Reading Ideas: The Knife of Never Letting Go

The first book we will be reading in the Hogwarts Professor Book Club is Patrick Ness’ Monsters of Men, which will be published on 28 September. The thing is that Monsters is not a stand alone work; it’s the final novel in Mr. Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy. If you haven’t read the first two book, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and The Answer, then you have a bunch of great reading to do in the next two weeks.

The bad news is “time is short!” The good news is that that’s the only bad news; the novels are wonderfully well written, challenging, and promise a huge pay-off ( a Monster pay-off?) in the series finale. My job this week and next is to provide “reading ideas,” questions and thoughts for your reflection on your first or second trip through the first and second books, ideas to foster return trips to the book that are spoiler free. In the days just prior to Monsters of Men‘s publication, I’ll put up some speculative notes about the last book that will assume you’ve read Knife and The Ask.

Here are my first five ideas to spur your thinking:

(1) The Knife of Never Letting Go is the coming-of-age story of Todd Hewitt, a boy on the cusp of manhood at age 13. It is a book, in large part, about what it means to be a man, and correspondingly, what it means when women become like men and when everyone despises what it means to be a child or a woman. Inevitably in a postmodern work, we are confronted by the evil metanarrative that our hero must recognize as a lie and transcend; I don’t think you’ll struggle in seeing this. As you might guess from the title, a lot of this is wrapped up in the knife Todd carries. Think hard about that knife.

(2) I suspect the book’s six parts reflect one another in mirror composition fashion of some kind; there is a strong story frame in which the beginning and end are joined and the story center, ‘Wilf and the Sea of Things,’ has a mythic meaning that acts as a pivot and resolution of the peripheral points of the story circle (and the challenge of materialism). Be thinking as you travel with Todd on his heroic journey about story structure and how it buttresses the story meaning; it happens, I think, as clearly as the bridge in the chief protagonists’ relationship is pictured by a bridge in the narrative line.

(3) The book is set on a ‘New World’ that has been colonized by settlers from an ‘Old World’ who are searching for a better life. As with most science fiction and fantasy, Knife comes with an implicit satirical and allegorical edge that is fairly sharp; New World and Todd’s nightmare confusion is meant to be taken as a commentary on our world and our lives. There are three or four transparencies that almost leap from the page, namely, a critique of the dehumanizing effects of a 24/7 information culture, a kick-the-dead-horse assault on religious fundamentalism and cult-life, and a curious, even relatively risky exploration of the Fall of Man and the meaning of Sacrifice. I think the serious reader will recognize the shadows of Islamism throughout the books and its threat to western culture as well as the difficulty in confronting this threat without an awareness of the history and power of Western Civilization.

(4) Patrick Ness is a postmodern T. S. Eliot, at least in terms of his citizenship travels; he was born and raised in America, principally Hawaii and the Northwest, schooled at USC, and has jumped the pond to write and teach in the UK. He became a British citizen in 2005. Forgive me for urging you to commit the Personal Heresy but I think your reading of Knife will be richer if Todd’s story of becoming a man and travels away from where he was born is read as a possible comparison of the US and the UK and as an expatriot’s struggle to escape his American identity. I do not offer this as the meaning of the book, far from it, but as a point of reflection. ‘New World’ and ‘Old World’ have specific meanings to Americans living overseas, right?

(5) Names are important to the story, especially biblical and Shakespearean ones, so I recommend for your reflection some special attention to the back-story of Aaron, especially with respect to the Golden Calf, Olivia from Twelfth Night (or Shakespeare in Love or She’s the Man), Benjamin, and ‘Todd.’ Given the meaning of such an evidently allegorical bildungsroman and hero’s journey, not to mention the near guilelessness of the lead character, I doubt ‘Todd’ is meant to mean ‘fox’ in this story, as the name dictionaries all say it does. The books’ penchant for Christian and biblical names makes me think ‘Todd’ is meant to be understood as ‘Thaddeus,’ the Aramaic word for ‘Heart,’ the spiritual faculty of the human person, or “breast,’ as in ‘bosom buddy.’

That’s a lot for getting started! Please don’t read any further in the comment boxes if you don’t want to know ‘spoilers’ about the story content and how it turns out. For those of you who have  read Knife and The Ask, I request that you feel free to discuss Knife below and any plot or theme points you’d like, but without reference to The Ask. I know that’s a difficult containment issue, but, hey, if I just wrote out five reading ideas without using the word “noise,” I’m confident that you’re up to this challenge. Reading ideas from The Ask will be posted early next week —

If you haven’t read The Knife of Never Letting Go, get on board, get a copy, and get reading. The discussion of Monsters at month’s end promises to be a reward worth many times whatever investment we put into reading the series’ openers now!