Diana Wynne Jones and Howl’s Moving Castle

Howl’s Moving Castle is one of the novels which I will always read without putting too much brainwork into it. Instead of going out of the way to rationalize my love for it, I would just admit to myself how bias I’m when it comes to this charming little novel. For most cases, books about witches and wizards aren’t my favourite, but Howl’s Moving Castle is an exception. In this short post, I would like to explain to you the very few reasons to my love for the book that I came up with before stopped thinking and just enjoyed it.

My first encouter with Howl’s Moving Castle was in the form of the great Hayao Miyazaki’s 2005 adaptation, which, as I soon learned, is more different from the book than I could ever expected. The film, which I will definitely dicuss in more details in another post, introduced me to Diana Wynne Jones’s world as Miyazaki imagined it, with never ending fields of flowers floating in the sky and intricately decorated buildings and carriages. I got hooked and took up the book right after, looking for the same feeling I got from the film. In the first half, the film and book are nearly identical; however, as the story goes on and more characters are introduced, while the book still mainly explores the themes of destiny, bravery and love, the adaptation quickly makes a sharp turn towards ideas of war’s brutality and love of peace. It’s hard to say which one is better. Personally, I like the two equally and for very different reasons. In the case of the book, it was Jones incredibly relatable potrayal of deeply flawed characters that captures me.

In the book, Jones’s story follows a relatively small cast and an interesting plot line with some slightly lengthy elaboration that in some ways, add to the dream-like vibe of the book. I love Sophie and Howl as individual characters and as a couple, despite that I still can’t fully understand the process in which they fall in love. Sophie, the eldest of the Hatter sisters, first appears as the most submissive among the three girls, never complaining about her hardship or asking for more from the people around her. As a result, her journey throughout the novel, during which she is cursed by the Witch of the Waste and turned into a ninety-year-old woman, is mostly about Sophie finding her confidence and learning how to be the master of her own fate.

Howl, Sophie’s counterpart and powerful wizard who literally doesn’t have a heart, is even worst. Vain, flirtatious and cowardly, the man is never ashame of his treacherous doings toward women, believing that he’s only trying to be in control of his life. In fact, he’s so used to running away from his responsibilities that he has to trick himself into doing the right thing. As the story progresses, Howl gradually goes through some remarkable transformations, which, admittedly, do make him a slightly better person.

The world of Howl’s Moving Castle is wildly imaginative, with spells and curses running around helping as well as ruining people. It’s never nice to be turn old in just a blink of an eye like Sophie or forced to meet up with an ex whom you ran away from like Howl. Nevertheless, one can’t not deny that if it hadn’t been for these curses and the relationships our charaters had as a result of them, Sophie and Howl wouldn’t have ended up under the same roof and become better version of themselves through their interactions. In a way, their curses are blessings in disguise.

If you ever find the time, please give the book or the film a go if you haven’t try them out. They could be found in any platform you could name (Amazon, Netflix, HBO, etc.) and in most forms (DVDs and Blu-rays for the film, physical books and E-books for the novel). No matter what you go with, you will definitely have a good time.