![]() There may be some spoilers so read at your own risk. Howl, though vain, is revealed to show compassion and selflessness creating an interesting contrast in his character.Release Date: Septem(Venice), Novem(Japan) As the story progresses though, Sophie learns to be more confident and makes her own independent choices. Howl is initially seen as a shallow womanizer and a childish drama queen. In the beginning, Sophie is pessimistic about her future and lacks confidence in herself. Sophie and Howl could be seen as counterpoint characters. One of my favorite lines from Howl is “Help me, someone! I’m dying from neglect up here!” Sophie and Howl’s flaws are what really make them enjoyable to read about. Seeing the three of these characters interact with one another is funny and amusing at times. She puts a lot of time into making Sophie, Howl, and Calcifer to be well rounded and likable characters. Perhaps the thing I like the most about Diana’s writing style is the focus on characters and dialogue. Interestingly enough, when Diana wrote this story, she imagined the castle to be floating instead of having legs like in Hayao Miyazaki’s version. If Diana were to explicitly describe everything, the pace the would have slowed down considerably and the story may have not been as enjoyable to read. It’s easier for readers to imagine things for themselves instead of reading a block of text to see what exactly the author imagined. Some may just see it as lazy writing but I personally see it as an effect that adds to the charm of the story. She often lets readers use their imagination and fill in the blanks themselves about some details in the world like what the castle looks like. She only uses enough so that readers can understand what’s going on. Diana doesn’t use a lot of imagery either. Instead she gives bits of the world here and there leaving the readers to interpret how the world works. Despite being a fantasy novel, Diana doesn’t spend large segments of text explaining details about the world Sophie and Howl inhabit. In the case of Howl’s Moving Castle, I believe that adding more detail would hurt the charm of this story. One thing that is brought up often in class is how you can never have too much detail. One thing I like about the way Diana wrote this story was how she handled world building. Diana didn’t want to write something that could lead to reader thinking deeply about the complexities of the story, world, or characters. ![]() A lot of this story is about actions and plot events. All of the other medium sized words are verbs and adjectives. “Thought” is also comparatively large though this word is used more as a verb than an abstract word. The largest instances of an abstract word are “time” and arguably “way”. There are not many times were a reader will be lost trying understand what’s going on.ĭiana rarely uses abstract words or ideas for this story. The story is straight forward and easy to understand. Instead of writing a masterpiece with high literary quality, Diana chose to write a story that was simply to be enjoyed. The lack of variety, I believe, emphasizes on the simplicity of Diana’s storytelling. There are some words much larger than the others on the word cloud. Overall, the vocabulary that Diana uses does not seem to be that varied. This, I believe, really emphasizes on how Diana wants to show the readers what’s happening in the story instead of telling through extensive exposition. Overall, many of the largest words on the word cloud are verbs or adverbs. Though likely a coincidence, the usage of look could also link to Sophie’s appearance as an old woman. Throughout the story, Sophie spends a lot of time looking at the things around her. The third largest word that isn’t a name is “look” which could tie in with how Sophie interacts with others in the story. Looking through the text, the word “up” was used as either an adverb, adjective, or preposition in most cases. I never would have guessed that these words would appear so often. I found it rather interesting that the words “up” and “out” were so large, having comparable sizes to Howl and Sophie. Sophie, Howl, Michael, and Calcifer are all important characters in the story. It should be no surprise that the biggest words in this word cloud are the names of the main characters. In a hectic turn of events Sophie becomes cursed to be appear old and stumbles into the moving castle of Howl, a wicked wizard rumored to eat the hearts of women. Being the eldest meant that she was destined to fail in her life. Howl’s Moving Castle is about a girl name Sophie who is the eldest in her family. The movie keeps many elements from the book although it deviates quite a bit in the end. One key factor to its fame would be Studio Ghibli’s movie adaptation in 2004. Howl’s Moving Castle is perhaps one of her most famous works. Diana Wynne Jones was a writer who primarily wrote fantasy.
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