Sophie And Howl

Castles, palaces, and cathedrals are scattered across Europe. Each one possesses unique characteristics and architecture bearing resemblance of their time. Some castles incorporate Greek influence, roman or gothic influence in design. Other castles and palaces are surrounded by sculptures outside in the courtyard or include sculptures worshiped as an altarpiece. While any one of these things would serve to make an ordinary castle more elaborate there is one palace that possesses all of these: The Palace of Versailles in France. The Palace of Versailles has managed to incorporate classic architecture, exquisite sculptures, and amalgamated the old design with the newer design trends of the day.

The castle in the picture sets the scene, as the image contains many of the gothic elements, including a light mist surrounding the castle, a dense forest and the center focus an old, damaged and creepy castle. The light mist is used to obscure objects by reducing visibility or to introduce the inclusion of a terrifying person or thing. A dense forest can create uncertainty to the reader as it associates it with danger and risk. Finally the damaged and old castle gives a creepy and mysterious element. All of the above builds an atmosphere of suspense, terror or horror.

Two years before my birth in 1986 the author Dianna Wynn Jones published a fantastical story of the imaginary land of Ingary called “Howl’s Moving Castle”. It is told from the perspective of an outsider to the world of the castle and that person is the new cleaning lady Sophie Hatter. A young girl cursed to the age of an elderly lady.

Mirabella is the youngest of the wolf girls. She has the quickest reflexes, but is the slowest at coming to terms with leaving behind her old ways. While the other girls are working on their speech and walking upright, Mirabella is still chewing on church pews, barking, and sleeping under her sister’s beds. She also continues to keep her fist in tight balls, despite the nun’s best efforts to stop her. By stage three, her teeth have become nubs, her hair is falling out, her ribs are sticking out, and her bright eyes have become dull, but Mirabella seems to keep her childlike attitude.

The first thing one should notice is the emphasis on titular house. It completely stands out from the rest of the painting, not because

My favorite part of the glass castle is the master bedroom and my master closet so I can store all my clothes in my closet. It can be a closet for 2 people and I like the master bed because it roomy and it can help me sleep better.

The building itself uses an abundance of straight lines that give it a very neat and sleek finish. It is perfectly symmetrical, having a broad staircase with granite steps going right down from the second level to the front of the building. Written on these stairs are the words Invent, Discover, and Remember. Right next to this staircase, placed on each side are some brilliant green plants which wrap around the entire building and make it look very appealing. The building has several tower like sections that have upward sloping roofs that give it a bit of a medieval castle look. Made mostly of red brick and a yellow looking stone, this also gives the building the look of a castle. It also has lots of windows that give a welcoming feeling. There are also six bright lights which hang down from the second and third levels which add to that welcoming

“St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell is a story of a group of lycanthropic sisters who go to a school to adjust to human culture. Through Claudette, the main character and narrator, the story is told throughout five stages of lycanthropic culture shock. Claudette’s personality changes drastically throughout these stages and her narration gives a deep insight into this. Claudette’s state of reform at the end of her schooling is very arguable as several incidents in the text differ in idea.

Every day, people are forced into positions they do not want to be in. Christopher McCandless, the protagonist of Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction book Into the Wild, and Gregor Samsa, the protagonist in Franz Kafka’s fictional novel The Metamorphosis, are perfect examples of people who are unhappy with their current lives. Both men are tired of their mundane existences. On the surface, the men seem to have a lot in common, including their subpar familial situations and their discontentedness with their current existences. Both stories unfortunately also end in misery that eventually leads to death. Despite McCandless’s and Samsa’s similarities, the men are actually very different. It is much easier to relate and gain insight into McCandless’s world than it is into Samsa’s world, largely because of their differences.

