Skellig

Skellig is a magical-realism novel, written by David Almond, about a boy named Michael discovering a creature that looks like an old man but has wings when he moves to a new house. In Skellig, Almond uses the life of Michael to show it is important to recognize that we do not always know what is true or real. In Skellig, things that no-one knows whether it is real or not are common such as dreams, wings and evolution. Firstly, dreams are something we do not understand and yet, it happens to us nearly every night! In Skellig Michael gets dream that sometimes seem to be caused by his stressed about his sister like on page 27 I tried to stay awake last night but it was hopeless. I was dreaming straight away. I dreamed that the baby was in the blackbirds nest in Minas garden, and sometimes he thinks he is dreaming but he actually is awake. In fact, not just Michael who is dreaming weird things, his mother also dreams although she does not know if the dreaming is really dreaming or she is imagining things, as stated in page 158-189 And the strangest of dreamsand I saw this man, thats all. Another dream probably but I was sure I was wide awake. This means that Michaels mom can also see the creature, Skellig, which suggest that it might be a creature of stress that appears to people who are stressed or that Skellig is real after all. Another thing that is not clear are the wings that Skellig has and, at one or two points in the book, Michael and Mina. all I knew were the hands in mine, the faces turning through the light and dark, and for a moment I saw ghostly wings at Minas back, I felt the delicate bones and feathers rising from my shoulders, and I was lifted from the floor with Mina and Skellig (120). This not only suggest that there might have been magical powers involved but also the fact that they were holding hands with Skellig could prove that Skellig is in fact, real. Lastly, we think if Skellig could be real then he must be some sort of angel or mythical creature, but we believe that dinosaurs are extinct, said Mina, but theres another theory, that their descendants are with us still (98). This quote suggests that Skellig could, however unlikely it may seem now, be the last of a kind that existed before mankind. In an interview we saw, Almond clearly states that he does not know what Skellig is, where he was from, or where he is going. What we do know is that he is a creature of good and seems to be a cross between an owl and a human. It seems we may never find out what Skellig really is. In conclusion, things like dreams, ghostly wings and evolution are something we dont fully understand, which Almond has chosen to do to make this book very ambiguous, even in the end, we do not fully understand or k now if things are true or imagination. An example of this is the claims of strange markings in fields that happen overnight. Some people say that aliens out there are coming in and out of Earth while others might say it is just a load of nonsense. In addition to this, there are even movies I have seen that have used this thesis, like Inception. In the end, no-one really knows if anything is true or just part of their wild imagination.