Chapter 5: Short Shrift

I’ll admit it. I had to look up the definition of “Short Shrift.”

1.       Rapid and unsympathetic dismissal; curt treatment.

1.1. Archaic Little time between condemnation and execution or punishment.

Also of interest is the definition of “shrift”

                Archaic

1.       Confession, especially to a priest.

1.1   Absolution by a priest.

Anyway, so the marketplace that sells physical words is in shambles. Words are all jumbled together and flying everywhere. No one in the area is able to speak properly and the dialogue matches. Eventually, though, the mess is swept up and people start to sort their words. The Spelling Bee flew off and as Milo stood up the entire police of Dictionopolis arrives, blowing his whistle. Yup. The entire police force is one person, “Officer Shrift.” Officer Shrift is short.  Two feet tall and twice as wide, to be exact. He blew his whistle until he was red, and then started shouting at everyone. He informs Milo and Tock that it’s disrespectful to sound your alarm in the presence of a policeman.

The Humbug tries to assure Officer Shift that he is not guilty and inadvertently places the blame on Milo. The officer, who is biased against little boys, asks Milo bunch of pointless questions that have nothing to do with anything, and throws Milo and Tock in jail for six million years. I was going to say something about how Milo didn’t even have his Miranda rights read to him, but then I realized that this book predates Miranda vs Arizona.

Fortunately, Office Shift doesn’t literally throw them in jail, as the jail appears to have a lot of steps to travel down into a dungeon. Milo and Tock are warned about a witch as the officer leaves them, with a “see you in six million years.”

The “witch” turns out to be a “Which” instead of a “witch” and her name is Faintly Macabre. She is the king’s great-aunt. She used to be in charge of choosing which words were to be used for occasions. She worked hard at her job until the power corrupted her and she hoarded words and convinced everyone that “Silence is Golden,” which caused Dictionopolis to fall into an economic recession and destroyed their main industry. The King found out and threw her in jail, and they have not yet replaced that position.

Milo offers Faintly help, but she says the only thing that can help is the return of Rhyme and Reason.

Thoughts:  

I had something here about Puritan culture and Fundamental Christians and the "choose words wisely" proverb morphing into "Silence is Golden." But I'm not really sure what I was getting at, so I'll just throw that half-formed idea out there and let someone else go with it. 

Chapter 6: Faintly Macabre’s Story

Faintly Macabre tells Milo and Tock the history of Westeros The Lands Beyond. It was a terrible place until one day some prince showed up. There was a battle between goodness and the demons, monsters, and giants. Eventually that was resolved and he had some land to build a city. The city grew and became the kingdom of Wisdom.
The Prince became a King and married and had two boys. He told them to build new cities in the wilderness for some stupid reason, I guess to keep these demons and monsters away. So one brother build Dictionopolis and the other built Digitopolis. Guess which one is the city of words and which is the city of numbers. Go one. Guess. Take a minute.

Got it?

Digitopolis is the city of numbers! Shocking, I know. It’s located in the Mountains of Ignorance.

It turns out the brothers aren’t very good friends and they fought about which is more important, words or numbers.

The old king, one day, disappointed that he didn’t have a daughter, found some girls in the garden. While I appreciate the nod to the tale of Romulus and Remus and/or Moses, I find it highly suspect that someone would just leave some twin girls in a basket in some random rich person’s garden.  The girls were blonde, because of course beautiful girls are blonde. (Someday children’s literature will consider dirty blonde/reddish/light brown/frizzy/wavy hair to be beautiful. Someday.) These supposed supermodel orphans were adopted by the king and called “Rhyme” and “Reason.” Because why not?

Eventually, the King died and the Kingdom was split between the two sons. Azaz (in Dictionopolis) and Mathemagician (Digitopolis). They provided for their adopted sisters and often called upon them to settle disputes.

Azaz the Unabridged and the Mathmagician had a huge fight. They asked R&R once again which is more important – numbers or words? And they were like “um, both, dumbasses.” So the brothers finally agreed on something, and banished Rhyme and Reason to the Castle in the Air.

Milo and Tock discuss going to rescue them, and the Which tries to dissuade them, as it will be difficult and there will be demons. She shows them the way out of prison, and as Milo and Tock leave, they are greeted again by the King’s advisors, who say the Royal Banquet is about to begin.

Thoughts:

I don’t think this story is just a history of the Lands Beyond. I think it’s more of a discussion of real world discussions in all levels of education. Should we focus on Language or STEM? There are other, smaller cities/towns in the Lands, as well, but we’ll get to them later. How about we teach kids like Milo both math and literature? Having a good vocabulary and the ability to communicate is just as important as being able to calculate the cost of your mortgage. Rhyme and Reason, despite pissing me off with their superhuman good looks and ability to be raised in a castle despite being left for dead by some random peasant, are literal representations of, well, rhyme and reason. Or common sense. So Milo is going to go save the world! (Or at least the Lands Beyond.) How fun!  

Also, my spell check HATES me right now. Imaginary words!