Book discussion: Fire and Hemlock, Parts Three and Four (and Coda)

[shimotsuki]

Here is the second of two discussion posts for Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. This post is currently public, so that anyone interested can read and join in the discussion, but if any of my f-listers would prefer that I f-lock the post instead, let me know and I will do that.

What became blindingly obvious to me in the course of the first discussion post :) is that much of the fun of discussing this book will come from trying to figure out how the story builds up to the climax -- what all the stuff in the first half (and Part Three) means in the context of what we find out in the end. I will start things off with just one discussion topic, because this is the one that is driving me the most to distraction in trying to figure it out: ;)

Why Polly? What is it that gives Polly the potential to spring Tom from Laurel and the Fairy Court? I have to admit that I'm still working on my reread, so I haven't made it all the way through Parts Three and Four a second time and may therefore be missing clues that are obvious answers to this question. But some ideas I had about this are:

• Tom definitely latches onto Polly as if she is his only hope. We are reminded several times that even before Laurel's intervention, Polly would sometimes almost forget about her Mr. Lynn and the Hero Business, but Tom would always keep writing to her and sending her books; clearly he doesn't want her to forget about him, even before he starts sending books that are actually clues to his own situation.
  
• If Polly is Tom's only hope, why is it her? Is it because she is the only outsider to show up at Hunsdon House on the first Halloween? Or is it because she is the one who first brings up the idea of Being Things to Tom? When she and Tom both see the water in the empty pond, is that a sign that she is the one who can help him, or is it that event that makes her be able to help him? What role do the Nowhere Vases play in this, since (here I go beating a dead horse) Seb definitely accuses Polly of "working the vases" (even though she didn't really touch them herself)? -- and yet, the incident with the water in the pool happens before the vases, and may even be what causes Tom to show Polly the vases at all.
  
• Does Granny, or Granny's past, have anything to do with Polly being the one who can help Tom? Probably not; indeed, we know that Granny sends Tom packing at the point where he's about to go to Australia. But, still, how much does Granny know all along? I think right away she knows or suspects that Tom is the current young man in Laurel's clutches; she seems to relax when he tells her that he is a musician in London (so perhaps she understands that he is trying to extricate himself), and before the outing to Stow-on-the-Water, she tells Polly, "I'm not sure I like it, Polly, but if he's free to ask, I suppose he must want to see you." And yet, when Granny and Polly are working out what Polly has to do to try to save Tom, Granny says she wishes she'd known all that in time to save her own husband -- so when Polly was young and Tom was starting to befriend her, did Granny already know he would need a girl to help him break free (even if she hadn't known that in her own youth)? And if not, why was she willing to let Polly see Tom, despite her unease about him being from That House? (Pity is another possibility, I suppose.)
  
• What role do the two photos play in the magic that connects Polly with Tom? If I understood the ending correctly, the "Fire and Hemlock" photo is part of the magic that originally enslaved Tom to Laurel, so it must be significant that he gets it out of Hunsdon House and gives it to Polly. It also seems important that Polly is looking at that photo when she begins to recover the memories that Laurel, or Mr. Leroy, had taken away; is that (along with the changed version of the quartet's book?) part of why she is suddenly able to remember? Then there's the photo of Tom; some kind of magic let Polly see it in the mirror at Hunsdon House. Is that another consequence of the fact that she is the one who can save Tom? Or is some benign magic in Hunsdon House deliberately showing her that to help out? Surely it's significant that she takes the photo out of the house, even though Laurel or Mr. Leroy apparently steal it back later.

Now that I've started, it's hard to stop, heh. I have so many more questions, too, but I guess I'll raise those in a comment below, later tonight or tomorrow sometime.

So there are some questions to possibly start the discussion going, but don't feel you have to address those in order to post. Anything at all is fair game. What did you like or not like about the book? Are there any cool things you figured out about how the magic worked or about how the threads of the story came together? What questions do you still have about what happened? (I'm really hoping that as a group we can figure some stuff out.)

Finally, here are some extra links for fun and more information:

• Here's a link that gilpin25 found to an essay by DWJ about what her influences were in writing Fire and Hemlock (scroll down to links at bottom of that page). [I haven't had time to read this yet, so it's possible that I have just embarrassed myself completely and all the questions I tried to raise in this post have been neatly answered by DWJ already, heh.]
  
  
• I really wanted to post a link to the Steeleye Span version of the "Tam Lin" ballad (from "Tonight's the Night Live"), but it doesn't seem to be online anywhere. :( Here are a couple of other versions:
  • Tam Lin - Fairport Convention (classic folk-rock version)
    
  • The Tale of Tam Lin - Bill Jones (vocal and piano; reminds me of Kate Rusby, or a less-lushly-produced Loreena McKennitt)
    
  • Bonus extra link -- there's also an instrumental Irish/Scottish trad reel called "Tam Lin," which my Irish session group plays, and I found a version on cello ;) (it takes her a little while to get the tune up to "normal" speed; start listening at 1:30 to get a taste)

Let me close by saying that I really enjoyed reading this book, and that would have been fun on its own, but it made it even more fun to have a bunch of people on LJ to read and discuss it with. Thanks, all. ♥
.

