Book discussion: Fire and Hemlock, Parts Three and Four (and Coda)

[shimotsuki]

Here is the second of two discussion posts for Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. This post is currently public, so that anyone interested can read and join in the discussion, but if any of my f-listers would prefer that I f-lock the post instead, let me know and I will do that

Comments

[shimotsuki]

Tom does say explicitly to Polly that she were his only chance, and that he had to keep getting in touch with her because of it.

True, by the end of the story it's clear that Polly has become Tom's only chance, but what I find interesting about this is that Tom seems to know immediately that Polly is the one. She can't have been the only -- person? woman? girl? -- he'd ever talked to from outside, so how did he know she was it, and why did he know right away? (And why Polly? Probably it couldn't have been Ann, whose mother was a Leroy, but why not someone else in the orchestra, for example?)

And since Polly was a part of inventing the hero, her presence was needed for Tom to keep on doing it.

That's an excellent point. Another one of my questions is whether Tom had already started to break free before Polly. He must have, a little bit, in order to divorce Laurel and move away, but Granny and Mintchoc definitely thought he was still connected to Laurel's people at the beginning, so maybe it was Polly helping Tom create Tan Coul that really started things changing.

I see the vases as a gate to the magic, if that makes any sense, something Tom knew he could do now that the right person had entered. And when he indeed could turn them, he knew the door to the solution was opened, and that he needed to hold on to Polly.

That interpretation makes a lot of sense -- maybe Tom wouldn't have been able to turn the vases either, if Polly hadn't been there, and that was why Seb thought the vases were important. Maybe the initial vision of the water in the pool was part of what spurred Tom on to check about the vases, since that did happen right before.

Mr. Leroy and Seb when realising that Polly could help Tom escape, desperately try to keep them apart.

Definitely. And I think this is also why Seb tries so hard to court Polly -- he wants to marry her. I bet he does think she's pretty, but I think he mostly wants to make sure she doesn't free Tom, because (Seb thinks) that means he'd be the one to have to go.

Polly also thinks that when Laurel did set her up to agree letting Tom go before she lost her memories, Polly ruined Tom's chances - by not being a part of his life anymore? ("Until she stepped in and destroyed him").

I haven't reread this part yet, but what I thought was, when Polly used magic to contact Tom, that alerted Laurel to the fact that Polly was helping him (I think until then it was only Seb and Mr. Leroy who were working against them, and even Mr. Leroy warned Polly that she didn't want to get Laurel involved.) So I think Polly being manipulated by Laurel to forget Tom was indeed specifically the factor that was going to doom Tom to his fate, because he couldn't get free without Polly's help. But I think what Polly sees as her terrible error was doing that magic in the first place and attracting Laurel's attention.

Was this a part of the bargain Tom says he drove with Laurel to keep Polly safe?

Must be! And this must be why Tom tries to ignore Polly, even on the train at what he thinks is the end of his life.

I do believe Granny knows quite a lot about Tom's situation from the start.

I agree -- she knew what had happened to her own husband, for one thing. It seems Laurel can put a spell on people so that they can't remember, or can't talk about, her and her goings-on (this is something I'm trying to understand better on my reread), but Granny does know what's up with Tom. But I wonder whether Granny knows that Polly is his key to escape, and if so, if that's why she (grudgingly) lets Polly contact him despite her worries. I'm unsure because when Polly and Granny are reading the ballads, Granny says she wished she'd known all that in time to save her husband. Still, maybe she'd learned about it afterward; it may not have been new information to her in Polly's day.

Will try to collect my thoughts in a more coherent post later:)

This is great fun! Thanks for all your interesting and insightful thoughts, which are perfectly coherent by the way. I want to post more questions and thoughts myself, maybe after I get further in my reread... (I'm just starting Part Three.)

[huldrejenta]

Tom seems to know immediately that Polly is the one. She can't have been the only -- person? woman? girl? -- he'd ever talked to from outside, so how did he know she was it, and why did he know right away? (And why Polly? Probably it couldn't have been Ann, whose mother was a Leroy, but why not someone else in the orchestra, for example?)

