So I had a request from my father after reading my blog to read The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico and give my opinion on this. Please be warned that there will be spoilers as I talk about the book but they will be at the end and I will make it very obvious when they begin!
The Snow Goose is just a short story about a man, Philip Rhayader, girl Firth and of course, a Snow Goose in The Great Marsh in Essex. This man is deformed from birth, he loves all nature and he loves to paint.
This story is a very short one, it is like a fine wine or coffee, you really have to read it slowly and savour every mouthful. It is a very beautiful story about love, the beauty of nature, rejection, loneliness, age and few other things (but I don't want to give them away!) I really recommend this book, it is only about half an hour long and it is just such a good short story that is so moving. Please buy, read and then come back to my overview of the story itself!
The next paragraph contains huge spoilers, please only read once you have read the book :)
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snow-Goose-Small-Miracle-ANDThe-ebook/dp/B00BWF59PS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411206905&sr=1-1&keywords=the+snow+goose)
So this book as I said is about rejection and loneliness. As Philip has chosen to live away from people in this marsh land because he understands why people act the way they do around him and rather then getting angry he just chooses to separate himself. This in itself is such an amazing point, that he doesn't hate humanity for how they treat him, that he just feels pity that they can't understand past their own prejudices. We learn his great love for nature and birds, which clearly comes from the author as he uses such great language to describe the area around him and the birds that fly there.
Then a girl arrives with an injured Snow Goose, she has to get over her own fear and prejudice of "the ugly man" that has been passed on to her from adults and the hunters that hunt the birds he loves. As the story goes on we learn that every year, the goose flies away for winter and comes back at Spring, so does Firth and she grows older every time becoming a young woman. (just warning again, super spoilers now.)
Then the year is 1940, the war has begun but the author gives it from the birds point of view, which I found really interesting
"In the spring of 1940 the birds migrated early from the Great Marsh. The world was on fire. The whine and roar of the bombers and the thudding explosions frightened them."
This is so telling of how the author and Philip are really similar, that they look upon the world as how it will affect the birds, because that is all that Philip holds dear.
Philip finds out he can volunteer to save men from Dunkirk on his boat seven at a time and he goes out, the Snow Goose escorting him along. (Super, super spoilers!) we learn from a soldiers account he saved a lot of men and from an officers account they had heard of the legend of the goose from the men, and they described how they found a man in a small boat, face down in the water.
That took a few moments to hit me. Of all the places this story was going, that was one I wasn't expecting. It says so much for the writer that in the space of 15 minutes of storytelling, you feel for this character so much and you just want him to prevail in everything he does.
The men try to get close but the goose is there, hissing at them to protect him. Firth sees the goose fly back and knows Philip is not coming back. She still comes back to the lighthouse feeding the geese but one day a German bomber comes and mistakes it for a military base and destroys everything, letting the sea take it over.
This was another shocking and upsetting turn, that not only he died, but every trace, every painting that he kept was also destroyed.
This is now when I can talk about the few other things I mentioned earlier that I didn't want to talk about until this moment. That the book is about love, the beauty of nature, rejection, loneliness and age. But it's also about sacrifice, loss, death and the fleetness of life. That this lonely man who was feared by other people felt it his duty to help the men at Dunkirk as he would help a bird in a trap, only to for his death to be be mentioned briefly in passing, as I'm sure so many others would have also done that day on the beaches.
The pure shortness of the story, how it doesn't go into great length, I feel really shows so well how fleeting life is. That his man we only just met and understood is already gone, which reflects all death in the wars, that if you watch and read anything about wars, you will see nearly 90% of the time there is no dramatic long death for men at war. Life is there, then taken, in the space of a few seconds.
I was given some feedback that in my blogs I could say how a book has changed me or changed my way of thinking. I think this book really teaches me the beauty in life, that hatred and fear does not have to be a one way road. That life is fleeting but you make the best situation for yourself and live in the moment, as Philip did by understanding he would not get on in normal society so he made a place for himself in an environment he loved. And all this detail and emotion is in a story that will take 30 minutes to an hour to read.
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