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Nicola Ovenden

Is white always light and black always dark?,

Marcus Sedgwick White Crow

Trea gimnazija,Sarajevo


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March 21, 2014 [TREA GIMNAZIJA, SARAJEVO]

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MATURSKI RAD IZ ENGLESKOG

JEZIKA

Tema:

Is white always light and black always dark?, Marcus

Sedgwick White Crow

Uenica:

Nicola Ovenden, IV-1

Profesorica:

Edina Selimovi prof.


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Table of Contents:

1. Introduction

2. Storylines

a.Ferelith's narrative

i. Ferelith's character analysis

ii. Ferelith's friendship with Rebecca

b.Third person narrative

i. Rebecca's charachter analysis

ii. Rebecca's relationship with her father

c. 18th century epistolary narrative

3. Analysis of the poem Ressurection

a. The poem Ressurection

b. The analysis

4.Topics that inspired the novel

a. Dunwich, the disappearing town

b. Accounts of the French Dr. Beaurieux

c. William James and the spiritualist movement

d. White Crows

5. Conclusion

6. Bibliography


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1.Introduction

-White Crow is a gothic novel written by author Marcus Sedgwick in 2010. The novel is set on the English

coast in a fictional town named Winterfold. It follows a multiple narrative storyline and has a complex

structure. I chose it for my term paper due to the fact that I feel the topic is a frequent matter one comes

across almost daily; does all seem as it appears.

-Marcus Sedgwick is a British author from Kent who has written many similar novels over the course of a

decade. Most of his novels are written as cautionary tales focusing on cause and effect analysis throughout

the plots. This novel, however mostly focuses on the bonds between people, trust and friendship, although

showing human insecurities to be the main cause of darkness inside people.

-There is a faint religious tone to the novel, showing the author's pantheistic concept of the afterlife and

apocalypse.

-The characters are intricate and one may have difficulty to understand them. The complexity of it all

appealed to me because it takes effort to understand and it is not strictly for entertaiment alone. Even

though it is charectarised as a young adult novel, it still has deeper meaning which is what literature is

supposed to be about. The genius of the main character and the topics that inspired the novel, some

however grusome, all point to the fact that every coin has two sides and for darkness to prevail there must

be light to triumph over. Everything in this world has its opposite. I hope to shed light further on how in my

paper.

2. Storyline Analysis

- The storylines of the novel are devided into three

sections: the story in the first person narrative told

by Ferelith, in the third person narrative concerning

Rebecca Case's stay in Winterfold and the diary

entries of an unnamed rector and his acquiantence's

studies. The narratives aren't put in a particular

order, which seems deliberate, but they are all

intertwined.

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2.1. Ferelith's Narrative

-Ferelith is an extraordinary girl that has spent her entire life in Winterfold, a town located on the British coast. Her

chapter Rebeccaopens the novel's story. Her chapters are written in a different font style than the rest of the novel,

often digressing on various subjects and topics concerning the happenings in Winterfold. For example, the first

chapter vaguely describes the phenomenon of coastal erosion and how her home town used to be a thrieving

medeival city but over time has been eaten away by the sea. She describes the city then and the town in modern

times. She also states that once she saw Rebecca that she would love her and that Ferelith would be loved in return,

which is a key point to remember.

- Four Seas Interludes-I shegives a short account of leaving school when she was just fourteen, but how she

countinued her education by closely watching her surroundings and observing people. She also describes how she

came to meet Rebecca. In some chapters Ferelith disscuses her beliefs, such as how she came upon a white crow

which lead her to believe in the afterlife, while in other she gives an insight of her Summer with Rebecca. However,

in most shereveals to have a somewhat sinister

personality, but by the end of the novel the author

makes her the heroine. Throughout the novel he

made her seem like the main antagonist and at the

end he turns her into a white crow, thus confirming

her earlier assumptions on the existance of the

afterlife. Her final words in her own final chapter

When I am Dead and Worshipped are For I am the

crow. The White Crow.1

2.1.1. Ferelith's Character Analysis

-Throughtout the novel, Ferelith is one of the central

characters with her own story. At first she shows signs

of rather odd behaviour, even from such a young age.

