notes on The Tale of Apple Street

[chu_totoro]

this was my original intent; I realize the story is written somewhat vaguely and could probably be interpreted differently (or not interpreted at all), but here goes.

allusions/references--

Vera: derives from Latin/Slavic, a name that means "faith; truth"
Themis: greek goddess of justice

symbolism--

Honey: love
Vera: faith
Themis: justice/good judgment/an understanding of things
Apple Street: derives from the concept of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit, which is most commonly said to be an apple (though nowhere does it say that in the bible?); it is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and as this is a story about good and evil (of sorts), the street is named Apple Street
turtle: in Eastern mythology the turtle is good, in a lot of Western mythology it's bad, as such the turtle wasn't really intended to symbolize anything in and of itself, though...
star-shaped pattern on turtle's back: what's a five pointed star put inside a (roughly) circular shape? A PENTAGRAM!!! DUN DUN DUN

themes/subthemes--

the general idea is that love and faith (you could think of it as belief) must needs be tempered with justice/good judgment, or else they walk blind. and blind love and blind faith are quite scary to behold.

subideas that love/faith, WHEN combined w/justice/judgment, are extremely powerful as a whole and can achieve the seemingly impossible (i.e. miracles).

also that blind faith does not believe itself blind, and while the two think they can see they can't, actually, and end up doing more harm than good because they do not perceive correctly (the sea)

errrrrrr I think there's other subideas but they're all pretty similar so I'll stop here.

Comments

[skypemaster007.livejournal.com]

My thoughts:
The story concept was all right, not outstanding (for me, outstanding merits some twists in the storyline), but solid. The main theme of the story, that of blind faith and love, came through pretty clearly with the symbolism and references. Other than that, though, the auxiliary symbols and subthemes are either not picked up on (I actually didn't pick up on the apple reference till I read this), or don't have much to do with the story. The star on the turtle's back; well, unless the reader REALLY pays a lot of attention to details, I don't think a lot of people will pick up this reference to the devil.
Other than that, the story is solid and very well thought out, and personally I thought, rather touching for some reason. Kudos!

[chu-totoro.livejournal.com]

not everything is supposed to be picked up on the first go. that would be pretty boring, hey.

i still pick up things every time i reread clover.

'swhy not so sure about keeping this post open. more fun to notice things yourself, i think. this kind of spoils it.

[fwufferz.livejournal.com]

So the only reason I knew what Themis symbolized was because it used to be the name of my mom's company. >>;

I thought Vera was truth and I pretty much didn't know what Honey stood for. D:

Thus this was enlightening. Although I somewhat think "blind love and blind faith are quite scary to behold" didn't show through as much. Like it was more of just that blind faith + blind love didn't work than that they worked but terribly twistedly so. (terribly twisted -> The Monkey's Paw!)