“Pink versus Black”
Soman Chainani explains, “Agatha stopped laughing. Then her gaze moved past Sophie into the square. The villagers were staring at them like the solution to a mystery. Good in pink, Evil in black. The School Master’s perfect pair.” Colors are employed when cataloguing the girls. Sophie who is clad in pink embodies “goodness” whereas Agatha who dons black clothes incarnates “badness.”
Bears
Soman Chainani elucidates, “Naturally the villagers blamed bears. No one had ever seen a bear in Gavaldon, but this made them more determined to find one. Four years later, when two more children vanished, the villagers admitted they should have been more specific and declared black bears the culprit, bears so black they blended with the night. But when children continued to disappear every four years, the village shifted their attention to burrowing bears, then phantom bears, then bears in disguise . . . until it became clear it wasn’t bears at all.” The bears are downright scapegoats for the children’s vanishing. The bears’ blackness underwrites to their made-up liability. Validation of the bears’ unreality proves the penetrating fantasy which profiles the fairy tales.
