Yet this is fantasy, and the note here perhaps is one that the power of redemption is greater than that of beastly evil.Ĭurdie is sent by the great-great grandmother to the king’s city of Gwyntystorm along with Lina, a fierce, ugly, dog-like creature who is intensely loyal to him. Yet even for the latter there is a hint of hope as some of the beasts we encounter in this story seem to be former humans on a journey of redemption–which strikes me as an odd note, a form of reincarnationalism, or a second chance for the condemned from a Christian author. This is a key theme that runs through the book, that people are on one of two roads, growing more fully human or descending to the level of beasts. He is bid to thrust his hands into a fire of rose petals through which the beastliness is cleansed and he is given a special capacity to discern those growing in their humanity from those descending into beastliness as he grasps their hands. So he takes the dying bird to her, but what is restored is not merely the dying bird but the dying spark in Curdie’s life, that is being slowly quenched by coarseness and beastliness. He then realizes that pigeons were associated with the mysterious and wonderful great-great grandmother of Princess Irene. It all begins when Curdie, on his walk home from another day at the mines, kills a pigeon. The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald
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