As a gift for her eighth birthday, young Ferelith's had

given her a poetry book she had written for her, to

which Ferelith replied that her mother is a genius,

comparing her to William Shakespeare and adding: Like him, you have suns, planets, ants, frightening skelletons. I

prefear things which are frightening.2

Ferelith's odd behaviour can be explained by traumatic experiances. Her mother was submitted to a mental asylum

when Ferelith quit school and her father seems to have left her. Orphaned at the age of fourteen can accumilate

resentment and bitterness. She lives in the village rectory for which she claims is hers (a connection to the rector

from 1798). Ferelith does not live alone and her room-mates pay her rent, which explains her source of income. She

shows certain contempt towards her tennants, refearing to them as frequent drug-users and drunks.

1White Crow, Sedgwick Marcus, Orion, London, 2010



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In her chapter Pattern Recognition Ferelith reveals a darker side of herself, a

concieded opinion through a quote.

I see everything. I see the patterns in life that make us who we are. One day, I

will know everything and, and when I do, I will be utterly powerful. Because when

you know everything about people, and why they are the way they are, you know

the way they are going to react in any given situation, and you know how to lead

them, this way or that, to do the things you want them to do.3

The qoute shows that even though Ferelith might not be confident in her

appearance, she takes pride in her vast knowledge of psychology, explaining that

knowledge is power.

Ferelith is described by Rebecca to have an elven appearence, that everything

ends in points and that she has long black hair. She wears muted and dark colours, and she's very pale, a classically

gothic character in such novels. Rebecca also described her as not beautiful, but not ugly either.

By the middle of the novel, it seems apparent that Ferelith wants to kill Rebecca to prove the afterlife exists through

a series of manipulating dare games and tresspassing visits to winterfold Hall. She acts as Rebecca's guide through

Winterfold, telling her stories and scaring her in the process.

2.1.2. Ferelith and Rebecca's Friendship

At the begining of the novel, Rebecca and Ferelith form a reluctant friendship wrought through with different

interests- Rebecca's loneliness and isolation from her father and Ferelith's self-assigned mission to prove the

existance of the afterlife.

On some points, their friendship appears to be stronger and that they both enjoy the other's company. Rebecca

sometimes found Ferelith's statements unsettling and Ferelith seemed to know everything about Rebecca, but also

asked questions about her life in London. The latter also claimed to love Rebecca even before she had gotten to

know her.

A frequent thing they had discussed is whether they believe in God, to which Rebecca said she had not thought

about it and that Ferelith replied that she believed.



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Their friendship revolves around outings; going to the beach, hanging out on the cliff edge dubbed as the Lover's

seat, having chips at the pub named The Angel and The Devil and visiting closed and ruined buildings such as

Winterfold Hall and St Mary's church.

Three situations shows their friendship strenghtening. The first is the girls' trip to St Mary's church. The church does

not have a whole wall but it is standing. All they saw through the wall was the sun setting and the moon rising.

Ferelith calls the church a temple to the sea because the eastern, non-existant wall ovelooks the sea. The girls dance

on the altar until they are chased away by someone.

The second situation is when Rebecca visits Ferelith at the Old Rectory, which is the first situation that Rebecca

willingly spends time with Ferelith. She describes Ferelith's bedroom as very big and amazingly arranged. They

discuss why people say hateful things, Rebecca cries and Ferelith comforts her. After she had calmed down, they

talked, ate pizza and drank wine. When Rebecca said that she felt alone, Ferelith told her that she has her. Rebecca

doubted this and Ferelith said that she certainly did, for better or fr worse.

The final situation is when the two girls rekindle their relationship after falling apart regaring a game together, but a

storm hits and eats away the cliffs and they spend the night under a bridge, huddled close to each other.

Ferelith frequently tells Rebecca stories of the town and one of them is about a magician Barrow who lived in

Winterfold Hall and had visitors that never came out. The story is a refference to the epistolary parts of the novel.

After the storm, the girls the girls found a tunnel under the Hall, leading to a closed off chamber with seven

decapateded skelletons and an eighth one running towards the closing tunnel. The skulls were placed in ninches on

the wall and the skelletons in rough coffins. This meant that they had solved the mystery of Winterfold Hall. By then,

it appeared that Ferelith was planning to push Rebecca off the cave, but insted thew herslef off. She continued the

narrative, as the final chapter was hers, proving her point all along.

2.2. Third Person Narrative

Rebecca Case is a sixteen-year old girl who comes to Winterfold with her father, John, after he is suspended from

his job as a detective in London. Their relationship used to be close, but it is now strained. They carefully avoid each

other's company for most of the novel, making forced small-talk along the way when they bump into each other.

