Later Chapters and Whole Novel: Winter and Spring

[BDonnelly]

There's been so much talk of Stephan and how he didn't get what was coming to him or should have come to him.  And, I've been thinking about that.  I wonder if Stephan is the human embodiment of how tough and harsh the times were then.  We see how tough, cruel and punishing the weather is and mother nature with her fire.  And Stephan shows us how tough, cruel, and punishing people can be. 

I know this is a week early but I had an inspired thought for his casting - Tom Cruise.  Most of us already don't like him and this would be a great character for him to play because it would give more history to the audience's dislike for him.

[BDonnelly]

Sunltcloud-

OK!  Maybe Barnes and Noble should sell an alternate version of the book with your ending.  It could be for tragedy challenged individuals. You should write when you can't sleep.  A real book I mean, not a post. 

[Deltadawn]

I loved the interpretation too!

[Zeal]

Interesting thoughts!  I wonder if Shandi would agree.

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

Well, you see, Kathy, this is what happens next:

Lesya cleans and cooks for the priest and eventually is part of the church choir that becomes famous and tours the world. Lesya is their vocalist, has an operation on her foot (this is 10 or 15 years later) and turns into a hauntingly beautiful young woman. Many years after that she runs into Katya and finds out that her aunt is very ill. She visits Maria who lives in B.C. and the two are able to put the past to rest. Lesya stays for the funeral and pays for the gravestone.

Petro takes over Josyp's farm (I don't think Josyp has children or they moved to the city) and becomes a respectable citizen in the community. But he never quite gets over his father's desertion and when he runs into him in town and his father begs him for money, (Stefan has deteriorated quite a bit) he relives all the bitterness he once felt, but hands him a few coins anyway. Then he secretly follows his father (the way he did when he was a little boy) and when he sees him bragging to other drunks in the bar, he shoots through the window and kills his father. He is arrested and goes to jail. After six months of confinement he hangs himself.

Myron becomes a successful farmer. He stays single, lives with his mother until her death. He never kills another rabbit.

Dania marries, gives Maria her first grandchild. When her husband dies of cancer she buys two sewing machines and opens a dress shop with her sister Sofia. Unfortunately Sofia only wants to try on clothes but isn't much of a seamstress. Dania does all the work while Sofia charms the married men who come into the store to buy dresses for their wives.

Katya is the first one to go to college. She becomes a teacher. On a flight to Nova Scotia she sits next to a a filmmaker named Shandi Mitchell and tells her the family tragedy. Shandi Mitchell writes a book about Katya's family. The book becomes a bestseller. Katya is inspired, quits her teaching job, becomes a screenwriter, writes the script for the movie. She donates all the royalties to her church.

Ivan hates farming; at the age of seventeen he moves to a coastal city and hires on as a deckhand. He is the only one who goes back to the old country where he falls in love with a Ukrainian girl named Oxana.

Little Maxim loves all animals, but mostly he is intrigued by coyotes; he becomes a researcher into their changing dietary habits. Living alone in a cabin for several months one early spring he listens to them bark at night and feels as if they are calling him. One night he staggers out into the prairie after drinking too much moonshine. He stumbles and falls against the crumbling edge of a stone wall and loses consciousness. The coyotes come, surround him, sniff and howl. One of the females licks his hand. She keeps the others from tearing him apart. She watches over him until dawn. When he comes to he has a strange sensation. He thinks that he had heard the coyote talk to him.

"Your father was a good man," she said. "I wish you could have met him." Then she pushes away the snow that still covers some of the dirt. She fills her mouth with the dark soil and chews.

Later Maxim writes into his notebook. "I observed a pregnant female eat dirt." Then he pours the last of the moonshine out the window into the snowbank behind the cabin. 

---

KathyS wrote:

Gisela, you're right...life isn't always fair.  Life isn't all tied up with a fancy bow, and smelling good.  We all wanted Stefan to get his just desserts, but it was profoundly smart of Shandi to leave all of these loose ends...giving the reader much to think about, and comtemplate as to the outcome of all of these characters.  Who knows, Stefan may show up as the villain, again, and raise havoc until someone DOES do him in!  Hopefully the police!  Or he may wander in a snow storm, and turn up as a popsicle.....Or he may just die from the obvious, drink.  Whatever happens, I hope the scumbag leaves his kids alone!!

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

IMHO. Life isn't fair. And the job of the writer of a novel is not, to create happy endings, but to distill the essence of reality into a work of art. Mission accomplished.

---

aprilh wrote:

---

ethel55 wrote:

With all the death at the end, I don't know if I thought it just that Stefan got to just run off...

We had been seeing cracks in Anna's mind since the beginning of the story, her affinity for the wolves was worrying, but I sure didn't see that coming.

I think with Myron's help, the family will be able to resettle and perhaps farm again.

---

I agree. Stefan shouldn't have been left unharmed. In my opinion, he was the one who started this whole mess. He raped and abused his wife to the point where she was only a shell of her former self. She could barely function on her own let alone take care of her children. Stefan also started the feud between Anna and Teodor over the land, making her sign letters saying she never agreed to let Teodor stay on the land. Then one night he just up and leaves. Granted I'm glad he was out of the picture, but having nothing happen to him just doesn't seem fair after we learn what happens to the baby, Anna and Teodor.

---

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---

[retromom]

I have to say that I haven't had a book stick with me for this long in a long time. I find myself thinking about these characters several times during the day. I like how the ending is making me think about what might have happened next. How things could have been different. I am almost haunted by the characters. The story is so well written. I have been telling everyone I know that is a must read book.

