Like many of a certain age, I was first introduced to this story by PBS’ “WonderWorks” version of the tale, put out in 1984. A few clips of it are available on YouTube, but they’re of poor quality.
Nevermind that.
This story is excellent and has drawn me back over the years to read and re-read it.
On this, maybe my fifth reading, passages from Chapter Fifteen stuck with me:
“[L]et’s get back to the nice Sunday-morning church folks who never once cared whether my father lived or died. No, you can have them. They’re the reason I left town. Even when I was small, I always hated them for their stupid ways. I guess I hated you folks before I saw you because I figured you would be no better than the rest.”
Mr. Small glanced at Thomas, who stared at Mayhew Skinner with something close to awe. Thomas had never heard anyone talk the way Mayhew talked, at least not in front of his father.
“You shouldn’t hate,” Mr. Small said. “It will destroy you.”
“That’s a well-meaning lie,” said Mayhew. “Folks have hated other folks for centuries, and the same business is still with us.”
That business, of course, is hate itself, in all its forms. And while perhaps its cynical to believe hate will always be with us, I think that’s a realistic point of view. And we can’t change that with platitudes; we have to change it in ourselves. We all know those Sunday-morning folks. Chances are, in some ways and to some people, we *are* those Sunday-morning folks. Maybe learning about them is a good thing, so we can learn about ourselves.
Further:
“We left [the land] finally,” Mayhew said, “but my father wouldn’t leave. I blame him for that. I still blame him for forcing us to leave. He had grown obsessed with the tunnels, with the haunting figure of Dies Drear. He became fanatical about protecting the house and its history and even its legend. I would say he is like you, Mr. Small, in his taste for what he calls our heritage.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Small softly. “We always tend to belittle that heritage in our zeal to be free.”
“I’ll take freedom any day over all the romantic nonsense about slavery,” said Mayhew.
“I mean not to glorify it,” said Mr. Small. “I simply want people to know about it. It’s a part of our history, and yet no one tells the truth about it.”
Here, two voices on one subject, opposed. Where do we see that today? Where there is zeal and glory, there is also heritage and freedom. All fine on their own, often fine in combination. But any put on too aggressively – even freedom – can lead to ruin.
That’s neither here nor there with Virginia Hamilton’s book, which I love for its description and storytelling.
I may address a few nits:
Some reviewers wonder why Thomas is so suspicious of others. Were they never kids who had to move into a new place and fret that everyone they meet is silently laughing at them behind their backs? I come from a family where the streak of paranoia is wide, so I understand the suspicion.
A few have compared this to a Scooby Doo story. So what? This kind of costume-party trap has been around in literature far longer than Scooby Doo has existed. The ending makes for a much more satisfying tale than if this had turned from a mystery to a police and law procedural, where the Darrows were legally barred from farting around on the Drear property for fear they might find something. This is fiction, and fiction sometimes needs to be a pinch overdramatic. One way to tell the story makes more logical sense. The other way to tell the story makes it a far better story to be told. So pooh-pooh to those particular Whos.
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