However they do rekindle their relationship after a series of bizzare events occur. Ferelith notes in her final chapter,

When I Am Dead and Worshipped:

It didn't take them long to work out who she was with, but then in the storm it took forever to find her, till

her father, walking on the beach with one of the search parties, heard her cry from the cave mouth

I saw them, reunited.4



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2.2.1. Rebecca's Character

Rebecca is shown to as a protagonist in the novel,

displaying a slightly less complex personality than Ferelith's.She seems to be in a great deal of pain, losing her father as

well as her mother when she was younger. Hurt by the fact

that her life has been turned into a media fiasco by her

father's suspension and that she leaves her friends and

boyfriend in Greenwich, she excommunicates father from

her life and distracts herself for a few weeks of her Summer

in Winterfold with reading and exploring the town before

she meets Ferelith.

When she does meet Ferelith, she is quite suspicious of her perculiar behaviour and guards herself well. In thebegining their friendship, she ignores Ferelith's weird side and hangs out with her because she has nothing better to

do. Later on, she slightly warms up to her but still does not trust her. Doubious by Ferelith's oddities, she relaxes

aroud her and behaves in a compliant manner. When Ferelith steals the honesty box from a stall, she disobeys her

father against her better judgement and leaves him to be with Ferelith.

She is portrayed as a predictable typicall teenage girl and a bad liar. Rebecca shows a rather unadventerous

personality, but does not like to be left out from anything Ferelith suggests. She appears to be Ferelith's opposite,

which is actually what Ferelith likes about her the most.

At the begining of the novel, Ferelith describes Rebecca's physical appearence as beautiful, noting her curly red hair.

They first bond over the 1934 production ofThe Wizard of Oz, but the strange circumstances result in Rebecca's

guarded behaviour. She soon realises that what she found so unsettling about Ferelith was her fascination and odd

cavalier attitude toward death.

In the end, though, it is clear to Rebecca that Ferelith had been a true friend to her. She is shocked by the discovery

of the chamber under Winterfold Hall. She bares witness to her friend dying and comming back to comfort her. It is

Ferelith who tells her she shold forgive her father, as Ferelith never had the chance to do so herself when her father

left her.

2.2.2. Rebecca's Relationship with Her Father

Rebecca and John Case share a very distant father-daughter relationship, strained by John's job. The narrator notes

that they had the radio on loudly from Greenwich to Winterfold to disguise the fact that neither of them spoke the

whole journey. In Winterfold, they avoid each other. It pains them to do so, but neither of them does much to let the

other know how much. For example, when Rebecca breaks up with her boyfriend, she takes off his crucifix and puts

on her father's heart pendant. John knows that a father can never be a mother, and he struggles with the only thing

he has left in the world. As much as he suffers, he does not put the same amount of effort to reach out to Rebecca

because he is too afraid.

Their relationship hits a turning point when Ferelith gets Rebecca into trouble after stealing money from a yard sale.

Her father gets angry at Rebecca, which is the first time he shows any emotions towards her. They regret everything

they say imedately after they had spoken. Another saddening moment in the novel was when someone had written


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childkiller on the side of their car, after which they both seperately brake down emotionally, shutting each other out

for good.

Her father grows out of control towards the end and ends up in jail when the big storm hits, making it impossible for

him to find Rebecca. Rebecca, howver goes back to the ruins of Winterfold Hall to find her father's pendant. The next

morning, Rebecca and John mend their relationship when John, in Rebecca's eyes, makes up for his suspension andand emotional barricades by finding her. The actual reason for John's suspension was in fact a similar investegation

of a missing girl who winds up dead when the search is called off. When he fond Rebecca, he is able to forgive

himself for shutting her out and Rebecca forgives him for the treatment he had given her.

2.3. 18th Century Epistolary Narrative

Inbetween the present-day plot there are also the diary entries of a an 18th century rector who is going through a

lapse of faith and agrees to aid a dr. Barrieux in his plans to prove the afterlife exists.

Frequent thoughts of the rector's entries are visions of hell, which he believes are sent to him by God as punishment

for embarking on such an abominable mission. A connection to the present is that Ferelith resides in the Old Rectory

of the village, same as the rector did, and that they have the same plans.

He often describes their grusome experiments in detail; they invite someone from the village to Winterfold Hall, take

them to a room under the stairs with a candlebra and strap them to a chair. They wait behind a screen until the last

candle extinguishes, and they cut the victim's head off with a blade on the headrest and try to determine by the

expression the victim's head has after beheading where the person has gone in terms of a Heaven and Hell

conception. They go as far as asking the heads questions, but they never answer.