Comments

[huldrejenta.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed this book a lot, and it's a book I probably hadn't found or thought of by myself.

I definitely want to read it again at some point, and maybe some things will be clearer then. But for now I've read it once, so please excuse if I say anything that's fairly obvious for you who've read it again;)

Tom does say explicitly to Polly that she were his only chance, and that he had to keep getting in touch with her because of it. I've assumed that Tom knows enough about his own situation that his words can be trusted on this. (Although he doesn't know everything in the final scenes, so who knows... - but then again, who understands everything of the final scenes..? ;))

Why it is her though is a different matter.
Polly thinks to herself when her memories come back that she became connected with Laurel's gift when helping Tom to invent Tan Coul. The hero, with abilities to break free from Laurel? And since Polly was a part of inventing the hero, her presence was needed for Tom to keep on doing it.

If Tom realises already when they invent Tan Coul (or when he understands that she is an outsider that somehow was able to enter the funeral) that Polly may be his answer, I saw the part where he turned the vases as some sort of confirmation on his part. Maybe he needed the right person to be able to turn them (and maybe Seb knew they weren't able to turn them by themselves and therefore thought Polly was a part of it). I see the vases as a gate to the magic, if that makes any sense, something Tom knew he could do now that the right person had entered. And when he indeed could turn them, he knew the door to the solution was opened, and that he needed to hold on to Polly. Or so I've read it.

Mr. Leroy and Seb when realising that Polly could help Tom escape, desperately try to keep them apart. It seems that they share Tom's opinion that Polly is Tom's chance.

Polly also thinks that when Laurel did set her up to agree letting Tom go before she lost her memories, Polly ruined Tom's chances - by not being a part of his life anymore? ("Until she stepped in and destroyed him"). Was this a part of the bargain Tom says he drove with Laurel to keep Polly safe?

I do believe Granny knows quite a lot about Tom's situation from the start. She was scared back when she first met Tom, her cat reacted badly to him, and she thought
"He's one of Hers, that one. He'll be lucky if he can call his soul his own. And I was right, wasn't I?" "You may have been then," Polly said. "But he was getting free somehow (...) until I stopped him."


An abrupt stop to this - -Oh my, time to pick up the kids, and I am totally rambling so much here. Will try to collect my thoughts in a more coherent post later:)

(This comment doesn't actually include any book discussion - just folk music...)

[katyhasclogs.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so glad that there's a link to that essay - I have a copy of it myself in a book of DWJ essays, but I'd never been able to find it online before that. It's good to know everyone else can read it too. :)

I've just checked my iTunes library, and I have no fewer than 9 versions of Tam Lin! I have to admit to not being that fond of the Steeleye version - it just can't compare with the guitar bits on the Fairport one. I'm re-listening to the Bill Jones right now, and what a treat - it's been so long since I listened to any of her albums. I'd really recommend checking her out if you don't know her stuff already - Panchpuran is a particularly good album.

Thanks for the link to the tune, btw. I know you asked in the other thread, and I haven't yet answered, whether I knew it. I didn't, only the song (9 versions, apparently, lol). It's really lovely though.

I did discover though, completely by accident while trying to bring some sense of order to my iTunes this weekend is that Hunsdon House is a tune and a dance. The version I have is mixed in with Steeleye's 'Queen Mary'.

Finally, another Tam Lin link - poet Benjamin Zephaniah's modern retelling with The Imagined Village (the people who brought us 'Cold Haily Windy Night with sitars), 'Tam Lyn Retold'.

I have stuff to say about the book, honest, but I'm looking at the time and know I have to go to bed if I'm going to function tomorrow - work atm is like a game of whack-a-mole: for every job I get rid of, another pops up just as fast!

[jobey-in-error.livejournal.com]

My thoughts are kind of jumbled. I'll be back, I'm sure.

There's a sort of urgency to some of the questions you're asking, because there are some doubts in me that to some of them there are no good answers, no subtle but sure clues, and I'm not wild about that. So the book would go down in my estimation if I start thinking too hard and then decide there was no thoughtful answer to the riddles. ;)

Just an observation as I skimmed through Tom and Polly's first meeting with everyone's comments so far in mind. One of the strange things that I hadn't been quite able to articulate before is that, at first meeting, it seems as if "these people" can hardly wait to be rid of Tom, but then later of course we find that, quite the opposite, Tom cannot get free of them if he tries.

