Response to Poem #2

“Fate and Destiny”

                Fate and Destiny are two of the main themes, or one theme if you prefer to phrase it so, in The Battle of the Sun, by Jeanette Winterson. The main character, a boy named Jack, is kidnapped by a dark alchemist who strives to turn the city of London to gold. The alchemist, otherwise known as the Magus, needs Jack because Jack is the only one who can help the Magus complete his dream. Jack is forced into making a decision about keeping his friends and family safe by helping the Magus, or risking all of their lives trying to escape from, and defeat, him. The Magus tells him, “You are the Radiant Boy . . . the boy that is written in the ancient books of life, and when your power is added to mine, there is nothing that we shall not accomplish.” (Winterson 58). However, Jack is unimpressed with his kidnapping and doesn’t agree with the Magus’ dreams. His defiance to the Magus changes his Destiny, which in turn changes his Fate.

                “Fate and Destiny,” by Robert Grimes, discusses whether or not Fate can be chosen. Grimes explains that people believe “Destiny is open” (Grimes 11) and “Fate is sealed” (Grimes 11). But then contradicts his initial question with another, that acts as an answer to the first, “If our Destiny has yet to be chosen but our Fate is sealed, then is not our Destiny already chosen, /but unseen to us until the opportune moment?” (Grimes 13-14). Winterson seeks to answer the same question; however, she takes a different approach. The fact that Jack is able to change his Destiny is what leads to the change of his Fate, or so we think. The Magus is the one that tells us of Jack’s “Fate,” so from the beginning we have a biased perspective. What if Jack’s fate was really to defeat the Magus? What if it actually was to turn evil; and if so, did he change his fate? The basis of these questions is explored in both pieces of literature, but it is the perspective of the author that changes the answer.

Response to Poem #1

“The Adamantine Perfection of Desire”

                “Nothing more strong /than to be helpless before desire.” (Hirshfield 1-2). The idea that nothing is stronger than desire and nothing can overcome the feeling of it, is a central theme in The Battle of the Sun, by Jeanette Winterson. Jack is kidnapped by a man who dreams of wealth and power in the midst of his own city of gold. The man disapproved and stopped helping with his studies.  The Magus was , the Magus, was trained to be an alchemist by his mentor, but when the Magus began to turn to dark magic his mentor already strong with his power and he trapped his mentor in a cellar and waited for him to die. When he heard of Jack, and what his soon to come powers would be able to accomplish, his desire for the boy and his dream overcame him and he did everything he could to keep Jack unaware of his plan until the time came. “No reason, /the simplified heart whispers, /the argument over, /only This.” (Hirshfield 3-6). Desire is stronger than any reasoning our brains can create. Even if the Magus realized what he was doing was bad for others, his own personal want of power and wealth would still take over his thoughts.

                Jack had a different desire though. His was to defeat the Magus and save his mother from the Magus’ dark powers. To keep Jack under his power the Magus began to turn his mother into a stone statue whenever he did something that the Magus disapproved of. This only made Jack’s desire stronger. Jack’s drive to save “The Sunken King”  (Winterson 53), the mentor of the Magus who was being held captive until he died in a chamber, and in turn receive the help of a magic dragon to defeat the Magus was his source of strength in his journey. Without his desire he might have lost hope of escaping from the Magus. But along his journey to get home to his mother, he fulfilled his Destiny. His desire led him to free The Sunken King, escape with his now stone mother and, in a battle between light and dark, defeat the Magus and return the city from its golden state back to normal. Winterson and Hirshfield prove that whether desire is selfish or admirable, its power over us reigns supreme.

Poem #2 Fate and Destiny

Fate and Destiny

By Robert Grimes

Who can tell us what Fate and Destiny are?
Who can tell us what our Fate is?
Who can tell us what our Destiny is?
Fate. Destiny.
People say we cannot choose our Fate, but we can choose our Destiny.
People say we are Fated or Destined to do/become something.
Fate. Destiny.
Are they different?
Are they the same?
People say we can choose Destiny and we are Fated to do it.
People say that our Destiny is open, but our Fate is sealed.
Are Fate and Destiny the same?
If our Destiny has yet to be chosen but our Fate is sealed, then is not our Destiny already chosen, but unseen to us until the opportune moment?
Fate. Destiny.
When is the opportune moment?
At what point in our life will our Fate and Destiny be revealed?
Or will we realize what our Fate and Destiny are only when it is too late?
Or will we pass our Fate and Destiny without knowing it?
Fate. Destiny.
If someone tells us what our Fate and Destiny are, will we like what we hear?
Or will you strive against the path set before you?

