Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
Safe harbors may be for ships that have come in after a hard cruise or a bad storm. They may be places on the coast where a ship may rest and repair, unload goods, and re-load to sell at the next port of call. When I was reading about Sir Francis Drake by Sugden, it was interesting how often he had to find a safe place to clean the ships. Ship worm took a toll. He went north along the west coast of North America looking for a northern passage and for a safe place to make repairs. Sometimes safe harbors are hard to find.
Safe harbors in stories are also places where a person can rest and recover from life’s hardships. Many books start with the idea that the main character needs such a place and then the character learns more about his past and meets new people and hopefully heals from the disaster that sent him to seek a refuge.
In The Lord of the Rings there is peace with the elves where wounded souls can recover while on an adventure or afterward. Galadriel and Celeborn offer gifts as well as rest in Lothlórien. Elrond of Rivendell gives shelter to Bilbo Baggins and Frodo is taken there when he is dying from the shard of a Morgul-blade that could turn him into a wraith.
Some harbors that seem safe are not, alas. Ships may be beckoned to their destruction by beacons set up by wreckers. False friends may trap those who seek their aid as Saruman did to Gandalf.
Safe harbors for those on a quest may be as simple as an inn or a hut in the forest or as dramatic as a castle with secret rooms and tall towers. The reader is grateful to the host as well as the story character because we have time to rest up, too, before we face more adventure and trials.
In The Martian by Andy Weir, The Habitat is the safe harbor for the man who was left behind on Mars. When Mark goes out on a long adventure in a Rover, I worried until he got back safely. I am on page 216 and this may be the best book I have read all year.
Sometimes a character themselves is a safe harbor that another character loves. I think that is what Laurie saw in Jo March in Little Women.
I believe that jobs we like can be safe harbors.
What books have you read that have safe harbors?
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! How not to undercut scene tension
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Robert Fuller says:
Here's the chapter posting:
http://www.rowantreenovel.com/....
Adam still doing the righteous thing in the White House and making his father proud.
The Kindle version of The Rowan Tree still free on Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/...
My memoir Belonging still free via Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/...
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NOTE:
plf515 has book talk on
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