When Lesya killed Happiness I was shocked. It broke my heart to think she had been driven to the point of killing something she loved so much. I think something in her just snapped and at the moment she felt that is what she needed to do.

I think Teodor felt he needed to kill Anna partly to free her from herself and partly for revenge for killing her baby. Maybe he wanted to make sure she wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else and in the end would be released from her inner pain. Teodor didn't have anything to lose because I think he knew he wasn't going to go back to prison. He was going to kill himself. He couldn't imagine spending more time in prison. He also freed Maria from having to take care and deal with Anna.

I wonder if Maria didn't take in Lesya and Petro because she could see the same pattern happening between the two sets of children. Maybe she was worried history would repeat itself or that the boys would have conflicts between them. Petro seems to favor Stefan and Ivan and Myron seem to favor Teodor. I don't think these boys could have lived together without issues after all that had happened. Especially after Petro turned Teodor into the police. Maria really didn't have a choice but to let Anna's children go to other homes. It was in the best interest of all involved.

This is by far the best First Look book I have read. I too have had a hard time trying to read another book. I guess I'm just not ready to move on from this story yet. I think that says alot for this book. It is one of the best books I have read in along time.

[literature]

Immortal-Spirit wrote:

Stefan was right in one thing. Leaving was the best thing he could ever do. 

---

Yes,  that's a question I've had for the group, too. Was stealing the family's money and bolting without a goodbye the best thing Stefan did in this whole novel?

____________________________________________________________________________________

The one good thing Stephan did was to leave, even with stealing the family's money.  What bothered me the most about Stephan was the way he looked at Lesya and even Dania.  I was just waiting for him to rape one of them.  He watched Lesya too closely when she brushed her hair.  "He twirls a tress around his fingers, slowly slips down the length."  "His breath is always deep and labored."  Lesya sleeps fully clothed and up against the wall and makes Petro sleep on the edge of the bed.  She lays in the bed with her arms folded across her chest and her legs crossed, fighting sleep when Stephan is around in order to protect herself from him.  Right before he leaves, he goes over to her while she is (supposedly) sleeping and starts tracing the outline of her legs.  Lesya is afraid of Tato.  She wishes he never came back.  She does everything right so not to upset him.

Stephan wonders how it has all gone so wrong.  Looking at his daughter reminds him that he is getting old.  He feels "imprisoned  in these four walls.  Unable to to move.  Unable to breathe.  Unable to be a man."   He feels that he is an officer, a man of discipline.  A man in control.  He also feels he is a good man, a good father...this, of course, his his own opinion of himself.   He had no love for Anna and didn't care anything about his children.  Only came back to her to get the land, sell it and then have money to buy land and sell it back to the railroad company when the railroad come through.  The only thing Stephan cared about was Stephan.  

He came back to be a gentleman farmer, hire hands to do his work.  Get enough money from the fields to get back into town.  He felt that he was worse off now than before.  He knows that there's nothing for him to get from the land now because there's no one left to work it.  He blamed everything on Theo.  Thought he would be off the land by now, sell the homestead for two hundred dollars plus at least 500 hundred dollars of improvements and he would have a whole new life.  New clothes.  A house in town.  Poker tables.  And girls.  He got tired of the letters.  He didn't count on Theo fighting back.  He couldn't keep the stories straight.  The government didn't believe he did the work and called his bluff.  They'd want 6 more acres farmed next year.  He didn't start this to become a farmer.

Stephan summed it up very nicely to Petro when he said "This life ain't fit for an animal."

So you ask is stealing the family's money and bolting without a goodbye the best thing Stephan did in this whole novel.  Y-E-S !!!

[KathyS]

Gisela, you made me cry, all over again!  May I keep your story?

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

Well, you see, Kathy, this is what happens next:

Lesya cleans and cooks for the priest and eventually is part of the church choir that becomes famous and tours the world. Lesya is their vocalist, has an operation on her foot (this is 10 or 15 years later) and turns into a hauntingly beautiful young woman. Many years after that she runs into Katya and finds out that her aunt is very ill. She visits Maria who lives in B.C. and the two are able to put the past to rest. Lesya stays for the funeral and pays for the gravestone.

Petro takes over Josyp's farm (I don't think Josyp has children or they moved to the city) and becomes a respectable citizen in the community. But he never quite gets over his father's desertion and when he runs into him in town and his father begs him for money, (Stefan has deteriorated quite a bit) he relives all the bitterness he once felt, but hands him a few coins anyway. Then he secretly follows his father (the way he did when he was a little boy) and when he sees him bragging to other drunks in the bar, he shoots through the window and kills his father. He is arrested and goes to jail. After six months of confinement he hangs himself.

Myron becomes a successful farmer. He stays single, lives with his mother until her death. He never kills another rabbit.

Dania marries, gives Maria her first grandchild. When her husband dies of cancer she buys two sewing machines and opens a dress shop with her sister Sofia. Unfortunately Sofia only wants to try on clothes but isn't much of a seamstress. Dania does all the work while Sofia charms the married men who come into the store to buy dresses for their wives.

Katya is the first one to go to college. She becomes a teacher. On a flight to Nova Scotia she sits next to a a filmmaker named Shandi Mitchell and tells her the family tragedy. Shandi Mitchell writes a book about Katya's family. The book becomes a bestseller. Katya is inspired, quits her teaching job, becomes a screenwriter, writes the script for the movie. She donates all the royalties to her church.

Ivan hates farming; at the age of seventeen he moves to a coastal city and hires on as a deckhand. He is the only one who goes back to the old country where he falls in love with a Ukrainian girl named Oxana.

