{"id":4516,"date":"2018-04-16T05:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T12:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4516"},"modified":"2018-04-26T06:48:07","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T13:48:07","slug":"mark-reads-the-wee-free-men-chapter-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/04\/mark-reads-the-wee-free-men-chapter-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Wee Free Men&#8217;: Chapter 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the fourth chapter of <i>The Wee Free Men<\/i>, Tiffany is concerned that she won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to help find her brother. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no surprise that I love young adult fiction at this point; I cut my teeth reviewing it. A young adult book is one of the books that set me on my path towards being a writer. (Specifically, that would be <i>A House on Mango Street<\/i>.) I have known for a long time that when I actually finished a novel myself, it would be within the genre. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a flexibility within YA that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just never really found in adult fiction, or at least not in a lot of mainstream stuff. I want to explore multiple genres; I want to talk about transitional experiences; I want to talk about change and growth and power and terror. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that you <i>can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> address those themes in adult fiction. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that for me, these things fit better within young adult narratives. (And middle grade, which I wanna try my hand at, but\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for another day.) Even within <i>The Wee Free Men<\/i>, I can see how Pratchett is addressing a lot of the same themes that I deeply, deeply love.<\/p>\n<p>Namely: what do you do when the world goes to hell?<\/p>\n<p>I mean that in both a small and a grand sense. I certainly feel like the world is slowly eroding around all of us these days, but a world can end in other ways, too. Much more <i>personal<\/i> ways. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an otherworldly, horrific threat to Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personified by the Queen and by Jenny, but the disappearance of Wentworth is the end of a world, too. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a frantic urgency to the text as everyone in the Chalk begins to band together to try and find Wentworth, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all filtered through Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyes. What do we get out of that? Well, Tiffany is still fiercely interested in the world around her, and much of the opening of the fourth chapter is her interrogation of what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in her immediate view. In this case, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Miss Tick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s toad, who <i>might<\/i> have once been a human, <i>or<\/i> they could have been a toad given a mind that makes them <i>think<\/i> they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re human. (Two very different things, each of them equal in their ability to cause an existential crisis.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But once the dire nature of Wentworth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disappearance becomes unavoidable to Tiffany, she immediately worries about how <i>she<\/i> can help. And that anxiety is so personal and so <i>terrifying<\/i>. There are few things worse than that sense of helplessness when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re young, when you are convinced that only adults can affect change and save the world. Even here, you can see how Tiffany initially tries to rely solely on some unspoken authority to solve this problem:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wish I could find my brother,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said aloud.<\/p>\n<p>This seemed to have no effect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>She speaks her desire aloud, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an implicit hope there: Maybe someone <i>else<\/i> will help her fix this. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not gonna work, though, is it?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t <i>wish<\/i>, Miss Tick had said. <i>Do<\/i> things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s precisely what she does. To me, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a transitional moment for Tiffany. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just growing older and maturing. She is accepting that she has to be different, that her approach to problems she has <i>must<\/i> be proactive. Thus, she utilizes a resource she knows that she has access to: the Wee Free Men. Which I also love because it shows that it is perfectly fine to ask for help! There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no need to be a lone wolf or a singular force for good. <i>Invite other people to help if they can and they want to<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Granted, the Nac Mac Feegle aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly <i>eager<\/i> to help out, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that the Queen is a force to be feared. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some personal shit going on here, too, such as Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very honest admission that she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to comfort her mother, who treats Wentworth as her \u00e2\u20ac\u0153favorite.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 ouch, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. I know what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like to perceive that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not the favorite child of your parents, and for Tiffany to know this at such a young age? That stings a little. I suppose I take a little comfort in her honesty, though. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that I could have been that honest with myself at her age! Perhaps that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the reasons why the head Feegle\u00e2\u20ac\u201dRob Anybody, BLESS HIS NAME FOREVER\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddecides to give Tiffany his name and why the Feegles don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn and run away from her. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <i>honest<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>And in the midst of this, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a big flashback, one that confused me just a little bit first. In hindsight, though, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that final line that really makes the story stick:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a theme we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen before in this book and in the <i>Discworld<\/i> at large, and the flashback reflects that theme. Granny Aching solved Baron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s problem through a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153magical\u00e2\u20ac\u009d means, even though it relied on her knowledge of an old ewe protecting her lamb. So, applying the same technique to the current situation, Tiffany tells a little lie. She lets the Wee Free Men believe that she knows what they are talking about. That illusion inspires them to feel confident in her, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s able to convince them to help her rescue her brother. And if it looks like magic to them, why say anything otherwise?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T-sbhbtedEk\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T-sbhbtedEk<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2017\/9\/22\/i-am-proud-to-announce-my-ya-contemporary-debut-anger-is-a-gift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the fourth chapter of The Wee Free Men, Tiffany is concerned that she won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to help find her brother. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248,543],"class_list":["post-4516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-wee-free-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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