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4.0étoiles sur 5
Dead white mountains, Janv. 30 2004
Fun Fact: "The White Mountains" was turned into a regular comic strip and published in the Boy Scout magazine, "Boy's Life" in the early 1980s. One of the earliest futuristic dystopian tales for children, the story is a harrowing one. The race of man has been conquered by beings known only as the Tripods. These gigantic three footed structures rule the earth, controlling the minds of the human race through "capping". Once capped, a person is exactly the same, but bound to the will of the Tripod masters. Will, his cousin Henry, and a French boy named Jean-Paul (but translated into the boys' speech as Beanpole), set out to find a place where men live free, without the caps or tripods. The white mountains.Now, in my description of this story I've relied on a the old fashioned method of speech that speaks about "the race of man" and "where men live free". Why not the race of people... or where people live free? Well, to be frank, this book is a bit lacking in the woman department. Originally published in 1967, it is a victim of its times. Women exist here as mothers and as docile servants of the Tripods. In the story, those humans who have been capped sometimes respond violently to the process. As a result, they end up insane and "Vagrants". Usually this happens to people who are strong of will and resist the capping. The author himself notes that, "it happened occasionally with girls, although much more rarely". Sorry ladies. Resistance must be a manly trait. As for the girl Will befriends halfway through the book, she is described as having a "soothing gentleness" and is considered a remarkable woman for it. This concept of women is more than a little backwards. Even the photograph of a woman Will finds in an abandoned Paris is imagined in his head as playing the piano (as accomplished women would be wont to do). The book is now being considered, I might add, by Steven Spielberg (unsurprisingly when you consider that the man is not usually prone to strong female characters in his own films). Aside from the old-fashioned nature of the XX chromosomed, the book has many fine features. There's a delightful tension running between the three boys as they make their journey. Will often finds himself jealous of the camaraderie between his two companions, and will lapse into spitefulness as a result. The story is well thought out and the dramatic high points very invigorating. The ending, unfortunately, is very sudden. Not to ruin it for you, but in a sudden "TA-DAH!" like sequence, the boys find themselves walking towards the white mountains one moment and suddenly IN the mountains the next. The abrupt ending feels like nothing so much as an indiscriminate stopping point created with the sole purpose of leading the viewer towards the sequel. And a map would have been a nice addition to the story. A map that showed the boys' progress from England to the mountains past France. I was very attached to this book while reading it, and in spite of all the problems I have with it, I recommend it highly. Just bear in mind that unlike some of the other fantasy books of this ilk, "The While Mountains" has aged a little more poorly than its fellows.
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de John Christopher
de John Christopher
de John Christopher
de Norton Juster
de James Patterson