Little Maxim loves all animals, but mostly he is intrigued by coyotes; he becomes a researcher into their changing dietary habits. Living alone in a cabin for several months one early spring he listens to them bark at night and feels as if they are calling him. One night he staggers out into the prairie after drinking too much moonshine. He stumbles and falls against the crumbling edge of a stone wall and loses consciousness. The coyotes come, surround him, sniff and howl. One of the females licks his hand. She keeps the others from tearing him apart. She watches over him until dawn. When he comes to he has a strange sensation. He thinks that he had heard the coyote talk to him.

"Your father was a good man," she said. "I wish you could have met him." Then she pushes away the snow that still covers some of the dirt. She fills her mouth with the dark soil and chews.

Later Maxim writes into his notebook. "I observed a pregnant female eat dirt." Then he pours the last of the moonshine out the window into the snowbank behind the cabin. 

---

KathyS wrote:

Gisela, you're right...life isn't always fair.  Life isn't all tied up with a fancy bow, and smelling good.  We all wanted Stefan to get his just desserts, but it was profoundly smart of Shandi to leave all of these loose ends...giving the reader much to think about, and comtemplate as to the outcome of all of these characters.  Who knows, Stefan may show up as the villain, again, and raise havoc until someone DOES do him in!  Hopefully the police!  Or he may wander in a snow storm, and turn up as a popsicle.....Or he may just die from the obvious, drink.  Whatever happens, I hope the scumbag leaves his kids alone!!

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

IMHO. Life isn't fair. And the job of the writer of a novel is not, to create happy endings, but to distill the essence of reality into a work of art. Mission accomplished.

---

aprilh wrote:

---

ethel55 wrote:

With all the death at the end, I don't know if I thought it just that Stefan got to just run off...

We had been seeing cracks in Anna's mind since the beginning of the story, her affinity for the wolves was worrying, but I sure didn't see that coming.

I think with Myron's help, the family will be able to resettle and perhaps farm again.

---

I agree. Stefan shouldn't have been left unharmed. In my opinion, he was the one who started this whole mess. He raped and abused his wife to the point where she was only a shell of her former self. She could barely function on her own let alone take care of her children. Stefan also started the feud between Anna and Teodor over the land, making her sign letters saying she never agreed to let Teodor stay on the land. Then one night he just up and leaves. Granted I'm glad he was out of the picture, but having nothing happen to him just doesn't seem fair after we learn what happens to the baby, Anna and Teodor.

---

---

[Sunltcloud]

 KathyS,

As I told Ms. Mitchell, the story came via Anna's ghost and is unreliable at best. At worst it will send me to the grain bin and make me inhale grain dust. I think that is the usual punishment for take-over of characters. They call it: the plagiarism reward. If you caugh often enough you'll get rid of the dust, (and the alien characters) but you'll never forget the experience.  (Plagiarism - so heavy a word, I had to look it up in my dog-eared demoted Webster's College Dictionary. I didn't want the spell-checker to go on record.)

But the answer is yes, you may keep the story.

---

KathyS wrote:

Gisela, you made me cry, all over again!  May I keep your story?

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

Well, you see, Kathy, this is what happens next:

Lesya cleans and cooks for the priest and eventually is part of the church choir that becomes famous and tours the world. Lesya is their vocalist, has an operation on her foot (this is 10 or 15 years later) and turns into a hauntingly beautiful young woman. Many years after that she runs into Katya and finds out that her aunt is very ill. She visits Maria who lives in B.C. and the two are able to put the past to rest. Lesya stays for the funeral and pays for the gravestone.

Petro takes over Josyp's farm (I don't think Josyp has children or they moved to the city) and becomes a respectable citizen in the community. But he never quite gets over his father's desertion and when he runs into him in town and his father begs him for money, (Stefan has deteriorated quite a bit) he relives all the bitterness he once felt, but hands him a few coins anyway. Then he secretly follows his father (the way he did when he was a little boy) and when he sees him bragging to other drunks in the bar, he shoots through the window and kills his father. He is arrested and goes to jail. After six months of confinement he hangs himself.

Myron becomes a successful farmer. He stays single, lives with his mother until her death. He never kills another rabbit.

Dania marries, gives Maria her first grandchild. When her husband dies of cancer she buys two sewing machines and opens a dress shop with her sister Sofia. Unfortunately Sofia only wants to try on clothes but isn't much of a seamstress. Dania does all the work while Sofia charms the married men who come into the store to buy dresses for their wives.

Katya is the first one to go to college. She becomes a teacher. On a flight to Nova Scotia she sits next to a a filmmaker named Shandi Mitchell and tells her the family tragedy. Shandi Mitchell writes a book about Katya's family. The book becomes a bestseller. Katya is inspired, quits her teaching job, becomes a screenwriter, writes the script for the movie. She donates all the royalties to her church.

Ivan hates farming; at the age of seventeen he moves to a coastal city and hires on as a deckhand. He is the only one who goes back to the old country where he falls in love with a Ukrainian girl named Oxana.

Little Maxim loves all animals, but mostly he is intrigued by coyotes; he becomes a researcher into their changing dietary habits. Living alone in a cabin for several months one early spring he listens to them bark at night and feels as if they are calling him. One night he staggers out into the prairie after drinking too much moonshine. He stumbles and falls against the crumbling edge of a stone wall and loses consciousness. The coyotes come, surround him, sniff and howl. One of the females licks his hand. She keeps the others from tearing him apart. She watches over him until dawn. When he comes to he has a strange sensation. He thinks that he had heard the coyote talk to him.

