Year of wonders essay
Para Bonn, the stepmother of Anna and the wife of Joss Bonn was greatly effected by the plague as it hit their home town of Maya. The plague taking many and causing much trauma made people change dramatically with Para evolving radically into partaking in witchcraft and black magic. Para losing her husband Joss to his own greed of stealing from plague victims as a ‘payment’ for burying them, was punished and died bleeding out from the wounds on his hands.
Such a gruesome event made her shift and during the time she was trying to con people into buying plague repelling trinkets and spells under the alias of the ghost of Nays, These were greatly linked to Ithaca and caused people to change and become warped. The ghost of Nays was then discovered to be Para and was punished like her husband but this time thrown into a pig pen where she spent the night. Spending the lonely night there she became mad and evolved into an evil woman. After being released she was later found to have turned into a crazed satanic witch chanting.
In her last moments she charged Liner Implosion and cut her neck, and took her own life “Para had turned the knife on herself and sunk it deep into her chest. Implosion also changes due to the tragic events that allow. The change of Michael Implosion is one of a negative nature. As Implosion’s faith grows into a way of life this leaves himself very vulnerable to, if it were to decade. Michael Implosion enters the novel in the first section as a “broken man” who “deliberately’ drops the Bible with a “dull thump. Symbolically Brooks establishes in this section the “bitter emblem and embodiment of [the] darkest days” that Implosion will become, foreshadowing his struggle with and loss of faith through his action and description of the Bible hitting the floor with a “dull thump” as if it was empty, ruthless and of no more consequence than a rock. It is this negative, “drawn and haggard” view of Implosion that the reader will attach to him throughout the rest of the novel, tainting the image of a strong, “commanding,” infallible leader the town of Maya sees him to be.
The medical and scientific knowledge of 17th century England lacked the advancement to explain the plague as “a thing of nature,” but rather looked to faith to rationalist the rampant death it brings as a “gift” and an “opportunity from God in his “infinite and unknowable wisdom” to test his people’s faith. It is Implosion, the symbolic figurehead of pious conviction at the time, who convinces the town of this and persuades them to quarantine themselves. Brooks paints Implosion’s leadership as strong and selfless as he aims to protect strangers by halting the spread of the plague.
It is through the adversities that challenge Implosion throughout the plague that the reader sees the deterioration of faith. While he confronts and overcomes the challenges of physical exhaustion, it is from the death of his wife Liner, a weighted emotional blow that sees Brooks tear Implosion from his plinth of rutty and have him retreat into the dark recesses of his mind. Through the foreshadowing of Implosion’s downfall the reader was already aware that the “dark” parts of Implosion’s mind existed and that his retreat into these recesses, these hidden places as empty and devoid of life as caves, was inevitable.
Thus his actions of strength throughout the play are manifested for the reader in worthless, selfish endeavourers to fulfill his personal vendetta to appease a God he will ultimately lose faith in. The character Brooks developed to have the most unfaltering conviction in God is ultimately the nee that has their faith completely obliterated, thus illustrating to the reader the perils of blindly believing in nothing more than God and “his power” and symbolically attaching this deterioration of faith to the rest of the village. Anna Firth is a character who changes for the better.
Anna Firth is One of the strongest characters in Geraldine Brooks’ novel, ‘Year of Wonders’. Anna is forced to survive a great depressive state after she loses her husband in a mining accident and is forced to raise her two children Jamie and Tom at a young age. This is unsuccessful as both her children die from the plague. Anna is now forced to survive with no close family or friendship connections in a plague driven town. Not only does she survive the plague but Anna thrives to help out all the people she can with the help of Michael and Liner Implosion.
Anna throws aside her emotions and continues to help out the sick through only positive actions. “Perhaps the plague was neither of God nor the Devil but simply a thing in Nature, as the stone on which we stub a toe. ” Through Anna questioning the origin of the plague she then is able to continue her conquest of facing the plague. By making remedies to help reverent the sickness she is risking her own life by the chance of someone discovering her actions and accusing her of being witch.