Poem #1 The Adamantine Perfection of Desire

The Adamantine Perfection of Desireby Jane Hirshfield

1 Nothing more strong
   than to be helpless before desire.

   No reason,
   the simplified heart whispers,
5 the argument over,
   only This.

   No longer choosing anything but assent.

   Its bowl scraped clean to the bottom,
   the skull-bone cup no longer horrifies,
10 but, rimmed in silver, shines.

   A spotted dog follows a bitch in heat.
   Gray geese flying past us, crying.
   The living cannot help but love the world.

AP Prompt Essay #3

Complimenting Conflictions

            The clash of desires that Jeanette Winterson’s main character, Jack, faces in her book The Battle of the Sun shows how prioritizing affects decision making, and how dissimilar desires can culminate into a forced maturation of the young and innocent.

            Jack travels down a hero’s path from the beginning. He starts out as an average kid on his way home for a birthday surprise. All of a sudden he gets kidnapped and his whole world is flipped inside out. He has to discover why he has been kidnapped, decide what his next plan of action is going to be and act on his decision. The most difficult part of his journey isn’t finding out who his captor is, or why he took Jack, but instead deciding on how he wants to take action. He must decide to either submit to his captor, the Magus, by handing over his power and in turn punish the whole town of London, or fight against the Magus to save London from being turned to gold by the combination of his and the Magus' power. The decision would be easy if it weren’t for the fact that when Jack’s mother realized Jack was gone, she went after him. When she arrives, the Magus knows immediately who she was and uses her to force Jack on his side. The Magus tells Jack, “When you become my true assistant, when you serve me as I require . . . on that day and no other, your mother will be freed to life . . . your mother’s life is for you to keep or to lose!”  (101-102). Jack knows that the Magus is not bluffing, but he wonders if there is a third option, one that doesn’t involve giving the Magus his powers or losing his mother, one where he can defeat the Magus and save his mother.

            While Jack is trying to come up with a way to escape, he begins to search his place of captivity; “The Dark House” (Winterson 19). The Dark House has two main areas, the room where the boys work, " . . . warm, and the only place that was not grey . . ." and the rest of the house, " . . .dark . . . [where the boys eat] silent fearful seven o'clock breakfasts after [a] long tramp down and down the stairs . . ." (Winterson 39). In a room buried deep within the house Jack finds a man who used to be the Magus’ mentor; his name is the Sunken King. The Sunken King tells him that there is a dragon guarding the house, if Jack can go to it and bargain with it he will be able to save the Sunken King from his impending death. To get the dragon to agree to help Jack, Jack must first acquire, and give the dragon, the Cinnabar Egg. On his way back from getting the egg Jack runs into one of the Magus’ servants and the servant demands Jack to give him the egg. Instead of giving the servant the egg, Jack gives him a coconut, so that he can keep his bargain with the dragon, and the servant, having been tricked, agrees to free Jack and his mother in return for the egg.

            During the final major scene of the novel Jack battles the Magus. At this point he has escaped from the Magus with his mother, saved one other little boy that was being held captive and, unfortunately, given the Magus his power. The Magus has turned the city of London into gold and Jack only has one more chance to save it. The moment Jack begins to understand his own potential he says, "'The Queen is right, I must claim my own power.'" (Winterson343) His maturity gives him the strength to refute the Magus' last attempt to sway his beliefs. He proves when he tells the Magus, "'You will never rule me . . . I would die first.'" (Winterson 351). When the battle is won he realizes he chose the right option; the third option. If he had settled for one of the choices provided to him by the Magus he would have lost something dear to him, whether it was the quaint city of London or his own mother. His maturation gave him the courage to battle against the Magus' dark ways, and led to the option that conquered all evil.

AP Prompt Essay #2

The Last Sunflower

            In Jeanette Winterson's The Battle of the Sun, she uses a minor character, a boy named Crispis,  to demonstrate the good of the world and to symbolize how light always conquers dark. Crispis is introduced as, "The smallest boy. . . covered in bright red curly hair, and because it stood on end it made him look like he had a perpetual fright." (Winterson 24) This description is meant to make Crispis seem wimpy and unimportant to the plot, despite his later involvement in the story.

            Crispis' importance is first hinted at when Jack's mother Anne comes to visit. Anne tells Crispis "[of a] sunflower that found the sun" and "If you promise to go to sleep, I promise there will be a sunflower for you tomorrow." (Winterson 85) Crispis then tells her that he wishes he were "that sunflower" (Winterson 85). This strengthens the concept that Crispis is just a sad, tiny boy who wants not to be picked on any longer.