"Your father was a good man," she said. "I wish you could have met him." Then she pushes away the snow that still covers some of the dirt. She fills her mouth with the dark soil and chews.

Later Maxim writes into his notebook. "I observed a pregnant female eat dirt." Then he pours the last of the moonshine out the window into the snowbank behind the cabin. 

---

KathyS wrote:

Gisela, you're right...life isn't always fair.  Life isn't all tied up with a fancy bow, and smelling good.  We all wanted Stefan to get his just desserts, but it was profoundly smart of Shandi to leave all of these loose ends...giving the reader much to think about, and comtemplate as to the outcome of all of these characters.  Who knows, Stefan may show up as the villain, again, and raise havoc until someone DOES do him in!  Hopefully the police!  Or he may wander in a snow storm, and turn up as a popsicle.....Or he may just die from the obvious, drink.  Whatever happens, I hope the scumbag leaves his kids alone!!

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

IMHO. Life isn't fair. And the job of the writer of a novel is not, to create happy endings, but to distill the essence of reality into a work of art. Mission accomplished.

---

aprilh wrote:

---

ethel55 wrote:

With all the death at the end, I don't know if I thought it just that Stefan got to just run off...

We had been seeing cracks in Anna's mind since the beginning of the story, her affinity for the wolves was worrying, but I sure didn't see that coming.

I think with Myron's help, the family will be able to resettle and perhaps farm again.

---

I agree. Stefan shouldn't have been left unharmed. In my opinion, he was the one who started this whole mess. He raped and abused his wife to the point where she was only a shell of her former self. She could barely function on her own let alone take care of her children. Stefan also started the feud between Anna and Teodor over the land, making her sign letters saying she never agreed to let Teodor stay on the land. Then one night he just up and leaves. Granted I'm glad he was out of the picture, but having nothing happen to him just doesn't seem fair after we learn what happens to the baby, Anna and Teodor.

---

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---

[MSaff]

What is your impression of the land offices and officers that write the letters discussing Theo and Anna's dispute? What is their interpretation of this story?

  First of all, I found that the officials in the land offices appeared to be of the mind, that who cares what these people are going through, or how they feel.  The officials are only doing the minimum to protect their jobs.  No investigations are being conducted and they don’t appear to care in any case.

In this heartbreaking chapter, we see, first Lesya, then Anna, then Theo break down and kill. Can you talk about what has driven each of them to do it? How is it possible that they are each capable of it? Are they each aware of what they are doing?

  This chapter brought this story to its climax.  Throughout the novel, I have felt that each character was product of their environment.  They treated others as they felt they had been treated and only acted in order to protect themselves.  Lesya could only control her chicken Happiness and when everything came tumbling down around her in her life, she, Lesya, lashed out at the only thing that truly loved her and depended on her.  Obviously, her mother, nor father cared enough about her, Petro; her brother appeared to treat her as his father did, in order to be like him.  The saying like father, like son, comes to mind here. 

  I could see Anna striking out and killing her newborn, well before she was born.  It was obvious to me that she was attempting to terminate the pregnancy from the start and would have done anything/everything to succeed in destroying the child.  I did however, feel for a brief moment, following the birth, that Anna would come around, but because of Anna’s fear that Stefan might return, Anna resorted to her non caring ways be leaving the child out knowing that she would not survive the cold, not to say the coyotes. 

Now as for Teodor, I found him as a man who had reached and been pushed beyond his breaking point.  All through the novel, he was trying to provide for his family, and at every turn, something blocked his way or completed disrupted his plans.  Once Stefan pressures Anna to sign the letters against Teodor, it is all over. 

After Teodor found the baby, be the stonewall, he knew that Anna had given birth and had completely lost her mind, but at that point, Teodor broke and blamed her for everything that had happened.  Even though Petro, was the one who informed the police of the liquor hidden behind the picture, he blamed Anna for alerting the Police, and could not think about leaving his family for another year in prison.  This was Teodors’ breaking point and he shot Anna in a vengeful rage.  Afterward, he took his own life, which I may add, did surprise me.

Do you feel you have any sense for the possible outcome of any of the surviving characters? Is there anyone you might make a prediction for?

  As for a sense of outcome for the surviving characters, my thought, and it is just my thought, is that they will live out the remaining years of their lives in obscurity.  They will continue to farm, but obviously, they will not be anywhere near this location.  Myron, is the one character I see growing and developing in his father’s footsteps.  He appears to be a kind yet strong person.  I think that he will continue on and start his own family, someplace else.

[KathyS]

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Wisteria-L wrote:

 Immortal Spirit said........

---

Maria and the children will survive. Their shame is already putting a stain on the family when Maria writes in the bible that Teodor died of the flu. Myron has had to grow up way too fast already, but knowing his father was coming back. Now, this time it's different.  He is truly the man of the house and will have to help raise his brothers and sisters.

---

I agree with you when you said Maria is putting a stain on the family when she writes in the Bible that Teodor died of the flu.  I suppose she wanted to save their future stigmata, however this demonstrates a paradox to her actions in the book.  Her personality as everyone points out has been the caregiver, the concerned and loyal wife, the caring sister in law the mother, the Christian. Even after Anna betrayed Teodor it reminded me of Judas  Jesus. Maria could not desert Anna or the children. She stepped up to Teodor and gave him an ultimatum. She had so much faith in the future of the family.

It must be that in the end, Maria felt that the survival of the family was more important than the sin of covering up the truth of Teodor's suicide. 

---

I think you're right, in this statement.  I was trying to decipher the word 'lie'.  Everyone will always have a different view of what that word means.  There is the "Black" lie.  The obvious one.  The "White" lie.  The one that protects someone else.  The lie by Omission.  The one that is never voiced, but understood to lead in another direction, if found out later.

