Life rarely leaves us to deal with just one problem by itself. It seems to have little respect for singularity or tidiness!! For as this thing called ‘life’ dismantles some of our most familiar and trusted structures, then another ‘event ‘ often coinicides and we are left emotionallly and spiritually stranded, trying to re-orientate ourselves in a world whose words seem alien and disempowering. . When I first read David Almond’s novel The Savage I was immediately caught by his narrator’s early declaration about his hero the Savage:
‘He lived in a cave under the rooined chapel.’
Something about this choice of habitat resonated straight away. It immediately began to live on in my memory, like a recalled adventure. The phrase has a pulse- I can hear its truth somehow! For why should Blue’s fictional response to his grief about his father,involve his protagonist living in a cave under the ‘rooined chapel’? Because there is something intuitively right, something revelatory about the idea of a ‘rooined chapel’. There is something deeply and arrestingly romantic about such a place – even the misspelling serves to intensify the raw emotional impact of such a space. For if fiction mirrors life, then Blue’s instinctive realisation about the predicament of his character must originate from his very own experience, or more importantly perhaps his expereince of his experience. And thus Blue’s savage dwells in a place where the very architecture of ‘home’ has collapsed, suggesting that faith has been lost, degraded, or destroyed. Such a ‘home’ therefore invites some form of rebuilding and this is I feel what the novel attempts to do, through the healing activity of writing.
Blue’s sense of ‘home’ has been rocked by the sudden death of his beloved father and he feels disorientated, perhaps trapped within a ‘cave’ of sorrow and faithlessness, where his youth and vulnerability leave him exposed. Something has to happen to shift this physical and spiritual feeling of incarceration and hurt. The conventional advice from his counsellor makes him feel ‘stupid’, even worsens his condition and he makes a spontaneous decision to ‘scribble’ out something different, something ‘Savage’ , something unlawful and ironically his own.
Everything in this scribbled story however apparently accentuates the differences of the Savage’s situation from that of his creator Blue. Even the colour of the pictures are green, intimating a raw naturalness that communicates the feral, uncivilised life style of the Savage, whose ‘rooined chapel’ seems to stretch out beyond the physical limits of the building, embracing all that is beyond Blue’s regulated world. The Savage’s ‘freedom’ is a collage of natural images and elated words, which transmit a child like exuberance as well as intimating a lonely existence where ‘savage’ solitude is inescapable. Into such a world Blue places Hopper, the local bully who has brutally mocked Blue’s grief and even claimed some supernatural part in his father’s sudden death. When I first read this novel, I don’t think I recognised the impact of such a narrative choice on Blue’s part. when Moira pointed out the powerful significance of placing Hopper within Burgess’ Wood, a place which may be situated within the broader confines of the ‘rooined chapel’, then Blue’s father’s expressed certainty that Hopper is also a figure of pity, came back to me. Instinctively Blue knows that he cannot address his suffering without exploring the significance of Hopper in his world, as Hopper’s vengeful antipathy to Blue debilitates Blue and makes it imperative that something should be done about him. Writing is therefore a release and expression of Blue’s savagery about his father’s death and Hopper’s heartless exploitation of Blue’s sorrow.
What is unexpected of course, is the impact of Blue’s storytelling upon this negative relationship. Almond is making it very clear that the stories we tell about ourselves and others, have an enormous effect upon our lives. Stories shape and then reshape us. The ‘rooined chapel’ is a place where Blue’s story about his Savage meets the Savage’s story about Blue! I am not sure if this meeting is even just a reversal of the real. It seems powerfully congruent and deeply satisfying. It rebuilds our faith in the imagination and elevates the story to a sacred level in a way, for the Savage’s pictorial narrative of Blue and is family exists in the cave-chapel, illuminated by the Savage’s light , made out of a ‘burning branch’ which reveals that which had been hidden but not lost within this world of the apparently ‘rooined chapel.’ But I am leaping ahead of myself with my enthusiasm for this tale. Let me return to the interloper Hopper and find out what he is doing in this place.
When I gaze at the images of Hopper ‘wanderin’ in the wood I am struck by the hollow-eyed, ‘grim reaper’ like aspect to his representation. I also wonder why Hopper is actually there, by himself, ‘wanderin’ in this place, suggesting he needs tiem and space for solitude, for escape and reflection. And if this place is an extension of the ‘roooined chapel’ then is Hopper ‘just’ a violating interloper or is there something else going on?