Ragnarok by A.S Byatt is a novel about the experiences and internal struggles of a young girl who grew up in England during the World War II. The young girl, known as The Thin Child, lives in the England countryside as a result of the raging war in the city and of its surroundings. Throughout the novel the Thin Girl ponders many questions concerning why is the war happening?, is her father coming back? and whether or not the germans are good or bad people? To make sense of these questions, the thin girl makes parallels between her current life and the life of the Gods in Norse Mythology. She becomes interested in Norse mythology after reading her mother’s book, Asgard and the Gods and…... The thin girl relates more to Norse Mythology than Christianity
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Religion restricts the thin child from feeding her imagination due to the belief that the stories in the Bible are human make-ups and not intriguing like the Gods in Asgard. The weekly forcing of Christian belief on scripture lessons makes it uninteresting for the thin child, and therefore she chooses to associate her eternal struggles about the war within the stories of the Norse myths. Byatt suggests that the Thin Child feels guilty about not believing in Christianity. As the narrator explains, ”The thin child had an intuition of wickedness as she felt what she spoke sucked into a cotton-wool cloud of nothingness”(Byatt 11). She feels wicked for going against the stuff that was taught fto her saying that it was necessary to be good. She refers to Christianity as a cloud of nothingness because this religion offers no imagination and way to interpret the story in her own way. Because she lives in wartime during WW2, she knows that death and destruction are a way of life, so the child pursues freedom in the Norse stories she chooses to read to make sense of the world around
Religion restricts the thin child from feeding her imagination due to the belief that the stories in the Bible are human make-ups and not intriguing like the Gods in Asgard. The weekly forcing of Christian belief on scripture lessons makes it uninteresting for the thin child, and therefore she chooses to associate her eternal struggles about the war within the stories of the Norse myths. Byatt suggests that the Thin Child feels guilty about not believing in Christianity. As the narrator explains, ”The thin child had an intuition of wickedness as she felt what she spoke sucked into a cotton-wool cloud of nothingness”(Byatt 11). She feels wicked for going against the stuff that was taught fto her saying that it was necessary to be good. She refers to Christianity as a cloud of nothingness because this religion offers no imagination and way to interpret the story in her own way. Because she lives in wartime during WW2, she knows that death and destruction are a way of life, so the child pursues freedom in the Norse stories she chooses to read to make sense of the world around