Aunt Maria Response

Response to Aunt Maria

Power has often been something of double-edged sword, while it grants us pleasures beyond our wildest dreams. It can also shape the more ugly parts of a person and transform them into something that people can easily despise or fear. This is the case with Diana Wynne Jones book Aunt Maria that centers on themes of Tyranny, Control and Individualism. The story centers around two children “Mig” and her brother Chris who along with their mum go to a mysterious seaside town to visit their Aunt Maria.

Who on the surface seems like a cuddly old aged pensioner of an Aunt, however she is slowly unraveled as a tyrant who wants to stomp out individualism and equality with an iron fist through a convent of witches who turn out to be the real power behind the village. All of the men are blank faced zombies without a will of their own and most of the children of the village are kept in an orphanage. With no families of their own. The society of the village is matrilineal to a fault, they are very much rooted in the beliefs of the traditional gender roles but at the same time, Maria and her convent are destroying lives in order to get what they want.

Aunt Maria’s regime seems somewhat similar to that of Josef Stalin’s. Along with the whole Communist party, Stalin wanted to also get rid of individuality, he was also very power hungry to the point where anyone who disagreed with him ended up dead. Like Stalin, Aunt Maria keeps the village under further control through her convent of elderly women, a secret police whose motivation is to keep people in line.

Behind the fantasy story setting, as well as it’s seemingly child friendly appeal is a story with some socio-political undertones as well as questions behind the empowerment of gender in society.

Kwaidan

Kwaidan Response

Kwaidan is a collection of ghost stories rooted in Japanese folklore and tradition. Each one of the stories represent the way the people of Japan are not only connected with Nature but also the spirits of their ancestors from the feudal times. The spiritual forces represent the workings of nature and how the spirits of ancient times play into the culture of a lot of the people of Japan. There is always the idea that there is a force unknown to certain people. That is always preying on the minds of those who make the wrong choices. Even though at first it seems to be the right choice. In one story, a woodcutter witnesses a spirit murder his mentor and is forced by the spirit to remain silent about what he sees under the threat of death. He then later marries a woman who is the physical embodiment of said spirit.

Like a lot of the people in those stories, we often fear the unknown and sometimes depending on the path we take. Along with the choices big or small, it can come back to bite us. We often forget that ghosts used to one day be people, and that certain spirits are not ones to be crossed. We often like to be scared of ghosts because it makes us remind ourselves that we have to be careful throughout our daily lives. To always be decent towards those even outside our family and to always be respectful. By doing so we can learn to become better people and live a good life.