I agree, he seems to know right away.
I think he knew, or at least suspected, the moment he began talking to her at the funeral. He talks to her as an outsider from the start, as someone who has no idea what's going on. The vision with the water in the pool may indeed have made Tom see more clearly that there was something special with Polly.

Why Polly, that's indeed a good question.
Is there something with Polly that connects her with the heroine in the ballads?

I've also wondered whether it needed to be both Polly and Tom also on this issue. Tom did, as you say, manage to escape Laurel on some level even before he met Polly, he seems to have some powers of his own that may have made him more susceptible to Polly. So maybe it was something with exactly these too people; that Polly couldn't have saved anyone but Tom, as well as her being his only chance. It seems to fit with other times when they both need to be there.
(And it is of course hopelessly romantic... but with a man not too different from Remus, not to mention who plays the cello, a romantic explanation seems to come naturally to my mind..;))

I think this is also why Seb tries so hard to court Polly -- he wants to marry her. I bet he does think she's pretty, but I think he mostly wants to make sure she doesn't free Tom, because (Seb thinks) that means he'd be the one to have to go.

Or be the one to take Mr. Leroy's place, yes.... Phew, poor Seb too. Laurel is indeed an intriguing, cruel character.

I wonder what, if anything, Polly and Tom could do about the whole situation after Tom was rescued. It seems they're still up for the impossible.

I think Polly being manipulated by Laurel to forget Tom was indeed specifically the factor that was going to doom Tom to his fate, because he couldn't get free without Polly's help. But I think what Polly sees as her terrible error was doing that magic in the first place and attracting Laurel's attention.

This makes a lot of sense!

I wonder whether Granny knows that Polly is his key to escape, and if so, if that's why she (grudgingly) lets Polly contact him despite her worries.

I believe she does. Granny is Polly's anchor of good sense as opposed to her parents, and I doubt that Granny would have allowed the contact between Tom and Polly when not knowing Tom very well, without believing it to be really important.

I've wondered about (with the Fire and Hemlock picture in her house) if Granny in some way had anything to do with the timing of when Polly starts remembering again. The timing is very convenient and hardly a coincidence.

[jobey_in_error]

I'm inclined to agree with huldrejenta on the vase thing--Tom obviously suspected that she was an outsider, and therefore Significant, from the very start, and during their talk he was only getting more and more hints (Polly's favorite thing is being things, is it?) -- but the vases could have been confirmation.

I would love to feel more certain I understood the water vision, though. Understanding this might clear up the end, too. ;) Is water significant anywhere else in the book? Wasn't Polly at a swim meet, when Tom held the umbrella for Granny and Granny scared him off? (My room is dark right now, can't/don't want to check. ;)

[shimotsuki]

It was a track-and-field meet, I'm afraid -- but it sounds like it was raining hard enough that it might as well have been a swim meet. ;)

The only other thing I can remember about water is the part where Granny warns Polly that water will ruin an opal. And of course Polly ends up deciding that, not only has Mr. Leroy defeated the protection in the opal, he's even found a way to use it to track her movements. So that seems sort of suggestive, maybe -- but it's not really about water, literally.

[jobey_in_error]

The whole question of what Granny knows and how she knows it is intriguing. She has that comment towards the end, when the ballads sort of "bring her to," that she has a way of knowing things without really thinking about them, hence able to hide things in her memory even from enchantment. I'm not sure if there's more to it that I'm missing.

[shimotsuki]

she has a way of knowing things without really thinking about them, hence able to hide things in her memory even from enchantment.

Aha, and maybe this is even the same as Polly's hero-gift of knowing things, as Tom points out when she first meets the quartet? I hadn't made that connection before -- maybe gifts run in families.

(Sorry for reply-stalking all your comments here, but I'm having a lot of fun thinking about all this.)