![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kestrellSomeone on a list posted a question about the ending of this book, and I wanted to ask any of my friends who have read it what their thoughts are. My thoughts are posted beneath the cut.
I first read _Fire and Hemlock_ when I was about twelve, and I felt that, while the ending is ambiguous, it is intentionally ambiguous, because it needs to reflect the ambiguity of DWJ's kind of magic.
I've always thought it was just as much Polly who figures out the twist of the magic she is dealing with as much as Tom figures it out. Perhaps Tom understands it earlier, but he is bound by the magic not to tell Polly, so she figures it out during the transformations ordeal.
DWJ's magic is not a fairytale tame magic, it is always a wild magic which can rarely be entirely understood or controlled by humans. In _Fire and Hemlock_ in particular, the unspoken warning is that, if whatever you imagine or speak can take on form, you need to be very very careful about what you say, and even what you imagine, since speaking and imagining--which are both expressions of wishing-- can produce objects and events which can be just as much manifestations of one's shadowy subconscious as one's orderly superego. The faery queen is particularly adept at manipulating thoughtlessly-spoken and thoughtlessly-imagined wishes for her own ends (think of the fairy queen's magic as existing in the same neighborhood as the magic in "The Monkey's Paw"), so the safest path for Polly and Tom is to not allow their wishes to take over and give shape to something which the queen can turn against them. Additionally, because the twist is a manifestation of the magic and thus there is no expiration date on it being able to still turn against them, Polly, after she has rescued Tom at the end, still has to be very careful about how she imagines their relationship and even their futures will turn out, so she and Tom have a twisty conversation about the future of their relationship, without actually being able to say anything specific about either the future or their relationship.
At least, this has always been my interpretation of the ending, but DWJ's stories often possess a large amount of ambiguity, which is one of the things I love about them.
I first read _Fire and Hemlock_ when I was about twelve, and I felt that, while the ending is ambiguous, it is intentionally ambiguous, because it needs to reflect the ambiguity of DWJ's kind of magic.
I've always thought it was just as much Polly who figures out the twist of the magic she is dealing with as much as Tom figures it out. Perhaps Tom understands it earlier, but he is bound by the magic not to tell Polly, so she figures it out during the transformations ordeal.
DWJ's magic is not a fairytale tame magic, it is always a wild magic which can rarely be entirely understood or controlled by humans. In _Fire and Hemlock_ in particular, the unspoken warning is that, if whatever you imagine or speak can take on form, you need to be very very careful about what you say, and even what you imagine, since speaking and imagining--which are both expressions of wishing-- can produce objects and events which can be just as much manifestations of one's shadowy subconscious as one's orderly superego. The faery queen is particularly adept at manipulating thoughtlessly-spoken and thoughtlessly-imagined wishes for her own ends (think of the fairy queen's magic as existing in the same neighborhood as the magic in "The Monkey's Paw"), so the safest path for Polly and Tom is to not allow their wishes to take over and give shape to something which the queen can turn against them. Additionally, because the twist is a manifestation of the magic and thus there is no expiration date on it being able to still turn against them, Polly, after she has rescued Tom at the end, still has to be very careful about how she imagines their relationship and even their futures will turn out, so she and Tom have a twisty conversation about the future of their relationship, without actually being able to say anything specific about either the future or their relationship.
At least, this has always been my interpretation of the ending, but DWJ's stories often possess a large amount of ambiguity, which is one of the things I love about them.