Completely opposite -- like how the "real" Thomas Piper is mean and the "real" Edna and Leslie are nice. Sometimes Nowhere/Now Here means topsy-turvy. But sometimes too it's not a mirror image but a near image.

Just to make it hard... ;)

[jobey-in-error.livejournal.com]

Then there's the photo of Tom; some kind of magic let Polly see it in the mirror at Hunsdon House. Is that another consequence of the fact that she is the one who can save Tom? Or is some benign magic in Hunsdon House deliberately showing her that to help out? Surely it's significant that she takes the photo out of the house, even though Laurel or Mr. Leroy apparently steal it back later.

Same as the magic that let Polly get inside at all, and let her listen in on Tom and Mr. Leroy... I think you could write a good "flipped perspective" fanfic pitying Laurel, "queen" of a kingdom that sometimes actively works against her (I wonder could she escape either, if she tried?)

Comment thread for cool minor details

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

Notice anything trivial, but cool? Here's a place to put it. :)

[gilpin25.livejournal.com]

Oh, the layers in this! A really good recommendation by katyhasclogs as not only did I enjoy the story and puzzle over it, but I've been listening to the music links, reading essays, and then there is this thread, where things have been picked up I hadn't even considered. So, certainly no complaints on the amount of entertainment provided. Mostly, I like that DWJ thought older children could handle this book, and that adults would do much head-scratching on LJ over it!

If Polly is Tom's only hope, why is it her? Is it because she is the only outsider to show up at Hunsdon House on the first Halloween? Or is it because she is the one who first brings up the idea of Being Things to Tom?

It's implied that not everyone can simply wander into Hunsdon - Leroy says that Mary Fields is no threat because she hasn't been there - which makes Tom watch her from the start. She doesn't drink anything in the fairy world, despite being pressed to, and I'm guessing that, in common with most fairy myths, if you don't eat or drink in their world, they can't take anything from you in return? (She doesn't take the photo till afterwards.) Tom actually whips her out of there - his look said, "Come on out of that" - just as she is about to drink and saves her.

I presume Tom, who must be desperate after witnessing the funeral, sees her as some kind of slim chance, even if he doesn't know of what kind, and talks about them as heroes, kick-starting his gift and hers. The part with the vases I've changed my mind over several times, but there is a nod to T.S Eliot with Now Here and Nowhere (in Four Quartets, there is the implication that what is and what might have been can co-exist at the same time), and the final turn by Tom takes them to Here Now. At the end of the book, that's what they need to find, their own world, in effect, for their relationship to stand a chance of surviving.

Does Granny, or Granny's past, have anything to do with Polly being the one who can help Tom? Probably not; indeed, we know that Granny sends Tom packing at the point where he's about to go to Australia. But, still, how much does Granny know all along? I think right away she knows or suspects that Tom is the current young man in Laurel's clutches;

Presumably, Granny could have been the original Janet, but didn't understand about holding onto her love in order to keep him.* Also, presumably, Laurel has messed with her memories about losing her husband, but she can still remember bits. I think it's the books Tom sends that triggers this unease, because she mentions the men are unable to talk about the fairies or their powers, and Tom is revealing the truth the only way he can. Leroy manipulates her into making Tom feel guilty about Polly's crush, and, again, I'm presuming that he disappears to let her grow up and lets go of the love he needs to survive, because he knows from the 'sentimental rubbish' that she wrote that he has used her, even if he didn't intend to use her in quite that way at that time. I think. ;)

* The irony here is that Polly is finally clever enough to realize that Laurel's lethal truth gift means she has to love Tom enough to let him go. Tom can despairingly throw this lack of love at Leroy, and Leroy can't fight back this time because he doesn't have any love himself and therefore goes to hell. But the twist at the end is that in setting Tom free to be his own man, Polly has freed him to chose her. (I'm not sure, though, because wouldn't he feel so beholden to her for what she'd done that he'd chose her anyway? AAGH!)

[gilpin25.livejournal.com]

What role do the two photos play in the magic that connects Polly with Tom? If I understood the ending correctly, the "Fire and Hemlock" photo is part of the magic that originally enslaved Tom to Laurel, so it must be significant that he gets it out of Hunsdon House and gives it to Polly.

More head-scratching! I thought Laurel wanted Tom, but could only seduce his brother, Charles, and struck a bargain with Charles for Tom's soul. (Polly and Tom have some of the worst family members ever.;)) Charles took the Fire and Hemlock picture, which Tom had originally taken, and a lock of Tom's hair, and gave it to Laurel who enchanted it to gain control of Tom's soul. It's the Obah Crypt, and I'm guessing it must be how she gives him the truth/protection gifts. Polly, the first time she overhears Laurel talking to Tom, is furious because she's bullying him - later on, Polly deliberately goes up against the school bully as part of her hero training - and tricks Tom into taking the picture out of there as payback for Laurel's nastiness, which he is able to do because it truly belonged to him. And then he gives it to her - and so literally gives her his soul to hold onto. Which I presume is why Leroy becomes paranoid about her soon afterwards.

