Mark's Pages

July 20, 2005:

"Subversive," the books are called. How profoundly true. The radical inversion of the standard Victorian presentation of children as helpless, cute, and not to be taken seriously.

The adults are at best ineffectual, at worst evil, most typically paralyzed either by fear or by lack of perception. Having no-one to protect them, the children protect themselves, acting with integrity, loyalty, bravery, honesty, compassion, decency, tact. The author portrays them as the only real adults in a world of childish values and childish behaviors. Their circumstances carry the weight of parable, isolated as they are among the insane and the grasping.

It would be interesting to see which adults understand this, and which don't. A litmus test for a certain type of real world good and real world evil. In a real world where evil sometimes manifests as sheer moral laziness.