The rector seems to have more inhibitions than the doctor, but that can be explained through their life callings. A

rector is a man of faith foremost, led through life by believing that God has a purpose for all while the doctor is a

scientist, living by the assumtion that science has everythig explained. It didn't take long for the rector to realize

what he was doing was wrong so he bricked up the chamber under Winterfold Hall while Berrieux was still inside and

left Winterfold for good.

Their experiments lasted since January to December of 1798. For that time they had decapitated seven victims,

disposing the bodies into roughly made coffins and putting the heads into the wall.

The rector and doctor's relationship is similar to Rebecca and Ferelith's. The rector is quiet and submissive to the will

of his collegue, while Barrieux is more controlling and dominant, but the difference between Rebecca and the rector

is that his willpower prevailed and he was able to leave the friendship, rather alliance, and his home. Another

difference is that he knew what was going on and it plagued him to defy the will of God the way he did. His act of

redemption was to leave Winterfold and stop Barrieux.


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3. Anslysis of the poem Ressurection

3.1. The Poem Ressurection

The earth quakes, the graves burst open, the dead arise and stream on in endless procession. The trumpets of the

apocalypse ring out.

There is no judgment,

no sinners,

no just men,

no great

and no small;

there is no punishment,

and no reward.

A feeling of overwhelming love fills us with bliss.

We know, and are.

And we know with all certanity.

God doesexist.

3.2. The analysis

A poem with a seemingly dark begining, but in fact a beacon of hope. The purpose of the poem isn't to

scare; it's meant to show that God keeps everyone safe in spite of the way they have lived. The writer

shows us further his belief that he would be saved because he has strong faith. However, those who

haven't had faith are also safe. Many people are of selective faith, which is a side-effect of secularisation,and believe in God only when it suits them, but at the first sign of difficulty doubt. The writer's intent is to

make those people realise the graciousness of God because he believes in that goodness.

In short, the poem is the writer's view on what the apocalypse looks like. The first verse of the poem

speaks about the rising of the dead, which is in fact ressuruction. the earth quaking can be comapred to

being shaken awake after a long sleep; the verb to burst gives a powerful impact to the dynamic of the first

verse. The dead rising and streaming on further develop the dynamic but also slow down, adding an air of

sluggishness to note that they are ressurected after being dead for a period of time, suggesting the feeling

of being awake after several hours of sleep. Endless processionreminds us of long rows of soldiersmarching, as do the trumpets. If not for the military influence, trumpetscould be replaced by bells.


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The second verse advocates equality between people in general. It makes no difference between those

who have sinned and those who haven't, or those done great or those who have just lived. It tells us that

no matter what, the outcome for everyone is the same.A feeling of overwhelming love fills us with bliss

points out that everyone will know, in the end, that they were loved after all.

The final verse confirms the last line of the second verse. We know, and are can be roughly translated to

We learn as we breathe, and it's somewhat true. The final line of the last is a general conformation of the

writer's opinion that God does exist.

The choice of words is very deliberate and a contributing factor to the gradual dynamic of the poem. The

poem starts off strong, then slows down a little at the middle to stop at the end, with the conclusion.

However, the symbolism of the poem runs deeper in the choice of words. As previously mentioned, a

militant picture is formed by marching and sounds of trumpets, ending in equality of all.

The poem is written as an indirect criticism of clergy and religion being founded on differentiating people

and thus sorting them into good and bad people, or rather those deserving punishment or reward. By the

writer's logic, if God is good then He forgives even those who haven't been forgiven by those around them

and He also forgives those who have denied forgivness to others. It's not a question of religion directly; it's

more of a morality issue- to err is human, but it's godly to forgive. In disagreement, it is also human to

forgive. If we forgive it means we understand, and we also seek understanding when we wish to be

forgiven.

The speaker is the writer and readers are the audience in the poem. The narrative follows the course of

action through verses one and two, but by the end of the second verse it is implied that the narrator is part

of the group witnessing ressurection by the use of us and the multiple use ofwe. There is no rhyme, which

means the poem is written in free verse most commonly used in modern poetry.

