Themes
Discrimination and prejudice are pervasive. There is the condescending English view of the Welsh and its corollary in the Welsh resentment of English money. There is the class divide, not only between a working class boy and richer children, but between a land-owning family and a businessman's family. There is the divide between the urban Welsh and the Welsh-speaking country people. The boy Gwyn speaks Welsh with local people as practise for examinations at school but his mother does not want him "speaking like a labourer". Gwyn's Welsh accent in English marks him as inferior in English eyes as well. Thus Garner creates conflict by bringing mismatched outlooks together, rather than from anyone's malice.
John Rowe Townsend cited the theme of ancient but living legend, which also appears in Garner's earlier books, saying that in this book "Garner added to his gift for absorbing old tales and retransmitting them with increased power a new grasp of the inward, emotional content of an incident or situation."
Another fellow reteller of Welsh material in English, Susan Cooper said that the novel can be called "true fantasy", "subtle and overwhelming". Penelope Farmer wrote, "I doubt if you could find any piece of realistic fiction for adolescents that says a quarter as much about adolescence as Alan Garner's The Owl Service.
Read more about this topic: The Owl Service
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)