Final Story: A reflection

I have been fond of Chopin’s Nocturne lately, particularly the Op 9 No 2. As I was listening to it the other day, I realised that Op 9 No 2 was a suitable background music to read Josephine Hymes’ “Seasons of Daffodils”. Thus I re-read it again… and it reignited my love to Candy and Terry. It then of course gave way to me thinking the famous Anohito identity, and how it has split the Candyland in two. This is my reflection of those issues, more than 1.5 years after my last post.

Since my last post, I have improved my Japanese quite a bit. I still struggle with Kanji, but I am more fluent with hiragana and katakana. I am more adept as well in understanding nuances in Japanese language; a very very nuanced language I should say. With these new understandings, I can see CCFS in a new light. Paired with my old analyses about Anohito, to keep it short, I can safely say that I still believe Terry to be Anohito.

Avon River and the Great Depression

The Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 2010, viewed from the Avon River side
(photo by Peter Scott, courtesy of the Royal Shakespeare Company) 

In this post, I’m examining an aspect of the Anohito clues that I have not delved in details so far because to me it’s very obvious that it is linked to Terry. This aspect is the Avon River. However, it occurred to me that a new reader might be confused as to why Avon River is immediately linked to Terry, for there are 19 (yes, nineteen) Avon Rivers in Wikipedia. Those 19 rivers are spread across four countries: the United Kingdom (5 in England, 3 in Scotland, 2 in Wales), Australia (5), New Zealand (2), and Canada (2). Here I will examine why I think the River Avon in England (the one flowing through Warwickshire, to be exact) is the river Nagita Keiko meant in CCFS.

I will start my explanation by briefly examining the 1930s Great Depression in the USA and in the UK, because that event IMO is strongly linked to Anohito bringing Candy to live by the bank of River Avon. Many experts linked the start of the Great Depression in the USA with the collapse of Wall Street in New York on a “Black Thursday” on 24 October 1929. Around the same time (give and take a month’s time), the London Stock Exchange collapsed. Ever since, the US economy spiraled down, dragging down other stock markets in Europe. It took about a decade for the USA to recover its economy, just in time to be ready for World War II. Interestingly, the United Kingdom recovered approximately three years after the Black Thursday (1929-1932), a good 6-7 years before the US recovered. This article is quite good to understand why the UK economy recovered relatively quickly from the 1929 Great Slump. I’m not an economist, so I will not summarise the causes for the slower recovery of the US nor the faster recovery of the UK. Suffice to say, when the US was still struggling to come back on its feet, the UK was already healthier economically.

Where is Terry? The missing person in the Epilogue

Source

I talked about this post with Nila a while back after I posted my article about Anohito’s voice, smile and open arms in the CCFS Epilogue, however, I didn’t remember to post it until now. It’s a short post, but I might post another (longer) article tomorrow or on Sunday if time permits.

It started with me receiving the Italian version of the CCFS. I flipped through the books and realised again something odd with the Epilogue.

Before I resume with my explanation, let me quote what an Epilogue means. The Cambridge Dictionary states that an Epilogue is “a speech or piece of text that is added to the end of a play or book, often giving a short statement about what happens to the characters after the play or book finishes”. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives three main meanings of an Epilogue. One of them is related to a book, thus an Epilogue is “a concluding section that rounds out the design of a literary work”. In contrast, a Prologue is “a part that comes at the beginning of a play, story, or long poem, often giving information about events that happened before the time when the play, story, or poem begins” (The Cambridge Dictionary). Although the Merriam-Webster version is very straightforward, I like using the Cambridge Dictionary’s version more because it stipulates that an Epilogue usually discloses what happens to the characters after the last chapter (pre-Epilogue) of the book.

Was Terry too emotionally damaged for Candy?

Update 25 Jan 2025

Five of my blog posts in this blog have been moved to "draft" because I used unlicensed manga images with English translations. Well, to make these posts appear again, I have to delete those manga images. Sorry guys, I don't have time to look for images right now, so I have five pages with no manga images... but at leat you can still read the post again now.



-xxx-

Since returning to the Candy Universe, I realised that there is one problem that the anti-Terry fans would always judge Terry on: He slapped Candy after she slapped him after he kissed her without her permission. While it is indeed not acceptable to slap any decent girls (I think Eliza needs some big slaps, though!), I don’t think Terry’s action should be seen on its own. It has its larger context; namely the scars of emotional abuse.

Terry kissed Candy during the dance in the May Festival because the jealous Terry was irked at Candy for always mentioning the deceased Anthony. On cue, Candy slapped Terry (take that, Terry!). And then Terry slapped her back, but not because she slapped him. Terry slapped Candy back because she said he was a “mannerless juvenile delinquent”. For Terry, Candy had no rights to judge him as a delinquent, for he had a very emotionally traumatic childhood. To complete the slapping session, Candy slapped Terry back.

Of course, I disagree with Terry slapping Candy. I am okay with Candy slapping Terry because he did ask for it. So I’m glad that Candy didn’t lose her spunk and slapped Terry back.