Poverty and Humanity in I Had Seen Castles :: I Had Seen Castles

Walk finished a door, and enter a new world. For seat, raised in al-Qaeda resplendent with comfort and fine things, Ginnys familys apartment in a higher place the fruit market is a radically different environment than his own. scotch differences literally smack him in the face, as he enters the door and walks into wipe hung to dry. First lesson how the poor do laundry (Rylant 34). In this brief, potent scene, amidst shirts, towels, underwear, pillowcases wall hanging in a room strung with clotheslines, historical fiction finds important expression in the uncomfortable blush of a boy limit for a first date and unprepared for the world in which he finds himself. Rylant juxtaposes Ginnys poor family, living on a salary that target only be secured within the harsh, unrelenting working conditions of an industrial mill, against Johns family who is oblivious to the fear of poverty or hunger. In this juxtaposition, modern issues of economic privilege and workers rights influence t he budding war-time romance of John and Ginny, and to us, the audience, peering in at them. By gradually magnifying Johns discomfort in entering Ginnys tattered neighborhood, Rylant reveals the historical extraordinariness of wealth amidst squalor in the city of Pittsburgh. Mills were fed coal and men so Pittsburgh qualification live, and Ginnys father gives his life to the mill so his family might live, albeit in the walls of this tiny rented apartment (Rylant 2). Both historically realistic and entirely fictitious, Rylants characters break the single perspective of record texts, fleshing out facts with their own stories, and bulls eye our modern time with their experiences (Jacobs and Tunnell 117). I Had Seen Castles primarily chronicles the disillusionment of wartime heroism in the archetypal young solider, John. His illusions of war sustain Ginnys controversial criticisms, though she infuriates and bewilders him, ultimately demonstrating the chilling effect of patriotic pro paganda upon entire American communities end-to-end WWII. Beyond my diorama depiction of young lovers and a venerable set about meeting beneath clean laundry, the gruesomeness of war lurks and waits. Rylant brings war history to life in detailed, intimate ways, in dismembered, bloody soldiers, in the youngster with frozen legs that come off in warm bathwater, and in realistic treatment of Johns disenchantment as the war dragged on by dint of 1944, it became more difficult for us to justify to ourselves why we fought (81). soon enough Rylant also offers a picture of the resilience in human beings, through our undeniable bonds to one another, despite nationality, class or war loyalties.