The book, The Thief Lord, had a tremendous amount of foreshadowing in the text. You can almost guess what the ending of the book is going to be, while you’re in the middle of your reading.
One of the main characters, Scipio, is a young boy who is very mature for his age, someone who thinks of himself as highly independent which causes him to be a little conceited. This hints that because Scipio can’t wait until he grows up, and because of his actions that he takes causes the readers to imagine him as an adventurous and independent adult, you know that Scipio will do whatever to grow up faster. Scipio, also known as the thief lord, can be related to the theme of the book which is, enjoy our moment while it lasts. The reason why he connects to the theme is because Scipio can’t seem to enjoy his age. Because his father is very strict to him and doesn’t show any care and love towards Scipio, he wants to grow up fast and leave his house so that he can do whatever he wants to do. The foreshadowing on Scipio allows me to see what the author suggest to us as a reader. When the time passes, no matter how much you regret it, you can’t ever go back. When Scipio gets to turn into an adult by the Magical Merry-go-around by the end of the book, he is not sure why he couldn’t use the time of childhood having fun and enjoying the precious moment.
The most important foreshadowing comes down to Barbossa, the greedy shop owner who follows Scipio and the other children to the Island where the Merry-go-around is placed. Thanks to him being on it, not only he has to stay as a child, the merry-go-around gets broken and destroyed forever which causes Scipio to stay as an adult while Barbossa stays as a kid. I think that this shares that when you want too much for yourself, you get punished for your action.
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Hi Grace. Although I have never read The Thief Lord, I have found the novel to be quite interesting after reading your interpretation of it. You seem to propose that the Thief Lord in the title is a thief of time, in saying that “when the time passes, no matter how much you regret it, you can’t ever go back.” Scipio, in wanting to reach adulthood at a young age, and time itself, in passing incessantly, both seem to be thieves of time that cannot be retrieved once it is lost.
As a senior at TCIS this year, I suppose that I can relate to this sort of feeling as well. Recently, I have had moments of just sitting, sort of lost in my own thoughts, wondering where all the time has gone over the past four years. Like Scipio, I had begun my freshman year wanting nothing more than to graduate as swiftly and quickly as possible so that I could return to the States. Now that I look back though, such hastiness of heart seems to have been altogether unnecessary. The truth is... time itself is constantly being stolen away simply by the essence of its existence.
I am curious to find out how Scipio deals with the challenges of lost time. As for you as the reader, I hope that you take to heart some of these ideas and enjoy the gift of each day – there is a reason why it’s called the present.
I loved this book and I can still remember it even though it’s been a long time since I read it. I agree with you that Scipio is a bit full of himself and not a down-to-earth sort of person looking at the way he holds himself. His immense independence and his hurry to grow up fits well with the theme of this book. I expected that he regretted deeply and asked himself why he didn’t try to using the best of his abilities to enjoy and benefit himself from where he was in life.
When he abruptly turned into an adult after his ride on the magical merry-go-around, I had another reason to think him as the “Thief Lord.” He had just robbed himself. All the opportunity and all the wonderful times he could have had were gone. The important step in life everyone has, the step from childhood to adult was now eternally banished from Scipio. Adulthood, the moment he had been waiting had finally come without warning, but he was unhappy. It seems to me that Scipio can never enjoy how old he is.
When I first found out that he had been turned into an adult, I was happy for him, but when he didn’t like being an adult either, I said to myself that it’s too late, it’s gone, it’s not going to come back. Why couldn’t he just go with the flow and at least try to be content with his life?
When the time passes, you can’t do anything about it, it’s not coming back. We should all be careful of this fact. Good job in catching the theme of the book.
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