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Early in their unlikely friendship, Galinda catches a glimpse of Elphaba and thinks she “looked like something between an animal and an Animal, like something more than life but not quite Life” (pp 78 – 79).
Discuss the dual, and sometimes contradictory, nature of Elphaba’s charater. Why does Elphaba insist that she doesn’t have a soul? (page 255)
1- The medieval Christian meaning: no soul + female = witch .
2- a more modern meaning: Elphaba and Fyero are discussing instinct, consciousness and soul (noble human aspirations...)
I, too, might argue that somebody has no business claiming I have a soul, that this is placing me within a certain system of belief I don't want to be associated with.
Hmm... but then "soul" is much more part of everyday English than the French equivalent "âme". Two atheists can accuse each other of "having no soul ", meaning "no heart", and neither would be suspecting the other of witchcraft.
Conclusion: reading page 255 as a whole, I'd be inclined to choose interpretation 2.
However, given the title of the book and that the readers know about the Famous Witch of the West, I'd say Maguire is discreetely introducing the theme of "witch", and having fun playing with all those words.
I'm going to paste what I've written in the thread about
Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi.
If all goes well with the new thread, I may be able to get inspiration from reading both novels in parallel .
Chaptr 1: Introduction of the heroine:
Choosing a heroine, Trudy Montag, with an appearance that will set her apart from the others, and also who has a gift: being able to see the pastand the future simultaneously, p 11.
Main characters in novels whose appearance is distateful to others, and who are thus set apart:
- Elphaba, in Maguire's Wicked, is green.
- Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo ... not quite though. This is the English title, the French title is Notre Dame de Paris.
Quasimodo is a hunchback but Hugo did not see him as the main character, the main character being the cathedral.
At first glance, there aren't that many such characters chosen to be the hero of a novel.
Her first act of sorcery is killing Manek, p 366, as a revenge for his attacks on Liir.
"Liir survived, but Manek did not. The icicle that Elphaba trained her gaze on (...) caught him in the skull..."
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