I was a little put off when I first started reading the book. I kept coming across words I have never seen and didn't understand. So naturally I had to look them up. It was an annoying process for me. As I continued reading and started to get pulled into the pages, coming across a word I did not understand was like being interrupted during a movie. On the quest to discovering what the author of the mystery novel wanted to say about history, I was on a quest of my own trying to discover what words meant. Eventually I could understand them... until "tonypandy"
I focused on this term in trying to come up with a visual way of understanding it. I found the solution in Grant. Grant, like myself can pick up certain clues when he looks at faces. Looking at the Kings face I came up with a visual. I imagined the king was in the middle of circle of people. He was surrounded by the Tudors. They were playing the child's game of telephone. As information (history) got passed it continued to get muddied. On the outside of the ring were other people writing their accounts of Richard. The Tudors of course were bullies and wouldn't let the others join in the game. Thus we have tonypandy. Now we have conflicting accounts of history, facts, and perspectives surrounding Richard. No wonder he has that facial expression. His eye was twitching while he was taking his ring off. He was furious at the mockery and didn't want to hurt his "king" hand.
Funny how an idea, in this case a visual idea with the help of a portrait can "accurately" shape history 60% of the time, throughout all of time.
60% of the time, even feels like a stretch to me. Telephone was a good way of explaining how a story gets twisted around, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the person at the END of the telephone is the one who records it all for future reference. Instead of a children's game (not that it was a bad analogy at all!), I imagined conspiracy theorists in Victorian-style outfits angrily writing on their scrolls...
ReplyDeleteI also felt that a lot of the language and references used in the book were difficult to understand at times. I think it's mostly because the references are aimed at British readers and the language isn't very current to our time. I couldn't even seem to find the word "tonypandy" online when I looked it up. I just kept questioning if it was actually a real word
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and Kayla, telephone was the perfect example. When you first play telephone as a kid, you're just like, "Oh man, this is easy," but as you hear the last person say what they heard, you kind of step back and realize that maybe not all communication is clear. That's the position Grant was put in. After making progress, he had to step back and look at the timeline and lo and behold, we have a problem!
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