After finally making it through Little, Big, I have had to completely re-evaluate my criteria on what makes a novel a great one. I realize now that it isn't if the book is entertaining or understandable but if it makes me think so much that it is a war to finish. I will be completely honest about the fact that at times I completely hated this novel. But like any relationship, you can only hate something/someone if at one point in time love was the primary emotion. Reading Little, Big was a roller coaster ride of emotions. One sentence, I would be enthralled and the next I would absolutely dread keeping reading. But as we have said multiple times in class, nothing is filler in the pages of Little, Big.
Over the past few weeks, I have been working on further developing the idea of biological responsibility towards the mythical. When analyzing the characters in Little, Big, I see so many connections to the mythologies that have captured my attention these past few years that there is no humanly possible way for me to be able to remember and describe them all, let alone incorporate them into my final project. My analysis seems to be drawing me further and further into the theme of this novel. The closer I seem to be getting to a point, the bigger the whole concept seems to be.
One idea that is truly lodged into my brain is that the combination of anonymity was needed to combine with the fairy blood to create ultimate level of power. This idea cements Smokey's role in the novel as well as explains why Crowley had to incorporate the daily mundane routines with the magic of the fairies. The combination of the magnificent and the mundane create the most powerful ideas, objects, and worlds imaginable. In my opinion, the people who don't like or appreciate this novel, don't have or haven't allowed them self to taste the fairy blood or the imagination. We cannot escape the mundane but in my personal experience some people have managed to shut off the valve that allows their imagination to run freely. This is a horrible shame but I guess that the way it is.
Now I have a ton of more research to do but a few of the amazing mythological connections that I have made with Drinkwater family after coming into contact with Smokey are the Hymn of Demeter, the Three Fates, Mother Goddess, and King & Queen of the Fairies based on A Knight's Tale by Chaucer. There are many many more connections that could be related back to the mythological.
One thing that really made me fall in love with this novel was that it treated the mythological or the fantastical as the religious. For everything there was rituals, reverence, and respect towards the Them. In my mind, I equated Them to the Christian God. Now I am not going to delve into my own religious views as that is not the point at this time. The point that I wish to make is that all religion is mythological based in the sense of it incorporating parts of the fantastic into it. This was overt to me but I am not sure if it would be as obvious to one who has not studied mythologies and religion from an academic standpoint instead of just as a follower. This may be one more reason that people don't gravitate towards this novel and that they struggle to finish it. I know that it caused me some distress to focus on Them, even though I knew, or had a good idea of what was taking place. It is almost like a subconscious impulse to fight imagining a different entity that controls the universe or created the world. Something to look for in future books, especially in this class as I'm guessing we will encounter more materials that are similar to Little, Big.
This summary seems a little all over the place but in keeping in line with the format of Little, Big, I decided not to edit it to make it flow more smoothly so I hope that you were able to follow my train of thought without too much stress.
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