In the voice of its sin, a lie is dealt with within the heart of the person who commits any one of these lies.  But, there are a dozen reasons and excusses we will give for committing them.  Maria's lie, when writing in the Bible the untruth about Teodor's death, was a combination of all three lies.  And the possiblity that she prayed about it first, asking permission and forgiveness, is not written.  In all sin, it only exists between God and mortal mankind.

[KathyS]

Gisela,

I love and thank you for your mind, and your sense of humor. 

I don't view this as plagiarism, it's only our minds taking the twists and turns of these characters into the future, that most of us don't have the skill to write down.  But a collaboration, none the less....You voiced what I wanted, and also saw.  Again, not easy to read these heartbreaks, but so true to life's experiences.  The joy is what I came away with.

Thank you,

Kathy S.

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

 KathyS,

As I told Ms. Mitchell, the story came via Anna's ghost and is unreliable at best. At worst it will send me to the grain bin and make me inhale grain dust. I think that is the usual punishment for take-over of characters. They call it: the plagiarism reward. If you cough often enough you'll get rid of the dust, (and the alien characters) but you'll never forget the experience.  (Plagiarism - so heavy a word, I had to look it up in my dog-eared demoted Webster's College Dictionary. I didn't want the spell-checker to go on record.)

But the answer is yes, you may keep the story.

---

KathyS wrote:

Gisela, you made me cry, all over again!  May I keep your story?

---

---

[KathyS]

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

Kathy,

here is what I think about Lesya and the chicken episode.

The episode begins with Lesya taking care of her mother, cleaning up the baby, tidying the house, planning for the next day's meal. She isn't angry, "she just can't summon up the energy to care."

Everybody else is asleep. "She can't feel herself at all." As she walks through the snow her leg quivers, and she tries to stop the tremor. She feels panic. She ducks inside the coop, the only place she feels safe. She calms her leg, but then her whole body begins to tremble.

A child of ten in the midst of a panic attack. A lonely child with too much responsibility resting on her trembling body. All the bottled up emotional pain is manifesting itself as physically. And then, the hen, her counterpart, "bobs and coos, overjoyed by Lesya's surprise arrival." Happiness is "dancing to music only it can hear." At this particular moment the hen is a frivolous, insensitive being that does not care about Lesya's condition. To add insult to injury, the hen breaks the eggs in the other hen's nest, the very food Lesya is planning to use the next day.

I think several things happen in Lesya's mind. 1.There is fear. 2. There is the after-effect of having witnessed the birth  (which, I'm sure she doesn't quite understand but had to handle.) 3. There is lack of control over her own body. And so she takes control of the hen's body.

I never once thought she is angry with her mother. I think she is angry with herself. I think in Lesya's mind Happiness is Lesya. But a Lesya who ignores the serious side of life, who dances and is careless with other chickens eggs and other people's lives (food supply), who must be taught a lesson.

She tells the chicken: "Look at you. Look how ugly you are. Useless." She might as well have said that to herself.

And the last dance the chicken will ever dance is the one it dances headless, "its wings flapping, its body tripping over its crooked foot."

Lesya is too young to understand any of her own actions. She is too young to cut off her own foot. Her inner rage turns against herself in the form of the chicken.

I wonder if, for a brief moment, Lesya sees herself tripping over her own foot? I wonder if this is a precursor to suicide? The killing of a stand-in in lieu of understanding enough of life to do away with herself?

---

kpatton wrote:

While reading some of the responses in this thread, I have two questions for the group.

Could Lesya's killing of Happiness be metaphorical for her inability to do anything to her mother?  Anna was someone who didn't want either or her children, Happiness wouldn't lay eggs.  Does Lesya know that Anna has tried to kill her unborn child as Happiness breaks the eggs of the other chickens?  The fact that Lesya killed Happiness and then didn't use the chicken for food had to mean something more than just being practical that she had a chicken that didn't lay and was breaking eggs.

Second question.  I was surprised and saddened that Maria didn't take Lesya and Petra into her family.  After all of the time the past two years while Teodor was in prison that she cared for them as if they were her own, and now she abandoned them.  Was anyone else surprised about this?

Kathy

---

---

I also wondered why Lesya hadn't salvage the chicken for food, but I do believe that it was all meant to be metaphorically viewed as loss.

She wasn't thinking beyond that moment.  I knew Lesya viewed her weaknesses, the same as Happiness had...and was taking it out on Happiness, replacing Happiness with death.  Something gave, when Lesya lost that happiness in herself.  She hated the thought that anything, or anyone, couldn't view her weaknesses at that time, and sympathize. We all looked at her beyond her years.  She needed love, she needed understanding, she needed to be cared for.  Her chicken wasn't echoing her thoughts.   It was a death that could have been a precursor to her own.  I worried about this.  Self-destruction. 

[babzilla41]

---

KathyS wrote:

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

Kathy,

here is what I think about Lesya and the chicken episode.

The episode begins with Lesya taking care of her mother, cleaning up the baby, tidying the house, planning for the next day's meal. She isn't angry, "she just can't summon up the energy to care."

Everybody else is asleep. "She can't feel herself at all." As she walks through the snow her leg quivers, and she tries to stop the tremor. She feels panic. She ducks inside the coop, the only place she feels safe. She calms her leg, but then her whole body begins to tremble.

