits. He's got big broad shoulders like a bull. He's you know his he's a sexual threat. He's a sexual threat to Hildy. He does threaten Hildy sexually. There's a point near the end where he suggests to her ah that, you know, she's betrothed the Lord of the Holy Islands, and that might end up being him. And he'll do a really great moment if angry little girl looks at him and says, You've got at least two wives already. Yes. And he's like, she doesn't know that no one's told her that she just immediately assumes it because that's the kind of person Alice. And he is, you know, the big broad shoulders ah are something that eventually met also like throughout the first part of the book, he has these recurring nightmares,
01:12:21
Speaker
about a man with big broad shoulders coming home and then falling to pieces like poor old amet in the water so as much as old amet is the father figure who comes to help you who saves you when you're in trouble he is also the danger and the threat and the the the father who is powerful and represents ah a person that you could become but perhaps not a person that you might want to be right i think that's all there in the bull right i i think i agree with you and i also think it's really striking that the moment when libby beer is described as looking like melda is when she sort of grins at the bull and says i can manage him
01:12:53
Speaker
So this idea that your father is actually a sort of powerful, violent, sexual beast, ideally being managed by your mother. I do think that Amit and Libby are parent figures. They're divine parent figures. they are They come when you call their name. They come when you ask for help. When you're thinking, I can't do this alone. I need an adult, please. There he is, the adult. This is ah almost, again, like Charmed Life. Imagine parents who were good and who came when you called for them.
01:13:22
Speaker
Yeah. So then he turns away from the bull, and he meets someone he immediately knows is Old Amet. And Old Amet says, and I think it's really striking. ah he So this is the the next time that Mitt is asked sort of a homing question. um He says, what do you do what ah when it is laid down that we shall deliver these islands into your keeping? My question to you is, will you take them as a friend or as an enemy?
01:13:50
Speaker
As an enemy to you, you mean, Mitt asked, highly perpexed perplexed by this question. And again, Old Emmett's young face laughed. We are not the stuff of enemies or friends, Al-Hammett. Shall I ask this way? Will you come as a conqueror or come in peace? And they'll help him no matter what. No matter what happens, whether whatever choice he makes, he will have the power of the gods in his hands. He has the choice right now to eventually come back to the islands as in the forefront of violent revolution.
01:14:20
Speaker
or in peace. Right. And we have in fact, just in the sequence leading up to this, Mitt has been fantasising about leading a violent revolution, about hunting down all the earls of Dale Mark one by one and killing them horribly, about ah causing the the bloody uprising that he's already dreamed of to finally take place and being the person who punishes everyone who's ever wronged him, wronged the people of Dale Mark.
01:14:46
Speaker
in the most violent and nasty way possible. And what becomes clear to him as he's asked his questions, is he could do that. Mitt actually, this is not hypothetical. This is not a daydream. This is not a game. This is real. That's someone that Mitt could be. He could come back to the Holy Islands one day as this violent revolutionary leader and take power there. And that's a choice that's open to him. And it is not actually saying don't do this. Libby's given him a bit of advice. And it doesn't advise him either that way. He just says, what are you going to do?
01:15:15
Speaker
yeah And this is like, it's a really powerful, I think, and profound moment of choice that is maybe ah unlike anything that we've seen in her other books, um to talk a little bit about the the force of myth as it applies in this book. um So often in in other books, we've sort of seen characters recognize the story that they're in, and then choose to step into it.
01:15:35
Speaker
In this case, I think that and in in Carton Quitter, we have these kids that are sort of that that step into the story by virtue of their unique and distinctive names that take on the valence of these figures of myth. Mitt has the most common name in Holland, and when he steps into power, when it turns out that he's sort of riding this force of destiny,
01:15:56
Speaker
um it's as Al Hammett among hundreds of Al Hammetts. And I think it's a really open question whether he's someone one who was born to become this prophetic figure, or whether he any Al Hammett could have been this figure. Al could have been this figure. Hamm, who's another one of the free hollanders, could have been this figure maybe. Right. So it's clear at this point that Mitt is someone special that he's been chosen by the gods right he's got that this is the out of reflections jones's idea about what is a hero it's someone with a special relationship with the gods but right any what any of the alhammets could have been this person it's a very common name
01:16:36
Speaker
Mitt ultimately chooses friendship. He chooses against conquest, against divine
Divine Intervention and Themes of Faith
01:16:41
Speaker
and revolution. He doesn't like it. He's like, I do not like having to make this choice still and I don't like the choice I'm making, but the alternative is being owl and that's work. And as a reward, he's given the names of the gods to call on in need.
