Ghost’s Child Essay
Feather made the right choice, he should not have stayed with Maddy. Intro: Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child reveals the mystifying story of Matilda’s remarkable journey up the mountain of life. Even though the departure of Feather pained Maddy emotionally, the overall outcome significantly boosted her emotional strength and confidence. Feather loved Maddy so much, but he knew he couldn’t change, so he had to do what was best for Maddy in order for her to be happy. The loss of Feather as well as the Fay encouraged Maddy to embark on many new adventures.
At the end of Matilda’s glorious journey of life, she was, truly, happy. BP1: All Feather wanted was for Maddy to be happy, and the only way that was possible was to free her from herself by leaving her and letting her go. Maddy had thought that because of all the times he crept off to the beach, and to be with just the water and sand, that “Feather didn’t care” about her, but it was not her, it was that Maddy was “less important than this strange, mysterious summoning thing”. Feather knew he couldn’t change his lifestyle to live with Maddy, and if he didn’t, he would continue to hurt her inside.
The only way to satisfy them both was to leave. It was not the fact that Feather could not change for Maddy, but that he could not change enough for Maddy. Feather is willing to do anything for Maddy to “make her happy”. Even when he says that “it makes no difference” to him, it actually does, and he knows that if he does “move to the desert” with Maddy, they won’t be able to live happily together because of Feathers urge to get back to his old life. Maddy was holding Feather back by making him more civilized and changing him to be the opposite of the person she fell in love with.
After living with Feather for quite a while, Maddy “still called him Feather, but it was easy to forget why” because of the new clothes she made him wear and his hair was washed and looked smart, and he had just lost the “strange smoky shimmer that swam from him” like the sun reflecting off a gold fish, in clear blue water. This shows that Feather left Maddy, not only to help her be happy, but also to let himself be happy. BP2: When Feather left Maddy, he freed her from the windowless “box” inside her head, and enabled her to live life without worrying about love or oss, and as a result Maddy proceeded to have many great experiences that heavily influenced her life. The loss of Feather strived Maddy to actually do something with her life, rather than dwelling on all of the bad things that have happened. Whether Feather meant to or not, he enabled Maddy to fight for what she wanted, and actually do the things she wanted to do right now. The “island of stillness” gave Maddy many new experiences and helped her learn a lot from them. The most vital thing that Maddy learns on the island is that “love is not the strongest or most important thing in the world”.
She accepted the fact that she had lost the Fay, and now was losing Feather. After learning this she can properly move on with her life and leave Feather and all their memories together in the past. Maddy going to help with the war was a very significant experience as it gave her the epiphany that she wanted to be an eye doctor for the remainder of her career. She was inspired by the fact that the blind injured men in the war had lost the biggest thing of all, “they had lost the sight of beautiful things”.
This tells us that one bad experience, can often lead to several good life changing experiences BP3: In the end, all of Matilda’s great journeys and adventures love and loss, finally enabled her to accept that the loss of Feather did help her learn to be happy. Love can be brutal and leave you injured, but eventually we learn that we can move past this and learn from our experiences to help us become wiser more knowledgeable. Through all the amazing good times, and the ever-lasting bad times, all Matilda’s memories made up an overall happy life.
After the island of stillness and the war, Maddy was living her perfect life, a job she wanted to do and nothing to worry about. It is strange to think of the outcome if she was still living with Feather, and if she would be doing what she was doing now. In the end, all alone “Matilda was standing on the mountain top, and looking back along the path she’d walked and she was satisfied with what she saw. ” Feather leaving, not only hurt Maddy, but more importantly it taught her valuable lessons in life and gave her many amazing experiences.
Sonya Hartnett was trying to explain that love can give you as much pain as it does happiness and to really experience great love, you must first experience the bad times as well as the good. Even if something bad does happen and you end up losing the one thing you love most, you must accept the fact that it has happened and that you cannot change it, and use it as a learning experience. No matter what happens, you have to learn to move on and enjoy all of the good things in life. As Matilda’s eyes saw the last things they would ever see, “on her face were the remnants of a smile”.
