The Gathering
For this essay I’ll be dicussing about Indian(Frank) and Danny. The Gathering novel is about how five kids whom chose to fight against evil spreading around Cheshunt. These five kids need to win the battle against the Kraken but to do that they need to discover more about themselves. The warning that Lallindra(Lallie) told Indian to heed was,”only a wound brought into light can be healed. That which is hidden will in darkness fester.”
In the novel when Indian was seven Indian’s mother left him to look after his little sister Jenny. She was five. He was watching her play on some swings when some older kids came and started calling him names. Indian fought with them and won but while fighting he did not notice his sister had climbed to the top of the slide. She slipped and hit her head, she was in coma for a week and when she woke up Jenny wasn’t the same, she used to smile and laugh but now she doesn’t smile or look at you. Indian felt he killed her but her body was left behind. He never told his Mother about the truth of that day.
Indian feels guilty for not taking care of his little sister and not telling his Mother about the truth of what happened, now Indian does not fight back because he feels he deserve to be hurt he feels its his punishment. Indian’s guiltiness is a wound and when he brought it to light by telling his mom what happen, Indian’s mom forgave him and does not blame him for what happened to Jenny.
Danny Odin was a victim of police sodomy many years ago. Later the saying “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is aptly used in reference to the story, which involved police officers letting savage dogs loose on Danny to force him to give them information that was false. For a while after that he felt scared that a police could do anything to him and no one could do anything. He went mad for a while and he had to go to a sanitorium. The only reason he could come out was because he told them he made the whole thing up.
After that one of the police officers that had attacked him visit Danny’s school for a talk to improve citizen-authority relations, at the end of which the officer gave Danny a wink .Danny then realised nothing was going to make it right. Nothing made sense but survival and justice. Right and wrong, it was all lies that people made up.
This quote and the opinion expressed in it is somewhat jarring with the rest of the novel’s message, as it flatly denies the existence of both good and evil. The theory is, however, later rebuffed by the very same character that put it forward, as it doesn’t make sense in the context of the novel thought by Nathanial, “You could tell he really believed that but there was something wrong about what he was, saying. Something that didn’t jell.” And he thought of Lallie’s warning to Danny. She had told him not to let the dark flame of the past consume the future. That’s about right winning out over wrong.’ Danny told Nathanial. Danny has to forget the past.
The Gathering is more than novel triumph of good over evil, it is also a novel about self discovery. All the Chain members in The Gathering had expierienced terrible things that they need to over come to win the battle against the dark because everything that happen in Cheshunt is related to everything else because it come from a sort of core. The place where evil bruised earth. The earth that sorrows.
