Crossing the Bridge to Terabithia. A novel by Katherine Paterson.
Yes, yes, this is one of those books you gotta read to check off a superficial book list. But you know what? I’m kind of glad I read it. It is enjoyable as an adult, but perhaps best read as a child crossing over to young adulthood. In The Bridge to Terabithia, Paterson captured the life as a child growing up in rural Washington without the cliché of dialogues and soppy romances prevalent in young adult books.
As an adult reading it now, it won’t have a lasting impact as you would if you had read it when you were younger. The themes that it deals with, especially in regards to grief, is something that most adults are familiar with but it may be something completely new with younger children, just like that time you watched The Lion King when you were a kid and that scene just scarred you for life. You know which scene I’m talking about. I couldn’t even enjoy the rest of the movie as a kid after that. But there are other aspects of the novel that even for grown adults are still refreshing.
Building a kingdom in the trees
Jess lives in woop woop Washington where his daily task is to run to the cowshed and milk Miss Bessie before his mother tells him off. She is one spiteful bitch and seems to be miserable all the time. But life goes on with Jess who’s focusing to be the fastest person in his school. That is not until he met his new neighbour Leslie, who’s a bit of a strange presence. Her parents moved into the village from the city, with a much different livelihood than Jess’s family.
For example, Leslie’s parents are smart, but only book smart. They’re quite useless when it comes to fixing things around the house and Jess shit sure knows more. But Leslie sure is fast, and she managed to break Jess’s ambitions to be the fastest at school. Leslie and Jess become good friends quickly enough. To escape the boredom of their reality they created a passage to go through Terabithia, a kingdom where they rule as king and queen, run purely by their imagination.
The kingdom remains small but their imaginations not. When Jess picked up a new puppy for Leslie, it became Prince Terrien, the guardian royale of the kingdom. But Washington is seasonal, the snow comes and goes before the rains in spring. Unknowingly, tragedy is right around the corner and Jess would have to grow up a bit faster than he’d want to.
Nothing like Narnia. But something like it.
“Terabithia” is a bastardisation of Narnia’s Terabitha, but it is coincidental, according to the author herself. Yet, there is a slight reference to Narnia where Leslie lent Jess the books. It is a somewhat catchy name which encapsulates a fantastic imagination, suitable for a child’s fantasy kingdom. Narnia is also an escape for the Pevensie children, just as Terabithia would be for Jess and Leslie.
But what are they escaping from? Are the children escaping for the sake of escapism? For Jess, this escape is much linked to the situation at home. Though the family is intact, the financial pressures of the parents leaks into the borderline resentment of their children. Jess takes the hit, being the only boy in the family responsible for helping around the house. Simple tasks such as going to church could be monumental and a land mine between the family members.
Yet, I question whether these problems were borne superficially. The family’s concern about going to church was that they weren’t able to come in new clothes and had to settle for old ones. Maybe the times had been different, where going to church is almost like going to the annual dance. But couldn’t they settle (as they did in the end) with the old clothes? Around Christmas time, May Belle was promised the Barbie which has a knock on effect on other presents the family could afford for the other kids. Jess took another hit. Is it wrong for me to question the family to prioritise buying presents instead of basic goods? Maybe it is.
In the end, the Aarons family are poor but not starving poor (they haven’t thought about butchering the family cow for her beef). They still follow the conventions of the traditional nuclear family back in the 70s with the father being the breadwinner, the mother taking care of the house and the children, well, just being children. For Leslie, the reasons for her escape is more enigmatic. Leslie’s parents do not have money problems and their outlook is less traditional than the Aarons.
Leslie comes in to school androgynously, from day one breaking the conventions of the rural Washington already looking like a boy and running faster than all the boys. It surprises me that girls wearing jeans were still stigmatised back then. And perhaps this is the difference between the town and the city, that what they see in television: women having jobs, smoking and wearing pants, still remain a nice little fiction. Leslie, though far from being a feminist, is still a nice prototype for equality and to question the existing rural status quo.
But for the life of me, I still can’t think what Leslie is escaping from. When she died and her father mentioned that they moved to the rural areas for Leslie, I couldn’t imagine why. Is it because the Burkes were running away from the corruption of the city which might in the end corrupt her daughter? Or is it because they are running towards the traditional American values which relies on manual labour, family traditions and being on a first name basis with your neighbours? The values that might be found away from city life and totally bereft in the metropole? Who knows.
When we get to the final pages, that is when Leslie suffered an accidental death, Terabithia became something else entirely. May Belle, as he hangs suspended asking for Jess’s help provided Jess with the ultimate test of his boyhood, in a way to redeem himself for not being present when Leslie fell to her death. It is that missing piece which he had to find under the rug to complete the puzzle of his self:
“It wasn’t so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing — one of May Belle’s puzzles with this huge gap where somebody’s eye and cheek and jaw should have been.”
It is an important for Jess’s development that he rescued May Belle and also to reclaim Terabithia. For a lot of people, they would never be able to complete this puzzle.
