Howl’s Moving Castle: Book Review

Watching the movie for the first time at the age of 7, I was blown by the concept of a floating castle.
It made me a huge fan of animated movies and more of the world of fantasy. However, I wasn’t
aware that this fantastic work of Ghilbi Studio was rather an adaptation of a very famous novel by
Diana Wynne Jones, written in 1986. While browsing through many famous fantasy novels, I was
acquainted with in a library to work on this assignment, I accidently stumbled upon this familiar
name that appeared on a beautifully illustrated cover of a text, hidden in the children’s reading
section – Howl’s Moving Castle. The cover suddenly hit me with nostalgia of my initial encounter to
the world of wizards and witches, way before I became familiar with the world of magic through Oz:
The Great and Powerful and the Harry Potter series.

Before getting into the text, I was completely captivated by the cover used by the Greenwillow Book
Publication which had many characters represented differently than what I had known through the
movie. It interested me deeply to understand their description in the text through the view of the
author. To my surprise, the language of the text was easy to comprehend, which made the journey
into this magical world, and the imagination of every character and chapter much more interesting
and enjoyable than reading a complex language as used in the Game of Thrones which was written
far more recently. This makes it somehow understandable, why this book was placed in the
children’s section. Nonetheless, this fantasy novel, turned out to be much more complex in its
nature in comparison to the simplicity of the words and sentences used by Jones and can be easily
recommended to any young adult to dive in a world of fantasy, surrounded by spells and many
timeless quests a person has with identity and self-image.

[“It would be a blue thin face, very long and thin, with a thin blue nose. But those early green flames on top are most
definitely your hair. And those purple flames near the bottom make the mouth. You have savage teeth, my friend. You
have two green tufts of flame for eyebrows…” This is how Jones describes one of the major characters in the story –
Calcifer, as illustrated on the top left of the cover.]

Howl’s Moving Castle is a twist to the trope of Fairytales. It starts with “In the land of Inagary, where
such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be
born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first…” This sets the rhythm
of the text by giving the idea of how this world created by Jones is much familiar with the ways of a
fairytale and no one goes against their destiny. Yet, at the same time the author is somehow
manipulating the much standardized ways of a fairytale. The story revolves around the character of
Sophie and her siblings who live in a world of spells and unexpected, yet expected events, with a
classic Victorian setting, accepts her fate of being the eldest among the three daughters. She comes
from a well established family of renowned hat-makers, with a real sister Lettie as the middle child
and Martha, the youngest sister who is born from the second marriage of her father to the youngest
mistress in his Hat shop, Fanny. Now, unlike many fairytales, none of the sisters are against each
other, rather they have a more understanding bond, and a well defined story as well. Neither is the
step mother evil towards either of the daughter. Sophie who believes that she has a dull life and
nothing even remotely enchanting would ever happen in her life, starts to live in constant monotony
until she is cursed by the antagonist of the text – Witches of the Waste. Sophie is turned into an old
woman, who then sets out to look for a way to break this curse, where she finally comes across the
moving, more like a floating, medieval castle on the clouds belonging to the Wizard Howl.

The theme that most stood out to me in the entire series of events that take place in Sophie’s life is
the complexity of the characters, relationship with each other and the image of the self. Not just the
central characters like Howl, Sophie, and Calcifer the fire demon, even the characters that are
associated with the protagonists like Michael, Sophie’s sisters – Martha and Lettie have much more
layers to their characters. In the initial chapters it is revealed that Sophies sisters’ switch roles
literally using a spell to even change their appearances to live the life that was more relevant to their
interest. So, Martha becomes Lettie to work in a Pastry shop as she wants to be courted by a
handsome young man and get married to have seven children and Lettie becomes Martha as she
wants to pursue a career as a diplomat by learning the spells as an apprentice to Mrs. Fairfax.

Sophies transition from the young woman to an old lady is where her fate changes and breaks her
own ideology of her destiny. The young Sophie was more complacent and would let things happen
to her in the fashion they were laid out for her. She was shy and had no fighting spirit. She was
already an old lady by heart. However, the curse made her life oddly liberating as when she becomes
old, she loses her filter and is not afraid to complain or demand for things that were more in her
favor. This old Sophie was more powerful in her actions as it gave her some power to put her
thoughts without hesitation. Howl on the other hand has excessive mood swings. Again the trope of
the protagonist who is supposed to fight, be more chivalrous, is rather a coward, spends all his
money on make-up and clothing, and runs away from commitments. Both the characters seem
unlovable, and have very anti-hero traits. However, the constant bickering between the characters,
fighting together through many obstacles whether physical or emotional, lead to an eventual growth
for both of them. The love story which flames here is not between a beautiful woman and a
charming prince but between a 70 year old woman and a wizard with narcissistic characteristics. The
coming together of two very unlikely characters is one strong reason for the text to stand strong for
readers of every age group.

Coming back to the fantastical Kingdom of Ingary, which is ruled by various rumors of the witch that
kills mercilessly and a wizard who eats young girl’s hearts, the main plot remains the castle itself. The
magical castle of Howl, which has black smoke escaping from its four tall chimney, is run by Howl’s
fire demon Calcifer, who was previously a fallen star, is in a contract with Howl and holds his heart to
stay alive in return to never leave the castle and keep it warm and moving. The castle itself has four
doors but only one is real. This door however, is enchanted to open in 4 different places, one of
which being Earth, where Howl actually belongs from. Howl, originally known as Howell Jenkins of
Wales, a renowned member of the fraternity of wizards on Earth, belongs to the future, or the
present of the world that Jones herself comes from. Sophie, too gets to travel to Wales through
Howl’s magical boots that cover one mile with every step, making it a time machine. Here, Sophie’s
encounter to technology like Cars and Computers is quite comical and provides a completely
different perspective to the world we live in. She calls it horrid and wishes to run back to her world,
where curses are the part of the mundane lifestyle.

The novel overall, is about complex magical conspiracies, unlikely heroes and heroines, dimension-
hopping, and speaking life into non-living objects. It was fascinating to see the author having fun by
striking the tropes of a fairytale through unusual characters. Magic too had a different way of
understanding, there was no explanation, rather much of it was discovered through the course of
the novel. Even though my source of taking this text as my reading for this assignment was the
movie, the text turned out to be completely different from it and gave a fresh view point to the
majority of the story and characters.