Blog Entry 11- Ugly Draft

Work in Progress

Fablehaven is essentially based on Kendra’s imagination, the main character of the story who has a mix of an orphan and innocent archetype. She expects nothing bad to happen if one doesn’t deserve it, which is one of the main characteristic of an innocent. She also believes that if you follow the rule, you get rewarded, and if you break the rule, you get punished. But as the story unfold, what she believed were proved wrong and now she must face the reality and go against what she feared most in order to save her family.

Orphan archetype:

Kendra is an orphan because she feels that her families are trying to abandon her by going to a mandatory vacation set by her dead grandparents. (Kids were not allowed). She thinks her parents will have a good vacation, without the kids. (She is suspicious about the whole vacation set up). she didn’t believe when her parents said, “we will miss you.” Once, Kendra heard her mother requesting grandpa Sorenson to take care of the kids when they go away for vacation. During the conversation she found grandpa Sorenson unwilling to take care of kids. She heard him saying, “Does it have to be in June? Why not in July?“  “I suppose we could find a place to lock them up.” After hearing this conversation Kendra felt that there is something going on in June with grandpa Sorenson, but she didn’t know what.

According to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” Kendra is a hero with an orphan character, and she goes through the stages that Campbell has described, but how does she complete her cycle is the question to be answered.

Separation: Kendra and her brother Seth are left with their grandfather for 17 days at the grandfather’s place. Her parents must go for a 17 days Scandinavian cruise set by her dead grandparents (Grandparents, Larson). Kendra is afraid of living with her grandfather because she though the grandfather didn’t like kids and she also didn’t know him well. Her grandmother wasn’t there at the time, and she never saw them together. She sometime thought may be they were secretly divorced. On her way to her grandfather’s place, there were many signs that made her think that there is something going on there that she is not aware of. She remembers her grandfather telling her mom “Things get a little crazy in mid-June” But “what it could be?” Kendra asks herself. So, in a back of her mind she is expecting something to happen. So, Kendra and her parents are separated for 17 days. ( Typical orphan story)

Adventure: Grandpa Sorenson sets some new rules. He tells the kids not to go into the woods. They could explore the garden or the tree house or the pool, but not into the woods because he thinks they can get Lyme diseases from tick bites. Grandfather gives Kendra three small keys and he challenges her to look for the key holes if she could.  Kendra wanted to talk to grandpa Sorenson, but he seems less interested and he tells her he is little busy. Seth her brother goes into wood alone and when he returns he claims that he saw a weird old witch. Kendra unlocks the three locks with the keys grandfather Sorenson gave her and she sees a mysterious message which says “Drink milk.” Then Kendra and Seth drinks the milk and they start to see fairies, which were once butterflies and humblebees.

  Seth going into the forest and Kendra seeing the mysterious message, “Drink milk” are all Kendra’s imagination, because she knew that Seth was a kid who like adventure (a rule breaker) and so she was expecting this kind of behavior from him. The “Drink milk” message is also nothing more than her imagination, because she saw Dale and Lena, the house keeper secretly feeding insects and butterflies with milk. But when she asked her why they were doing it so secretly, they said, it’s because they didn’t want grandpa Sorenson to know (He may think that they are wasting milk). Kendra was not satisfied with their answer and she thought maybe there is something going on with the milk. So this is the reason the word “Drink milk” came into her imagination. Then Seth again breaks the rule. This time he catches a fairy and keeps it in jar. The fairy turns into an evil animal and then they retaliate back. Seth, grandpa, grandma and Lena all get abducted and Kendra must do something to save her families. She didn’t know what to do, where to go ask for help or may be do nothing.  She is scared as hell and she never was in a situation like this before. So essentially she is an orphan and she needs to grow up and do something that an adult would do. She goes to the fairy queen to get some help and the fairy queen says something like “blood” and “milk”. So Kendra gathers all the clues and she comes to the conclusion that she has to mix some blood with the milk form that strange cow. Once she makes this mixture(mixture of blood and cow’s milk= talisman), she gives them to the butterflies and the humblebees, which turns them into fairy twice the human size. The fairies (supernatural aid) help Kendra to rescue her families from the evils and the family is united.

Return: Kendra can’t believe so much has happen in just 17 days. She can’t believe what she has just gone through. She thinks may be this was a dream ( clue that this could be dream). When she came here she though this 17 days would one of the most boring days of her life, but now she doesn’t even want to count how many days are left. Everyone is happy, and so is she. She knows her grandparents very well and she is hoping to visit her very soon.