Post # 8: Summary of Chapters 31-33

Chapter 31: Of the Battle, and the Fate of Those Who Would Be King

In this chapter, the king tries to convince David to become king, but David refuses and tells the king that he knows about the whole scheme and who the king actually is. The Crooked Man then tells David that he will be killed and that the Crooked Man will go after Georgie if David refuses to be king. He goes on to describe all of the horrible truths about David's world as a final attempt to convince David, but the wolves begin to attack before he can finish. The king accuses the Crooked Man of letting the wolves in, and is very remorseful for everything he has caused. He is killed by Leroi, and David at the last possible moment tells the Crooked man the name he wants to know so badly, "brother". At this point the Crooked Man dies and Leroi realizes that he was the cause of his own demise, because he was the king's fear and he killed the king. The Loups disappear and David finds himself in the throne room with the Woodsman, who says it is time for David to return home. All of the Crooked Man's magic was reversed when he died, so now there is only one tree with twine.

Chapter 32: Of Rose

In this chapter, David notices how the world is changing (in a good way) now that the Crooked Man is dead. He returns his sword and changes back into his pajamas before reluctantly returning to his own world. He says his goodbyes to the Woodsman and Scylla, and after a few confusing minutes in the tree, wakes up in a hospital bed. He sees Rose sitting by his bedside and apologizes to her, after he has seen how upset she is at the thought of him being hurt and how happy she is that he is alright. Then he falls asleep.

Chapter 33: Of All That Was Lost and All That Was Found

In this chapter, David learns that the people from his world believed that he fell into a coma after the plane crash, even though many aspects of his disappearance could not be explained. He finds that the experience has changed him for the better; he is now more affectionate towards Rose and more protective of Georgie. Then it describes the rest of David's life. He grows into a man, stays close with his brother, and his father and Rose split up. David goes off to University and his father retires. They go often to visit Rose and Georgie, where David would sometimes visit his old bedroom and the sunken garden, reminiscing about what had happened. He realized that the Crooked Man was right about his life being full of grief (his father and Georgie die, of old age and in the war, respectively, and his wife, Alyson, and son, Georgie, die during the childbirth). Although his life was full of sadness, it was also full of happy memories, and David ends up writing a book, called "The Book of Lost Things", which is in fact this very book that I have been describing. David looked after Rose until she died, and decided not to sell her house, but to live in it. He would let any children who wished see the sunken garden, and told them about what he wrote. He grew old, and began to hear the books again. As he was dying, he went back to the sunken garden through a hole his gardener had made at David's request. He took a book with him, similar to Jonathon's, but with his own memories in it. He returns back to the other world as a young man and is greeted by the Woodsman once again, who takes him to a cottage where he is reunited with his wife and child. The novel ends with, "And in the darkness David closed his eyes, as all that was lost was found again."

THE END!

My Thoughts/Questions:

-loyalty as a theme?
-main themes are good and evil, illusion and reality, something to do with fairy tales
-love the last line of the book
-this novel was SO predictable
-had no trouble reading this book, had it done in a week, now on to Wicked