A child of ten in the midst of a panic attack. A lonely child with too much responsibility resting on her trembling body. All the bottled up emotional pain is manifesting itself as physically. And then, the hen, her counterpart, "bobs and coos, overjoyed by Lesya's surprise arrival." Happiness is "dancing to music only it can hear." At this particular moment the hen is a frivolous, insensitive being that does not care about Lesya's condition. To add insult to injury, the hen breaks the eggs in the other hen's nest, the very food Lesya is planning to use the next day.

I think several things happen in Lesya's mind. 1.There is fear. 2. There is the after-effect of having witnessed the birth  (which, I'm sure she doesn't quite understand but had to handle.) 3. There is lack of control over her own body. And so she takes control of the hen's body.

I never once thought she is angry with her mother. I think she is angry with herself. I think in Lesya's mind Happiness is Lesya. But a Lesya who ignores the serious side of life, who dances and is careless with other chickens eggs and other people's lives (food supply), who must be taught a lesson.

She tells the chicken: "Look at you. Look how ugly you are. Useless." She might as well have said that to herself.

And the last dance the chicken will ever dance is the one it dances headless, "its wings flapping, its body tripping over its crooked foot."

Lesya is too young to understand any of her own actions. She is too young to cut off her own foot. Her inner rage turns against herself in the form of the chicken.

I wonder if, for a brief moment, Lesya sees herself tripping over her own foot? I wonder if this is a precursor to suicide? The killing of a stand-in in lieu of understanding enough of life to do away with herself?

---

kpatton wrote:

While reading some of the responses in this thread, I have two questions for the group.

Could Lesya's killing of Happiness be metaphorical for her inability to do anything to her mother?  Anna was someone who didn't want either or her children, Happiness wouldn't lay eggs.  Does Lesya know that Anna has tried to kill her unborn child as Happiness breaks the eggs of the other chickens?  The fact that Lesya killed Happiness and then didn't use the chicken for food had to mean something more than just being practical that she had a chicken that didn't lay and was breaking eggs.

Second question.  I was surprised and saddened that Maria didn't take Lesya and Petra into her family.  After all of the time the past two years while Teodor was in prison that she cared for them as if they were her own, and now she abandoned them.  Was anyone else surprised about this?

Kathy

---

---

I also wondered why Lesya hadn't salvage the chicken for food, but I do believe that it was all meant to be metaphorically viewed as loss.

She wasn't thinking beyond that moment.  I knew Lesya viewed her weaknesses, the same as Happiness had...and was taking it out on Happiness, replacing Happiness with death.  Something gave, when Lesya lost that happiness in herself.  She hated the thought that anything, or anyone, couldn't view her weaknesses at that time, and sympathize. We all looked at her beyond her years.  She needed love, she needed understanding, she needed to be cared for.  Her chicken wasn't echoing her thoughts.   It was a death that could have been a precursor to her own.  I worried about this.  Self-destruction. 

---

I also think that Happiness let Lesya down by breaking the eggs (after all she had done for him; after how she had rescued and protected him)- that was the final straw for Lesya.  No matter how hard she tried, how much she loved him, how good she was to him, it still wasn't enough - which is how she felt about her own life.  She did everything she possibly could for her mother, father and brother and it just wasn't enough.  There was no love - only fear of tomorrow.  So sad for poor Lesya - she was so easy to love.

[KathyS]

---

Wisteria-L wrote:

I loved this book on so many levels because it was a story of the lives of people who are not perfect. Life is not perfect, and most family holiday gatherings will show how difficult getting together to socialize in a happy, non-stressed social event can be.

Shandi has written a story of what can happen when the extremes of those minor disagreements fester and continue unresolved.  In this story, who was to blame?  The eventuality was that no one really communicated, or loved each other enough as family to put the family (extended) first. I would have to say, the only one that did this was Maria, to the point as I mentioned before and so did Immortal Spirit, that she covered up for her brother. 

I knew from the beginning this was going to be a solemn book that would make us look at family. It was the picture and the description that said....

---

"Within three years, this farm will be foreclosed. Two years later, one will die. Two others, of whom there is no photograph, will be murdered."

---

I also knew because as I said before, Shandi used the stark contrast of color a lot. 

Black, White and then red. Red often symbolic of blood. 

There was the blood from the mice in the beginning, blood from the rabbits...

If you reread the section about the photograph the only color they mention is white and they are all smiles. So that is the beginning before all the turmoil began. But it ended in a bath of red blood. 

The last line of the book is 

"The children sway to its roll, their eyes fixed on the graying house and the prairies unfolding between them. "

I think the graying symbolizes a new start, the past is blurred....a combination of the stark black and white of the past. The are looking at the prairies unfolding...opening up creating distance between them. I see a hopeful future for this family where the fighting and evil will be gone from their lives. 

Just a different way to look at it. I see hope and bright light in the prairie grasses. 

---

Wisteria,

I love how you've actually analyized color in this story. 

For the most part, I'm an emotional reader.  But, I can take all that is said and break it down, picking it to its minutest degree.  But, in saying that [with this novel],  it had so much to say, by just feeling it;  I had to leave some of this discussion alone, just too much emotion for me to inhale. 

Colors exude feelings/emotions.  I tried not to get too close to some of those feelings, because they did hurt.  Color to me is like the background music in a movie.  It's generally subliminal, only to motivate the feelings of the audiance.  You're busy hearing (reading) the dialogue, but never notice the theme behind it....these words of color, and sounds of music, are only felt.

When you mentioned the last line of the book....using the word, "graying" the author did not use the word "gray"....reminded me of the extensive changing in the color pallete.  

In reality, there are only three colors that exist.   Yes, we can achieve the color gray by mixing black and white (although, white is not a color, it's the absence of color), but you can also achieve the color gray by mixing equal parts of the primary colors:  Blue, Red, Yellow. 