01:16:56
Speaker
ah So the sort of ultimate sort of climax of the book is a sequence of children calling on divine names and being answered. So this ultimately the the final version of call your parents and they will come and they will literally grow an island up through the ship that's trying to kidnap you and send a storm to wash away all your enemies and turn your evil father into grass.
01:17:20
Speaker
Yeah. Bye, Al. Bye, Al. You weren't the Al Hammett that we were looking for. but And here we are going to break the rule. So the end of the book, right, is Mitt and Inan and Hildy on the boat, the winds road, sail away north and the islanders sail to them sail say to them, sail now on the winds road and come back sevenfold, which is also the magical words of the ritual in the harbour in Holland.
01:17:50
Speaker
so now yeah up And there's this one, the one quote that we, I think that we kept coming back to when we were talking about it is this idea that the Hollanders don't know their gods. So Libby and Old Ammet are gods in Holland, but, and they, you know, on the Holy Islands, they don't name people Ahamut. In Holland, they name everybody Ahamut. Right. The Hollanders don't understand their own religion is is suggested.
01:18:12
Speaker
What was I saying? Right, so the book ends with the three children going away north. Navis takes first watch. Navis, Hildy's father, who's just barely managed to escape the purges in Holland, ah takes his children away north, takes Mitt to. And for the first time in the book, three of them are described as children, tired children, yeah as they go to the final paragraph. ah Finally, an adult is here to take responsibility, an actual father figure.
01:18:37
Speaker
But that's all we know about Mitt's future. He's going north. And it will be 15 years before we get the reveal. So Mitt makes this choice, right? Is he a friend or an enemy? Is he a violent conqueror or something different? Mitt's going to be the king.
01:18:56
Speaker
This whole book is the story of a boy born to be king. The chosen one of prophecy? You've not even told the full form of the prophecy in this book. There is a prophecy. The islanders all know it. We don't get to know it because none of the point of view characters hear about it. It's the chosen one. The once and future king. The destined king of Delmarque.
Mitt's Role as King and Future Potential
01:19:19
Speaker
There's been all this fuss about for two whole books. It's Mitt. He's the guy.
01:19:25
Speaker
It's this guy from the fishing docks, this kid who's made every wrong choice and bad and stupid choice. Right. And I love that. I love that Jones doesn't go with, well, she never goes with the obvious. You might read Carton Quiddo and think, right, they're living the myth of the Aedon. And we know that Kialin, the one person who escaped from the shipwreck in Holland, this boy who's the heir of Hanart, he's the Aedon, right? He's the rightful heir. So this maybe this is a fantasy series about he becomes king. Nope.
01:19:55
Speaker
It's myth. It's myth. It is going to be king. Part one. Part two, myth is not going to become king through violent revolution, but things are going to change in Delmarque. That's clear. There has to be a change. Something is coming. So the actual punchline is that myth invents constitutional monarchy.
01:20:14
Speaker
which is the funniest fucking thing imaginable oh my god there's so much to talk about in Crown of Delmarque I'm so excited to get there if we ever get to season three I mean we didn't we did say we might sort of stop after one season we'll see how we feel when we get there and it comes out in 1993 there is so so much in between Drowned Outlet and Crown. And there's so much like the world changes, the world that she's living in and writing about changes. And I think the way that she writes about Dale Mark changes too. But I think the thing that's important in this book, I do think that like she knows already that Mitt is going to be king. She has to know There's no way to read this book other than Jones knew the outcome of Mitch choice in the climax, because it's given that enormous weight um that I don't think she's ever really done this before this moment of choice, which is a growing up beach, growing up beats a coming of age beat. Yeah.
01:21:24
Speaker
And I think the thing that I keep coming back to about this, about this book as an answer to carton quitter, and as an answer to the question of destiny and myth and power, is that Alhamet is the commonest name in Holland. Anyone could be the chosen one, the the revolutionary comes from the community is part of the community is in solidarity with the community. It could be anybody, but at the moment when it makes his choice,
01:21:51
Speaker
to become what he's going to be, then he gains the divine power of the gods and he is the chosen
Preview of Next Episode
01:21:56
Speaker
one. yes shall we end it there all right thanks everybody next week we'll be doing spell coats which is the last episode of our season our season one of eight days of diana win jones and the third delmark book ah what we're gonna be coming back to mostly different questions. yeah like Very different questions. Because it's set in the Bronze Age. Because June is mad. Brilliant. Mad. Like as a series, this is bonkers. I can't wait to get through it. See you next week. You too. See you next week.