Names can help to bring out the depth of a character's personality. Names also may have significance as the title of a place. Over time we may come to identify a particular person's physical characteristics with the name they are called. Other names simply have certain qualities and emotions attached to them. In The King of the Golden River the very title of the book suggests the richness and wealth of a glorious fantasy country. Naming in fantasy novels is left very open to wherever the author's creative imagination takes him. If you look even further into the characters, you may notice their names becoming representations of their traits.
In a secluded and mountainous part of Stiria there was in old time a valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility. It was surrounded on all sides by steep and rocky mountains rising into peaks which were always covered with snow and from which a number of torrents descended in constant cataracts. One of these fell westward over the face of a crag so high that when the sun had set to everything else, and all below was darkness, his beams still shone full upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of gold. It was therefore called by the people of the neighborhood the Golden River. It was strange that none of these streams fell into the valley itself. They all descended on the other side of the mountains and wound away through broad plains and by populous cities. But the clouds were drawn so constantly to the snowy hills, and rested so softly in the circular hollow, that in time of drought and heat, when all the country round was burned up, there was still rain in the little valley; and its crops were so heavy, and its hay so high, and its apples so red, and its grapes so blue, and its wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it was a marvel to everyone who beheld it and was commonly called the Treasure Valley.
The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers, called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the two elder brothers, were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and small, dull eyes which were always half shut, so that you couldn't see into THEM and always fancied they saw very far into YOU. They lived by farming the Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were. They killed everything that did not pay for its eating. They shot the blackbirds because they pecked the fruit, and killed the hedgehogs lest they should suck the cows; they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen, and smothered the cicadas which used to sing all summer in the lime trees. They worked their servants without any wages till they would not work any more, and then quarreled with them and turned them out of doors without paying them. It wouuld have been very odd if with such a farm and such a system of farming they hadn't got very rich; and very rich they DID get. They generally contrived to keep their corn by them till it was very dear, and then sell it for twice its value; they had heaps of gold lying about on their floors, yet it was never known that they had given so much as a penny or a crust in charity; they never went to Mass, grumbled perpetually at paying tithes, and were, in a word, of so cruel and grinding a temper as to receive from all those with whom they had any dealings the nickname of the "Black Brothers."
Questions
1. What is the connotation of the name Gluck? Does this name as well as the name of his brothers, Hans and Schwartz, give the reader any insight into their personalities?
2. What is the significance of repeating "so high," "so sweet," "so blue," etc.? (Chapter 1)
3. The sun shines on the water, making it look "like a shower of gold" (chapter 1). The brothers keep heaps of gold lying on their floors. What other examples of gold do we see in Golden River? Should this be paralleled or contrasted with the descriptive use of "silver" in Phantastes?
4. Is there a symbolic significance in calling Hans, Schwartz, and Gluck the "Black Brothers? Does it have anything at all to do with race or the mere negative implications of the color black?
Last modified 1 May 2024