“Howl`s Moving Castle”

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by a British writer of fantasy novels for children and adults Diana Wynne Jones (16 August 1934 – 26 March 2011)

Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early summer of 2009. She underwent surgery in July and reported to friends that the procedure had been successful. However, in June 2010 she announced that she would be discontinuing chemotherapy because it only made her feel ill. In mid-2010 she was halfway through a new book with plans for another to follow. She died on 26 March 2011 from the disease.

In 2004, Hayao Miyazaki made the Japanese-language animated movie Howl's Moving Castle, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. A version dubbed in English was released in the UK and US in 2005, with the voice of Howl performed by Christian Bale.

A fragment from the interview

Diana devoted Howl`s Moving Castle to a boy who inspired her at school she was visiting. That boy (Steven) asked her to write a book called The Moving Castle. And the author did it. When it was published the very first time in the U.S., in became a runner-up for the annual Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in children`s ficition.

Jones started writing during the mid-1960s as she said mostly to keep her sanity, when the youngest of her three children was about two years old and she felt a crisis in her family and in her life, because they lived not in their own house, her husband was sick and there were a lot of problems with her mother-in-law.

Diana was born in London in 1934 in a family of teachers. After World War I here family settled in Essex. She studied English at St Anne's College in Oxford, where she attended lectures by both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien before graduating in 1956. Soon after graduating Diana married John Burrow with whom she had three sons.

People all over the world love Diana for her amazing books

“Howl`s Moving Castle”

Essay

It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel. Salman Rushdie

One of the most striking and unique aim of any book is to provoke our imagination, to make us dream or fantasize, to make us walk in characters` shoes. I think that each of us, maybe just once, but have thought how ordinary and small we are, while the brave, beautiful and successful characters in books are living their invented exciting lives. Every little boy or girl dreamt to become a character of such book, but when you are an adult little by little you lose this skill of dreaming, and you do not want to be a hero anymore. You want to get a good job, to have enough money, to be healthy and you are so busy thinking about your problems that you just have no time for anything else. You reconcile yourself to the fact that you are ordinary, as Sophie Hatter did in the book “Howl`s Moving Castle” by English writer Diana Wynne Jones. Unlike us, she lived in a magical world and that is why it was more painful for her to accept the fact that she was nothing more but a girl. Being a wonderful young woman she convinced herself that no wonder was going to happen in her grey life and did not want to confess that she dreamt not about making hats but about love and adventures. It happens in our real life so often when people are sure they do not deserve anything special and stop dreaming. Many people firmly believe that the older they get the more serious they should be and the more serious literature they should read. The public in general tend to believe that there is no place and no time for adults to read fairytales if they haven`t yet finished their “must-read” list of classical or philosophical books. Many authors also are concentrated on psychological and social problems of our life. Moreover there are a great number of people who are against going away from reality by means of books. They do not appreciate and do not understand the power of phantasy. Here I agree with Salman Rushdie, who describes literature as a door in a world of imagination, as the way of becoming someone else. It is one of the most cherished desires of humanity to find a way into someone`s mind, to have an ability to read thoughts – but we already have it! Books are the best way to see the way others see, to think the way others think, and above all to feel the way others feel. To draw the conclusion I can say that I enjoy the book I have chosen for my individual reading because no matter how old you are, this fairytale can teach you to appreciate yourself, to listen to your inside voice and not to make up your mind to the fact of being ordinary. This story is a great example of the achievement of the main aim of a book, because you see clearly and brightly all the events and all the characters while reading. It means your imagination works. This is the most vital thing about all books.

The beauty of imagination

PLOT

Howl’s Moving Castle is a fantasy story that deals with issues of identity and fate. It is a wonderful story about the ways that outward appearances can be deceiving, how we can overcome our own perceptions of what we can do. The story teaches us that ven an ordinary person can save everyone.

Sophie and Howl

Howl believes himself to be so powerful that nothing can stand in his way. If he wants something, he is well within his power to have it. Sophie, on the other hand, believes strongly in fate. Only at the end that she is able to overcome this idea, because she saves everyone in this story (even a prince of the neighboring kingdom). They fall in love with Howl. Sophie is a young woman cursed to live in a crone’s body. She is comfortable with this look because it protects her from having to think too much about her future. When she believes in herself and finally understands that she can have a lucky fate, she gets her real appearance

The tragedy happens when the King of Ingary starts a war and all Howl`s characters should take a part in this war. Sophie is trying to help Howl to avoid doing it but the attempt fails. Howl`s teacher (the most powerful witch in Ingary takes away the power of the Witch of Waste and Sophie lets her live with them. Howl tries to protect his little and strange family and takes part in the war. Soon Sophie understands that he has given his heart.

Howl lives with his fire demon and with his apprentice, Michael Fischer keeps all the day-to-day details running. Boys live in mess, so Sophie decides to take care of them and soon Michael and she become good friends. Howl spends hours each day in the bathroom and makes himself beautiful.

подтема

His castle is a magic portal into several places, so Howl has several names in Ingary and can change his location.

Howl`s Moving Castle

Howl has a terrible reputation, because people gossip around of him eating hearts of beautiful young women, and Sophie is also very afraid of him at first but it turns out to be that Howl spreads these lies so he will not have to do any work and everyone will leave him alone.

Howl

She meets Howl’s fire demon, Calcifer, and he agrees to change Sophie back if she can find a way to break the contract between him and Howl. Part of the contract is that neither Howl nor Calcifer can disclose the details, so Sophie must guess what will break the contract.

Calcifer

Her life changes when one day the Witch of the Waste comes into the shop looking for the wizzard named Howl, when Sophie does not tell her how to find him (just because she does not know, she has met him the very first time in the morning of the same day), the Witch of the Waste turns her into a very old woman. The Witch of Waste is looking for Howl`s heart during the story. Sophie decides that she cannot work at the shop anymore, so she leaves and finds work with Howl`s moving castle as a cleaning lady.

Sophie Hatter

The Witch of Waste (with power)

Sophie lives in the fantasy kingdom of Ingary. In this place, it is believed that the eldest will never be successful, and so she has resigned herself to this fact, because she is the eldest one. She works at her father`s shop making and selling the most beautiful hats.

The Kingdom of Ingary

Howl’s Moving Castle, a novel by Diana Wynne Jones published in 1986, is a fantasy story, and the first in a series of novels about a powerful wizard, Howl. The book is about a young girl named Sophie who one day met a Wizzard named Howl, and he changed her grey life.

The cover of the book