I finished a really great book recently, The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman. I read the book purely for pleasure, but I couldn’t help but soak up the symbolism that is sprinkled throughout the story.
Just
to give you a brief summary, in case you haven’t read it: Be
careful what you wish for. For a woman, one wish ends in childhood
tragedy. The second results in being struck by lightening. Following
her lightning strike she feels horribly cold from the inside out and
cannot stop the ticking in her head. Her only solace is with a fellow
lightning strikee who was supposedly dead for 45 minutes before he
got up and walked out of the hospital. His lasting curse: constant
heat. Their relationship is anything but normal. How did lightening
turn one person to fire and the other to ice?
The
Ice Queen just seems so chock full of symbolism of someone who made a
mistakenly harsh childhood wish and is forced to live with her guilty
conscience the rest of her life. She completely cuts herself off from
the world becoming figuratively cold to any other person. It is only
when she is struck by lightening, due to her second wish, that her
coldness to the world manifests itself literally and she must learn
how to live with her new handicaps and gains a new appreciation for
the world the way it was before.
Have
you seen guilt in stories manifest itself physically? Does it help
the character to overcome their guilt and forgive themselves?
You've intrigued me, and I like the very focused question at the end. It's something I want to have a conversation about -- and that's a good sign!
ReplyDeleteWhen introducing a book that is not well known, be sure that you introduce its genre so that people can adjust their expectations quickly. I wasn't sure if this book was a romance, a supernatural thriller, science fiction, Young Adult Lit -- see what I mean?
When quoting at length, use the block quote feature so that it indents and sets off the quote. In this instance, I am uncertain whether the words starting at "Be careful..." are yours or whether you were quoting.
Oh sorry about that. It was my bad editing skills. I copied and pasted it from a word document and for whatever reason it decided to keep it highlighted. Thanks for the advice! I'll keep that in mind for the next book.
Delete