All of the colors that are mentioned in this story....from the blue of the sky, to the yellows of the grain, to the reds of the fire, or the shedding of the blood....you mix these together, and the music of the past becomes the "graying" on these soon to be distant lives, leaving this gray memory behind them as "The children sway to its roll....."  It fades....to the end...."graying".   And we hope the future will bring back the brightness of the colors, once more.

Kathy S.

Message Edited by KathyS on 08-20-2009 01:37 PM

[KathyS]

---

babzilla41 wrote:

---

KathyS wrote:

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

Kathy,

here is what I think about Lesya and the chicken episode.

The episode begins with Lesya taking care of her mother, cleaning up the baby, tidying the house, planning for the next day's meal. She isn't angry, "she just can't summon up the energy to care."

Everybody else is asleep. "She can't feel herself at all." As she walks through the snow her leg quivers, and she tries to stop the tremor. She feels panic. She ducks inside the coop, the only place she feels safe. She calms her leg, but then her whole body begins to tremble.

A child of ten in the midst of a panic attack. A lonely child with too much responsibility resting on her trembling body. All the bottled up emotional pain is manifesting itself as physically. And then, the hen, her counterpart, "bobs and coos, overjoyed by Lesya's surprise arrival." Happiness is "dancing to music only it can hear." At this particular moment the hen is a frivolous, insensitive being that does not care about Lesya's condition. To add insult to injury, the hen breaks the eggs in the other hen's nest, the very food Lesya is planning to use the next day.

I think several things happen in Lesya's mind. 1.There is fear. 2. There is the after-effect of having witnessed the birth  (which, I'm sure she doesn't quite understand but had to handle.) 3. There is lack of control over her own body. And so she takes control of the hen's body.

I never once thought she is angry with her mother. I think she is angry with herself. I think in Lesya's mind Happiness is Lesya. But a Lesya who ignores the serious side of life, who dances and is careless with other chickens eggs and other people's lives (food supply), who must be taught a lesson.

She tells the chicken: "Look at you. Look how ugly you are. Useless." She might as well have said that to herself.

And the last dance the chicken will ever dance is the one it dances headless, "its wings flapping, its body tripping over its crooked foot."

Lesya is too young to understand any of her own actions. She is too young to cut off her own foot. Her inner rage turns against herself in the form of the chicken.

I wonder if, for a brief moment, Lesya sees herself tripping over her own foot? I wonder if this is a precursor to suicide? The killing of a stand-in in lieu of understanding enough of life to do away with herself?

---

kpatton wrote:

While reading some of the responses in this thread, I have two questions for the group.

Could Lesya's killing of Happiness be metaphorical for her inability to do anything to her mother?  Anna was someone who didn't want either or her children, Happiness wouldn't lay eggs.  Does Lesya know that Anna has tried to kill her unborn child as Happiness breaks the eggs of the other chickens?  The fact that Lesya killed Happiness and then didn't use the chicken for food had to mean something more than just being practical that she had a chicken that didn't lay and was breaking eggs.

Second question.  I was surprised and saddened that Maria didn't take Lesya and Petra into her family.  After all of the time the past two years while Teodor was in prison that she cared for them as if they were her own, and now she abandoned them.  Was anyone else surprised about this?

Kathy

---

---

I also wondered why Lesya hadn't salvage the chicken for food, but I do believe that it was all meant to be metaphorically viewed as loss.

She wasn't thinking beyond that moment.  I knew Lesya viewed her weaknesses, the same as Happiness had...and was taking it out on Happiness, replacing Happiness with death.  Something gave, when Lesya lost that happiness in herself.  She hated the thought that anything, or anyone, couldn't view her weaknesses at that time, and sympathize. We all looked at her beyond her years.  She needed love, she needed understanding, she needed to be cared for.  Her chicken wasn't echoing her thoughts.   It was a death that could have been a precursor to her own.  I worried about this.  Self-destruction. 

---

I also think that Happiness let Lesya down by breaking the eggs (after all she had done for him; after how she had rescued and protected him)- that was the final straw for Lesya.  No matter how hard she tried, how much she loved him, how good she was to him, it still wasn't enough - which is how she felt about her own life.  She did everything she possibly could for her mother, father and brother and it just wasn't enough.  There was no love - only fear of tomorrow.  So sad for poor Lesya - she was so easy to love.

---

Yes, Bab....I think the theme that some are coming away with is, the feelings of loss, and fear.  Nothing, that one did, seemed as though it was ever enough.  I do like to look at the word, love, though.  I saw it, but it wasn't a topic that these families talked about, or demomonstrated much.  We had to assume a lot, and with assumptions, one really never knows until they're voiced.

[MsReaderCP]

One ofthe greatest things about this novel was that i felt like I knew each of the characters, flaws and all.  I had come to respect Theo and looked to him to lead his family through this wilderness.  The brother in law and then even Anna became the villains.  I had forgiven him for letting his family down and leaving them alone for a year to starve and find food on their on.  I had forgiven him for forcing Myron to become a man before his time and then just expecting him to move out of the way when he came back home as if nothing had ever changed.  But Theo was selfish.  He believed that it was fair for him to have his mooshine and so he would have it despite Maria telling him that she would not wait and despite the house being searched once. 

How can a man kill his own sister?  For taking his family away from him, I thought.  But he did it on his own.  Even if it had been Anna that gave away his space.

[Tarri]

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

Well, you see, Kathy, this is what happens next:

Lesya cleans and cooks for the priest and eventually is part of the church choir that becomes famous and tours the world.

