Censorship In The Bookman's Tale

The cold ache of hardship and sorrow chiseled at Peter’s bones as he relinquished a part of himself and moved on to New England, in pursuit of letting go of his tormented past. His deceased wife, Amanda Deveraux, had died just recently and Peter was still woebegone, struggling to cope with the loss of his wife. Though Peter wielded a deep passion for books and literature, every book that he encompassed seared a knife through his heart and shot it with a notorious remembrance of the past. He, nevertheless, “loved the feel of heavy eighteen-century paper between his fingers, the texture of the indentations made on the page by the letterpress.” (pg. 2) The Bookman’s Tale pivots around Peter’s deep obsession of books, developed through his job as an antiquarian bookseller and book restorer. The discovery of an Antiquarian watercolor, with inscribed initials B.B., drives Peter into psychological insanity after recognizing that the familiar, serene look of the woman in the old watercolor shared an uncanny resemblance to Amanda. In the progression of Peter’s development as a character, Peter is exposed to many hardships and a plethora of deterrents. With his desperate thirst for …show more content…
They soon discover that Phillip Gardener was indeed, the forger of the Pandosto. But fortunately, the real copy was never destroyed, as Gardner claimed. Peter discovers that Gardner’s will left his books and documents to his son’s youngest living heir, which turns out to be Peter himself. “As soon as she had said the name, Peter remembered the family tree he had found among Amanda Deveraux’s papers. Amanda’s father was Phillip Deveraux; his mother was Isabel and his father has been listed simply as “unknown”.” (pg. 342) According to this evidence, Peter is the legitimate owner of all the documents Phillip left, in addition to the Pandasto. This was clearly shocking and left me in