Spring Is Dead

Chapter 20: ...So Does Season

Season is important to a scene in a movie or book because it wouldn't make sense for something bad to happen in the sunshine summertime. It can, but the cold and dark winter season seems more appropriate. Foster talks about the season holding a specific meaning like spring is usually associated with babies and flowers blooming. 

Boy, do I have some irony for you.

In Unearthly by Cynthia Hand, Clara Gardner finds out that she's an angel-blood, part-angel and part-human. Her mom is a Dimidius, which means she is half angel while Clara is a Quartarius, which is only a quarter angel. Angel-bloods only live until they are 150 years old. Clara's mom is slowly creeping up to that age, but Clara is unaware that her mother is going to die soon.

Clara starts to notice that her mom is not doing well when she starts moving slower and she gets bags under her eyes. Her mom never tells Clara or her younger brother, Jeffery, who is also a Quartarius. Near Christmas time, her mother tells her that she is nearing the end of her life and that she has a few months to live.

The irony comes in when spring time rolls around. Clara's mother deteriorates fast and she can't even get out of bed by the time March is upon them, when the sun is staying out longer and the weather is warming up. Clara's mom dies a few days into March, despite what Foster says about winter being the time of death and darkness. Clara's mom dying goes against the set "rules" for the seasons in novels. But her mom dying could also be taken as a sign of rebirth because Clara has a lot of things that she knows nothing about and she has to figure them out on her own, helping her grow into a stronger person. 

Seasons are important to setting, a dastardly word according to Foster. They have to make sense with what is going on in the story or else it just sounds weird or the imagination gets confused on how to picture the moment. It has to be set perfectly or it just won't work. 

I never really enjoyed reading scenic parts of a book because I'm more of an action scene kind of gal. I see the value in them though because they set up the whole action that I like. In Harry Potter, when some dark things happen (which is all the time), it's usually the winter time. Did you know that it snows in every Harry Potter movie? Every one. Crazy things happen at any time in Harry Potter, but they're wearing jackets when they're fighting Voldemort and his army, so there's that.

The seasons are important to a book because without them, what would the characters be wearing? What would even be happening without the season to set the mood? You need the seasons and the weather in order to set the scene which leads up to the action shot, which are the best parts, to me anyway. 

What if I wrote a book where there were no seasons? That would be hilarious. 

I could be famous.

No one steal my idea.