*snip*

---

Your ending had me tearing up for the family once again. 

Everyone has pretty much covered how I would have answered the discussion questions.  In my mind I did not understand why Maria would leave her niece and nephew behind, but when I read DSaff's comment on one of the first pages, I finally understood.  

I was so sad at the ending, but I do think the hard times of that era call for the sadness.  

[Wisteria-L]

---

KathyS wrote:

---

Wisteria-L wrote:

I loved this book on so many levels because it was a story of the lives of people who are not perfect. Life is not perfect, and most family holiday gatherings will show how difficult getting together to socialize in a happy, non-stressed social event can be.

Shandi has written a story of what can happen when the extremes of those minor disagreements fester and continue unresolved.  In this story, who was to blame?  The eventuality was that no one really communicated, or loved each other enough as family to put the family (extended) first. I would have to say, the only one that did this was Maria, to the point as I mentioned before and so did Immortal Spirit, that she covered up for her brother. 

I knew from the beginning this was going to be a solemn book that would make us look at family. It was the picture and the description that said....

---

"Within three years, this farm will be foreclosed. Two years later, one will die. Two others, of whom there is no photograph, will be murdered."

---

I also knew because as I said before, Shandi used the stark contrast of color a lot. 

Black, White and then red. Red often symbolic of blood. 

There was the blood from the mice in the beginning, blood from the rabbits...

If you reread the section about the photograph the only color they mention is white and they are all smiles. So that is the beginning before all the turmoil began. But it ended in a bath of red blood. 

The last line of the book is 

"The children sway to its roll, their eyes fixed on the graying house and the prairies unfolding between them. "

I think the graying symbolizes a new start, the past is blurred....a combination of the stark black and white of the past. The are looking at the prairies unfolding...opening up creating distance between them. I see a hopeful future for this family where the fighting and evil will be gone from their lives. 

Just a different way to look at it. I see hope and bright light in the prairie grasses. 

---

Wisteria,

I love how you've actually analyized color in this story. 

For the most part, I'm an emotional reader.  But, I can take all that is said and break it down, picking it to its minutest degree.  But, in saying that [with this novel],  it had so much to say, by just feeling it;  I had to leave some of this discussion alone, just too much emotion for me to inhale. 

Colors exude feelings/emotions.  I tried not to get too close to some of those feelings, because they did hurt.  Color to me is like the background music in a movie.  It's generally subliminal, only to motivate the feelings of the audiance.  You're busy hearing (reading) the dialogue, but never notice the theme behind it....these words of color, and sounds of music, are only felt.

When you mentioned the last line of the book....using the word, "graying" the author did not use the word "gray"....reminded me of the extensive changing in the color pallete.  

In reality, there are only three colors that exist.   Yes, we can achieve the color gray by mixing black and white (although, white is not a color, it's the absence of color), but you can also achieve the color gray by mixing equal parts of the primary colors:  Blue, Red, Yellow. 

All of the colors that are mentioned in this story....from the blue of the sky, to the yellows of the grain, to the reds of the fire, or the shedding of the blood....you mix these together, and the music of the past becomes the "graying" on these soon to be distant lives, leaving this gray memory behind them as "The children sway to its roll....."  It fades....to the end...."graying".   And we hope the future will bring back the brightness of the colors, once more.

Kathy S.

Message Edited by KathyS on 08-20-2009 01:37 PM

---

Kathy, Thank you for your response.  I am also a very emotional and sensory reader. I live books through all my senses. It is what drives my reading, I know no other way to read. I am a musician, and I know what you mean about background music. Sometimes for me I have found background music cannot be in the background, because as a musician, I hear the music more than others do. This is not always a good thing.

Being sensitive to color as background and as and emotioncan get me into trouble like you said.  Since I cannot read without experiencing all senses that an author evokes. Shandi spoke to me in color. I saw this thread all the way through her novel, and couldn't separate it from the text. It was like a huge symphonic work.  I couldn't get away from it. Without her use of color, I don't see this book as the same story. Well, let me say it has more depth with her use of color. 

I loved when you said this.....

---

"And we hope the future will bring back the brightness of the colors, once more."

---

or in my eyes.....at least the white that was present in the photograph in the beginning.

White light the symbol of healing and power. 

[JaneM]

---

Sunltcloud wrote:

Well, you see, Kathy, this is what happens next:

---

LOL!  You must have had so much fun writing that.  Thanks for sharing!

[literature]

ethel55 wrote:

With all the death at the end, I don't know if I thought it just that Stefan got to just run off...

We had been seeing cracks in Anna's mind since the beginning of the story, her affinity for the wolves was worrying, but I sure didn't see that coming.

I think with Myron's help, the family will be able to resettle and perhaps farm again.

Message Edited by ethel55 on 08-17-2009 06:04 PM

---

I agree. Stefan shouldn't have been left unharmed. In my opinion, he was the one who started this whole mess. He raped and abused his wife to the point where she was only a shell of her former self. She could barely function on her own let alone take care of her children. Stefan also started the feud between Anna and Teodor over the land, making her sign letters saying she never agreed to let Teodor stay on the land. Then one night he just up and leaves. Granted I'm glad he was out of the picture, but having nothing happen to him just doesn't seem fair after we learn what happens to the baby, Anna and Teodor.

April

_____________________________________________________________________

Hi All,

Not to worry.  I'm sure the reason the book ended the way it did was because Shandi is just setting the stage for Book # 2.  She's probably out right now collecting her thoughts and I can't wait to read what she has in store for Stephan.  I'm sure everyone in the FL club will be waiting impatiently for book#2.