            The sunflower, to Crispis, is a way to escape from his current situation. He wants to feel the sun on his face and sway in the breeze of life, but instead he is kept in "the Dark House" (Winterson 19) and under strict watch by the Magus' servants. He represents a small ray of light that is trapped in a world of darkness, unable to express himself and underutilized. When the sunflower is brought up again in the novel it symbolizes the same ideas, but on a much grander scale.

            Towards the end of the novel when the Queen of England herself asks what is protecting a single house from being turned to gold, the owner replies, "'The sunflowers . . . for they are emblem of the sun, and the sun is emblem of the true gold that is the treasure of the soul, and not of the common gold that spoils the hearts of men.'" (Winterson 337) This is the first moment that the reader is directly told that the sunflowers are the only thing that can fight the power of the Magus, the man who is trying to use his dark powers to turn the city of London into gold. It shows that desires for material objects are defeated by desires for morality. Crispis serves as the fool in this novel, he is the one that hints to the reader how wonderful being a sunflower would be, only he describes the want from more of a freedom standpoint.

            The last scene of the novel with Crispis is when he is found in a sunflower patch. Earlier in the novel he eats a magic sunflower seed which turns him completely yellow with a black face. This symbolizes how he is impenetrable to the Magus' power simply because of who he is. When Jack and his mother go searching for Crispis after the battle is won and find him in a field of sunflowers he tells them, "'This is my home, among the sunflowers, who don't frighten me . . . I'd rather be a sunflower" (Winterson 383) After much persuading, Jack's mother eventually gets Crispis to, "walk beside her out of the field of sunflowers." (Winterson 385) Even though the field was Crispis' safe place, to conclude the story he must leave. Every trace of the Magus has been erased and the only piece left was little Crispis alone in the sunflower patch, enjoying his freedom. But to wipe away the last spot of darkness, one must set the final ray of  light free.

AP Prompt Essay #1

The Power of a Parent

            In Jeanette Winterson’s The Battle of the Sun, the Magus, the novels villain, emphasizes the good in the protagonist, Jack, by comparing his past stories and current desires to Jacks. While the Magus dreams of someday ruling a golden world and having exponential amounts of money and power, Jack simply desires to return home to his mother and to defeat the Magus.

            The Magus attempts to win Jack's faith so that he can take Jack's power when he tells him, "'You are the Radiant Boy . . . the boy that is written in the ancient books of life, and when your power is added to my power, there is nothing that we shall not accomplish" (Winterson 59). The Magus has been searching for Jack by kidnapping many other boys to test their power; however, when he realizes that the boys aren't the ones he is looking for, he turns them to stone or keeps them as slaves. The length of time that the Magus has dreamed of turning the city of London, and eventually the world, into gold majorly impacts his increasing levels of desire. The more he fantasizes about power and wealth, the more he feels driven to find Jack and steal his power. His goal of turning the world to gold originated in his youth. He was being mentored by a powerful alchemist, the Sunken King, but when he strayed to using his power for evil, the mentor would not teach him. The Sunken King could not imagine why he would stray from "the Way of Light" (Winterson 53) and choose a selfish path instead. By analyzing his past, the reader begins to realize why he chose the dark path, and how his desire blossomed.

            The Magus' past and Jacks present are antonyms of each other, quite like their goals. While Jack merely wants to return home to his mother and his new dog, the Magus wants an all-powerful status. In chapter 11 the reader learns that the Magus' "' . . .mother died in childbirth . . . [he] never knew her. [His] father sold [him] for a gold coin'" (Winterson 102). His father's choice initiated his dark decisions and the gold coin creates a drive in him to acquire his wealth from gold just like his father. Contrasting his father though, he doesn't want merely wealth, he wants everyone to have gold so that the scarce object to society is food and other necessities of life. Once people realize that they won't survive with only gold, they must bow down to him to receive food. His source of power will be changing certain objects back to normal for the people, he wishes to be viewed as a savior. He desires to feel wanted.

            The contrast between Jack and the Magus serves to give the reader a deeper view behind the motive of the Magus. It shows how one act in a child's life can change their destiny. How much of an influence parents have on their children. When one studies a person’s background, one begins to understand the person’s motives and possibly begins empathize with them. Jeanette Winterson wasn't trying to get her readers to side with the Magus over Jack; she was simply trying to show how a child could be turned evil by the choice of an adult and compared him to a child, with a loving and caring mother, who had yet to make the choice between good and evil.