Which is more important – family or love?
This is the endless question for everybody, because there are some people, who have never chosen the right one. Have you ever thought which of both are more important for you? R. D Blacmore’s
book Lorna Doone is a story where a girl whose relatives are known robber band. This is a love story between two young people, whose love is impossible, they both are like Romeo and Juliet – young, fell in love and there are many things that do not allow them to meet. A report on this book includes three major aspects: theme, style and value.
One aspect of the book is its theme. This book tells us the love story of a boy, who had lost his father, because he had been killed, and a girl, whose relatives are hated by all neighbourhood, because they were stealing their houses and fields and also they were killing men on the road.
One of the major ideas of this book is the situation between those two parts of village where one of them were terrified citizens, but other – robbers and murderers called Doones. In case of Doones all people were afraid to approach to moor alone, because it was territory of Sir Ensor, who was their lead. He had arrived from Scotland, because in seventeenth century, on the eve of the great bourgeois revolution, many estates in Scotland had been confiscated for political reasons. So he had decided to go to Court, hoping that the King would help him to get his estate back, but when he had seen a nobleman who had taken an active part in the confiscation of his estate, he had attacked and killed him. This was the reason why he was outlaw. Before all this he had been a rich and respected nobleman, but now he was a captain of the band of robber. At first they had been honest and poor, and the farmers of the neighbourhood had been sorry for them and they had tried to help them, bringing the Doones little presents. But after some time they had decided that they had done enough for those aristocrats. The Doones did not like it and they had started to bring all those things without permission. Later, when they had noticed that they had not been punished, they had started to kill people.
The other major idea of this book is about the suffer of people, because there were many people who had felt the pain. The Doones were very cruel people and they liked to laugh about other and enjoy about their problems. In world there are a lot of people who have no difference with these ones. In case of such people, other cannot feel safety, they are frightened and in horrors.
The last major idea of this book is the beautiful and tender love between Lorna Doone and John Ridd. It had started with John’s dad death, because he had been killed by the Doones in foggy day in November 1673, when Master John Ridd had been on his way home from Porlock market. After that event, little John went to search were those cruel men were living and at the top of the waterfall, near the Doones’s valley, they had met each other for the first time. It was the love at the first sight, which was continuing through all the story. At the end the had married and lives together for a long time.
A second aspect of Lorna Doone is its style. There is a translator’s note which was added in a small book where were also some tasks and activities to understand better the idea of each chapter. The vocabulary is not very difficult, but also not easy. The book is very interesting and exiting, because it attaches the attention with interesting events. In the book, there are also some pictures, which describe happenings.
A final aspect of Lorna Doone is its value. This is a really powerful book that makes us think about the real values in life, because sometimes it is very hard to choose the right one – between family and love. It was very touchable when eight years old Lorna understood that her family was evil and cruel, there are not so many people, who understand his family’s mistakes and it is important to say that that little girl identified it at so early ages.
This is extraordinary book that tells us about the life of two young people’s love which needs to keep in secret of her family, because if it will found out about their love, it could kill them both.
R. D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone, published in Latvia in 2002.