Student Question
Can you provide some analyzed quotes from The Fall?
Quick answer:
When selecting quotes to analyse from Garth Nix's fantasy novel The Fall, each reader should select his or her favorites and then examine the deep meanings of those selected quotations. One passage one might analyse is the first passage in the book, which begins with "Tal stretched out his hand and pulled himself up onto the next out-thrust spike of the Tower."
Garth Nix's fantasy novel The Fall is packed full of quotations to analyze. Each reader should select his or her own favorites, but I'll provide a few samples. We'll begin with the very first lines of the book:
Tal stretched out his hand and pulled himself up onto the next out-thrust spike of the Tower. He stopped there to get his breath, and looked down the Red Tower, down to the twinkling lights that outlined the main buildings of the Castle. They were far below, a height that made Tal dizzy. He quickly looked back up.
As we examine this quotation, we might notice how the author catches our attention by starting in media res , in the midst of things. We don't know who Tal is, why he is climbing the Tower, or even what the Tower is, but we want to find out. Our interest raises quickly,...
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as does our identification and sympathy with Tal—for which of us hasn't felt dizzy looking down from a great height? Yet Tal keeps climbing.
"Oh no," said Lallek, fingering the two very large Sunstones that flashed on her thumb and forefinger rings. "We really haven't any to spare."
"What a shame," added Korrek, lightly touching the pendant she wore that held four Sunstones, all of them twice as large as Tal's own. "But I'm sure you'll manage somehow ... even though your father is dead."
Tal has just asked two of his mother's cousins for a primary Sunstone. He needs one desperately, and they know it. They clearly have more Sunstones than they need and can use, and they likely have extra primary Sunstones as well, considering their obvious wealth (which they enjoying showing off). Yet the cousins refuse and lie about their refusal. Despite their words, they have no sympathy for Tal and his plight. Instead, they cruely remind him of his father's death. Why are these cousins so nasty? Could it be because they are trying to please Sushin, who clearly has a hatred for Tal? How do the words of these cousins make you feel? Having you ever encountered people like these? Why do they speak and act the way they do?
[Tal] had just sworn some sort of oath that he didn't mean to keep, but couldn't help taking seriously. He'd mingled his blood with—he didn't know what anymore, because they weren't Underfolk—but a crazy girl with a natural shadow who wanted to kill him and was only stopped by tradition.
Tal's world has turned upside down. His shadowguard saves him from the fall off the Tower, but he lands in another world, a world he knows nothing about. He meets with hostility, especially from Milla, yet he must somehow get home. So he teams up on a sworn Quest with this future Shield Maiden, a Quest that might get him home and might help her achieve the status she desires or might get them both killed. Tal even swears an oath, yet he doesn't intend to keep it. Is Tal serious? He says he takes the oath seriously, which usually means that he will respect and keep it. Tal seems to be contradicting himself here, and that isn't much of a surprise, since he is confused and scared. He doesn't understand the Icecarls, and at first, he looks down upon them, yet they are not the servants he is used to. They have their own deep traditions, and now Tal's life depends upon those traditions.