When I opened this novel, I didn’t expect to get so sucked into the story that I stayed up way past what was appropriate considering my approaching early morning road trip - but that is the power that Barnes holds over me, and she has since Raised By Wolves. Tess and her sister have had a complicated relationship since her sister stopped contacting her years ago. But now, she’s back, and dragging Tess along to live with her in her DC house. Soon, Tess learns from her classmates that her sister is considered a “fixer”- she fixes things like permanent records, arrests, and other bad situations using her pleathera of contacts and secrets to get things going. Tess doesn’t admire her sister’s career, but she feels herself falling into the role of the high school fixer, until the secrets get deeper and more dangerous than she bargained for.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is about eighteen-year-old Sophie Hatter as she leaves home after being turned into an elderly woman by the Witch of the Waste. She makes a deal with a wizard’s fire demon to break his contract with said wizard is he breaks her curse. She becomes employed as the Wizard Howl’s cleaning lady. When the Royal Wizard and prince are taken captive by the Witch of the Waste, Howl is ordered to find and kill her. Howl attempts to avoid doing as she put a curse on him for breaking her heart. Throughout the book, Sophie accidentally furthers the curse along. Eventually, the witch lures Sophie into a trap and Howl comes to rescue her, killing the witch, who was being controlled by her fire demon. At the end of the book, Sophie and Howl decide to be married and Sophie discovers she can talk life into inanimate objects.

The neighbours were scared of the castle because it wasn’t the same as their houses. One day a woman named peg makes a brave decision to go up to the scary looking castle as she was having a bad day selling cosmetics. She finds Edward and decided to take him down to her home because he is all alone. An important setting is a castle

After tells Polly to watch out Polly recalls, “…her chief memory was a dim blue sight of Tom…” (Jones, 307). For this reason I put Polly and especially Tom in different shades of blue. The third mention of the color blue is mentioned is right after Tom kicks Polly down. After he kicks her the book says, “Polly staggered and fell over, in a whirl of frantic blue, metallic lights—” (Jones, 307). In my interpretation I created the castle to have different bricks of different shades of blue to follow this criteria.

The buildings had barrel vaults columns and windows and doors with rounded arches. The buildings were solid and heavy with small windows which made the insides very dimly lit. This lack of light is apparent in the film as a way to describe the general mindset and lifestyle of monastic life in the Middle Ages. Romanesque architecture is known for its large internal spaces. Annaud uses these Middle Age details in his construction of the set. As Professor Russell describes in the Medieval Culture lecture the different rooms of the monastery contained the cloister which connected the dormitory, refectory, scriptorium, kitchen, cellar, and herbal garden. The small windows, arched doorways and the non-human void of expressivity capitals and sculptures were all true to the times. Annaud constructed this Romanesque church set built specifically to shoot majority of the film. The attention and detail that he put into making sure that the backdrop provided a true and accurate account for how religious architecture was in the Middle Ages furthered the success of the film.

This variation and symbolism of colors are used extensively throughout the movie, and allows for a more effective and accurate method in delivering the messages and themes intended. In a way, Anderson is not just telling a story, but he is also painting a picture for the viewers to enjoy on the screen. For instance, extensive use of soft pastels and muted undertones create a dreamlike look to the hotel and objects (the cake box, funicular, Mendl’s uniform & vehicle, etc), clearly distinguished from the other parts in the film. The poetic and impeccable pastel-toned look of the hotel, mostly pink and purple, resembles of a doll’s house: peaceful, and fairytale-like. Not only that, it is comparable in appearance with the graceful pink packages of Mendl’s Patisserie. On that note, the scene that stands out in terms of a strong color contrast is when Gustav is in prison and shares the cake with the other inmates. When he cuts the cake with the “throat slitter”, the soft rosy box of Mendl’s stand out from the gloomy color schemes of the prison. Not only that, the box is placed in the very middle, thereby emphasizing the objet using the “rule of thirds”; composition aspect of mise-en-scene. Also, the director strikes the audience with vivid colors, when in need of reinforcement of the theme or highlighting an essential scene. When Agatha and Dmitri board on the elevator when holding painting, there exists a powerful contrast: between Agatha wearing beige-toned outfit with hairs impeccably braided reminiscent of an angel, Dmitri with all black long coat and messy mustache signifying the dark and the evil (also, wearing the armband similar to that of Hitler), and the elevator guy wearing a vibrant purple uniform. The costumes, which are also a significant part of décor, therefore convey the audience in