The use of poetic devices is limited to those concerning the sounds of words, but the use of the latter is

almost undetectable after the first reading. The first verse is written as a consecutive stream of thought

rather than an actual verse, with stressed use of repetition. If not for the form of the verse, the repetition

of thewould be an anaphora. Assonance and alliteration are present throughout the poem, for example:

The dead arise and stream on in endless procession, where the repeated use of a, e andea are making

assonance, while then in words such as and, endlessandprocession make alliteration.

In the second verse there is a combination of repetition and anaphora; in the begining and near the end

with There is no and the middle with the words no and and, respectively. In the final line of the second

verse cacophony is used by repeating suffixingas in the wordsfeelingand overwhelming, also the -ills

and -liss infillsand bliss adds a pleasant sound of near- rhyme.

The final verse uses repetition for We know and and in a criss-cross formation. The final line uses euphony ,

a series of musically pleasent sounds in does exist,where thexin exist sounds like az, almost rhyming with

thesin does.


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4. Topics That Inspired the Novel

4.1. Dunwich, the disappearing town

Dunwich is a village in the English county of Suffolk and located 148 kilometers north-east of London. In Anglosaxon

times it used to be the capital of Kingdom of the East Angles, but due to coastal erosion the city was greatly reduced.

The city's decline began in 1286 when a large storm hit the East Anglian coast.

The progress of erosion occured due to the fact that it was not possible to localize the damage storms made to the

harbour, which was where the Dunwich River entered the North Sea and the river started to shift. During the storm

in 1286, the city was eaten away by the sea, most of the buildings had fallen to the depths of the sea. Only in

modern times is it possible to control to a point damage stroms make.

There is a popular local legend that at certain tides it is possible to

hear the ringing of church bells under the waves. The last large strom had taken the remains of the All Saints' church

between 1904 and 1919.

4.2. Accounts of the French Doctor Beaurrieux

On June 28 1905, a report following the execution of Hanri

Languille was written by a Dr Beaurrieux.

Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately

after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the

guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic

contractions for about five or six seconds. This

phenomenon has been remarked by all those

finding themselves in the same conditions as myself for observing what happens after the severing of the

neck.

I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased. It was then that I called in a strong, sharp

voice: "Languille!" I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractionsI insist advisedly on

this peculiaritybut with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life,

with people awakened or torn from their thoughts.

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have a key, the battery might be dead or the distributor cap might be missing. By comparison, many factors

interfeare with the proper distribution of pigment in the feathers of birds, resulting in white instead of black. The

white can be localized, such as damage to the birds' plumage so that one or several specific areas are affected, or it

can be genetic where the whole bird is affected; some birds can be completely white.

5. Conclusion

Light and dark are polar opposites, but the

boarders which define what is light and dark have blurred due to the differences in culture and belief systems. This

makes it hard to determine right and wrong, but not all that is dark is wrong and the same goes for light and right. By

analyzing this novel, it is apparent that the Macchiavellist theory that the ends justify the means.

Accordingly, Ferelith shows this most of all as a character whose role was introduced as anatagonistic but by the end

portrayed as protagonistic . However wrong was the way she justified her life, it was as good a way to prove that we

live on not only metaphorically but also in reality.

Essentially, one's life can be described as a series of challenges with light and dark battling until the end for the sake

of perseverence. One might assume that what is to be done is right, but the means should not be as right as the

choice. For example, the rector had the choice to decline the doctor's proposition when he learnt of the means by

which it was meant to be done, but he did not because he wanted to do the world a favor by attesting the existance

of the afterlife. However, gaining moral conciousness, he refuses to participate any further owing to the fact that he

discovered that it was not the right way by things. That does not make him the least bit antagonistic.

People have always needed something to believe in and have found comfort in the belief that there is judgement

and reward for all those worthy and unworthy of eternal bliss. In a way, the author agrees, but due to thepantheistic concept of Heaven and Hell, or thereby lack of, he differs that there is such a way for everyone to be

happy in their afterlife.

Light and dark co-exist since the dawn of time, and it is their co-opperation that maps out the world to be the place

it is supposed to become. There is always a little of both inside a person, which, I believe, is what in reality a person

ought to bea merge of right and wrong, decisions and everything in between perspective and appeal.

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6. Bibliography

White Crow, Sedgwick Marcus, Orion Books, London 2010

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunwich#History, 21.03.2014.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine#Living_heads, 21.03.2014.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James, 21.03.2014.

www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/whitecrows,21.03.2014.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/whitecrowshttp://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/whitecrowshttp://www.birds.cornell.edu/crows/whitecrows

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