43 pages • 1 hour read
Colin MeloyWildwood
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Question of Good Government
Wildwood uses a children’s fantasy adventure as a vehicle to explore political themes. The book examines which form of government is best to promote the happiness of all its citizens. The various regions of the Wood employ distinct forms of government and distinct views toward diplomacy with their neighbors. South Wood is a mercantile society governed by a cumbersome bureaucracy. It represents the interests of commerce. North Wood is an agricultural district that can best be described as an agrarian commune with overtones of a mystical theocracy. The Avian Principality is a hereditary monarchy that tries to avoid conflict with its neighbors, much like Switzerland. Wildwood is a no man’s land that houses a tribal bandit clan as well as the totalitarian regime of the Dowager Governess and her coyote army.
The various regions must overcome their doubts and suspicions toward their neighbors before they can work together for the common good. This is no easy feat since North Wood residents resent the bandits in Wildwood who frequently raid their export products. South Wood views North Wood as a region populated by barbarians. The avians simply want to be left alone, but their borders are being compromised by incursions from Wildwood. South Wood, in turn, would like to expand into Wildwood to exploit its resources for industrial purposes.
Once Alexandra is defeated, Owl Rex articulates the ideal that all the regions must strive to achieve: “No process of government building is ever easy. There is, however, a striking feeling in the air, regardless of the petty disputes, that we will arrive at a solution in time, a solution that will see to the rights and needs of all citizens of the Wood” (527-28).
Outcast Alliances
To advance her plan to take over the Wood, Alexandra must recruit allies from the human, animal, and plant kingdoms. Those most vulnerable to her influence are beings who have been treated as outcasts by their own kind, much as she has been cast out by the citizens of South Wood. The crows have always been alienated from the other avians. Owl Rex says, “They had always been a troubled lot, prone to mischief and petty thievery, and seemed to suffer under the delusion that they somehow stood above their avian brethren. A separatist streak developed” (178). Alexandra is only too glad to welcome the crows to her cause once they defect from the Principality.
The coyotes, too, have been rejected by other animal species. They are reviled as scavengers by everyone. When Alexandra offers them a modicum of respect, they repay with loyalty, much like Curtis. One of her soldiers declares, “And so: I would gladly lay my life down for the Governess. She elevated our entire species from our lot as scavengers and scroungers; she brought us coyotes to a place of honor among the beasts of the wood” (119).
Alexandra extends her generosity to reviled members of the plant kingdom when she offers to feed blood to the invasive ivy. Any invasive species of plant is usually rooted up and destroyed, not nurtured as the Governess promises to do. In exchange for sustenance, the ivy agrees to obey Alexandra’s command.
Finally, Alexandra is able to gain Curtis’s support for her cause because she instinctively recognizes that he, too, is a loner and outcast. No one back in Portland wants to befriend him. Prue actually throws rocks at him to prevent him from following her into the Wilderness. In contrast, Alexandra praises Curtis and lavishes attention on him. This kind treatment very nearly succeeds in gaining his loyalty.
A Sense of Belonging
This theme ties in closely with the theme of alienation that allows Alexandra to attract an army of the neglected and disaffected in Wildwood. Prue initially associates her sense of belonging with her family and with Portland. She’s especially attached to her baby brother. Her entire story arc is an attempt to reassert the notion that Mac belongs to her.
While Prue’s devotion to her brother never fades, she seems to feel less of a sense of belonging in Portland than when she first started her adventure. Meloy writes: “From this vantage, Prue thought, Portland seemed like the strange, magical country—not the world she currently stood in […] The lattice of Portland’s freeways, clogged with cars and trucks, all the concrete and metal—these things seemed more alien to her now” (526). Prue’s sense of belonging is further compromised when she discovers that her very existence is owing to the magic of the Wood. Although the story ends with her return to Portland, the novel suggests that Prue will re-enter the Impassable Wilderness at some point in the future.
Curtis’s identification with the Wood is much stronger than Prue’s. His entire life has left him feeling alienated, and it isn’t until he enters the magical realm that he feels as if he belongs. He gravitates immediately to Alexandra because she and her allies are all outcasts like him. He later attaches himself to a more positive role model in the form of Brendan and his outcast bandits. When Prue asks him to come home to Portland, Curtis declines. He’s found his true home in Wildwood, saying, “I’m a bandit now. A real Wildwood bandit. I just can’t go back on that. That moment on the Long Road, before you came up, I had the chance to leave. But I’m needed here, Prue. I belong here” (531).