I have some questions of my own:
The necklace is an opal and there's a myth that opals brought the gift of fire to mankind. In the essay, DWJ talks about the fire being the imagination and redemption, and the hemlock is a spiritual void. Does Granny give Polly the necklace to try and protect her imagination, and stop them messing with Polly's memories? But I suppose Leroy's magic is far stronger, and so it becomes a kind of tracking device for them to know when Polly is contacting Tom?

The horse. Tom tries to call it up at the end in the duel - because he's calling on his physical strength after the music has failed? - but the horse belongs to Leroy, anyway. And Mary know this, so wouldn't Tom? I don't understand the horse part, though I presume that it was doomed to fail because Leroy is so weak by now that it's just used against Tom.

[gilpin25.livejournal.com]

I was going to comment on the age difference issues at length, but I've rambled on enough. I did notice how DWJ used references to Polly's hair throughout: Tom starts off by admiring it and then mentions it in the one physical declaration of love near the end; Mr O'Keefe and David make remarks about how they'd thought about her and her hair when she was 15 or 16, and Polly completely ignores this. (Though maybe Ivy had a point about David!) But the best reassurance comes from Polly herself, who shoves Seb away and tells him she's too young for any of that. The age factor is probably more questionable in Laurel's pursuit of good-looking and musical teenage boys. Tom was 16 when she first went after him?

Finally, I found a Tumblr dedicated to DWJ, and it would have been her birthday last week:

http://dwj2012.tumblr.com/post/58417413636/today-would-have-been-dianas-79th-birthday

[katyhasclogs.livejournal.com]

Right, so here's my answers, such as they are, your very excellent 'Why Polly?' questions.

(Apologies if I'm repeating anything anyone else has said as I've not quite read it all yet and also suspect I'll get myself in a fearful muddle if I attempt anything more than just getting my interpretation down on the pagesorry! screen.)

If Polly is Tom's only hope, why is it her?

The way I see it, Polly is Tom's only hope in the sense that she is the only opportunity that has presented itself to him, rather than being the only person who could help. I think what happens is that she is the right sort of person in the right place at the right time, and that provides a chance that she can be Tom's salvation if all goes well. To my mind, it's a bit like the way that the divine intervention/free will thing works in The Curse of Chalion.

Now, I think several factors in that first meeting indicate and/or set up Polly as a person that can help Tom. I suspect it's hugely important that Polly even finds her way into Hunsdon House, while Nina didn't, and I think there's a twisty thing going on whereby her act of trespass enables her to help and she was able to trespass because she's the sort of person who can help. I see the house as existing both in the 'real' world (here now?) where Nina just walked up the drive back to the road, and elsewhere (nowhere?) where Polly gatecrashed the funeral and it all began.

I do rather think that it pretty much had to be a child that ended up in the position to save Tom. There's a suggestion of children=clever, adults=stupid running through the book (and the DWJ essays I've read) and one point that does seem to be made fairly clearly is that the "penalty of being grown-up" is that your thinking becomes rather muggle-ish when it comes to magical, otherworldly, nowhere stuff. Polly as a child well practiced in imagination and making things up was well placed to perceive the elsewhere part/layer of Hunsdon, and had skills that worked well with Tom's 'gift' to provide a way of helping him.

I see the water in the pond as an indication and/or confirmation that Polly can perceive the nowhere/faerieland layer of Hunsdon. And I've wondered whether the vases indicate something about what layer of reality you're in, but I've not really managed to form that idea into any kind of coherent theory yet...

The photo stuff...I don't really understand. Except to say that when Polly sees Tom's photo in the mirror, I think the prefect's mirror superstition is working for real and it's a demonstration that in the world of the book superstitions do work for real rather than just being nonsense (says Katy the grown-up, lol).

As for Granny, I pretty much had the same thoughts as you about how much she knows, though I think some of it is probably not certain knowledge (since she wasn't in-the-know enough to save her chap). I don't know whether she's even very sure that the young men can be saved, and her sending Tom away suggests she doesn't think it ought to be Polly's job to do any saving, so perhaps she's reassured at him living in London and being "free to ask" because it indicates he's not quite under the thumb, or no longer entranced by That House and its occupants, which makes him less threatening? Maybe she thinks there isn't much she can do about it all?

(As a sideline, how is she ok with Seb, who *is* from That House?)

Ooh! I've just read this bit from towards the end:

"It's laid on them not to say, nor me to remember, but I keep what I can in my head by living where I do. She likes them young, she likes them handsome, and musical when she can get them."

So perhaps what she knows is a bit fluid or unreliable? Perhaps a lot of it is subconscious or instinctive?

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