Now I will try to give my personal opinion about the book, though I have already made a subjective description of the characters. Under my point of view we can find two messages in this story, despite they do not exclude or negate each other.
One is strictly directed to kids, a kind of reference for children that are growing up and face new circumstances. This childish message also pretends to incite imagination, to stimulate dreaming and experiencing fantasy. We could say that this is a common message in most books written for children: histories that have ethical content or try to give some values to kids, while at the same time they try to be amusing to entertain them and make them like literature.
A second intention that one can observe in this book is a more philosophical one, and perhaps directed to people in any age. It has a lot to do with what I have already written while describing the main characters of the story, but also with the development of the plot. The story shows how it is impossible to move from a world of trouble or sadness, the Earth, to a world of happiness, Nangiyala. Life is not black and white, instead it is an uncertain scenario where good things and bad things are always present and where we should seek for the former and learn to deal with the second. Life is unpredictable and what we have to do is to try to retain what we can feel that is vital for us. In Karl’s case that is his brother, Jonathan’s love. Even though his life keeps changing (actually he lives in three different worlds) he has always a permanent need: living by his brother side. And while trying to satisfy this constant desire he grows up, he faces trouble, he knows other people to look up on, and he keeps searching for new adventures.
What I am trying to say is that to me the whole book is a metaphor of life. One can say that we never reach the meaning of life or happiness, those are not absolute concepts or defined goals, but unpredictable paths that one himself has to build and that we never finish until we die. While we make this path we meet people in the same situation as us, some more conscious about it and others that seem to be walking asleep. During our life we keep building dreams and trying to make possible a pleasant future, but we do it in a permanent state of doubt that makes us be afraid in the present. A good piece of advice that this book can give us is to try no to link or dreams to the future, if we always try to live our life regarding what we expected we will always meet frustration from time to time (which anyway is inevitable sometimes), so perhaps the best way is to try to focus in what makes us enjoy the present. But I don’t think that the writer means living the present unconsciously or without any intention. I think that what she tries to tell us is that we shouldn’t be afraid of what expects us in life, and instead we should use our present time in the best way we can think about. Despite, it is not easy to define what it is that provides us pleasure, what feeds again frustration, but we must deal with that and be conscious of the difficulties we will have to face meanwhile we search.
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