Violated

Her secret place was hers only.  There, she can do what she wanted, she can be what she wanted to be, learn things she ought to know, think calmly.  There, she is the normal person that she is, that she always thinks she is.  But this is just a secret to herself.  A secret that only happens in her own secret world.

On that day that her secret place was violated, she should have listened to that mist of cloud that she saw as a bad sign.  But we people always choose to learn the hard way.  She went on until the four boys decided to go for a game they call water fart.

Trudi thought that hiding behind the big rock would give her the chance to know their secrets that these four boys might be keeping in her secret place.  But she was wrong.  Instead, they found her and then it was her turn.  Small as she is, she does not have the strength of even one of them.  Overpowered, obviously, she couldn't do anything.

They took her away from her secret world.  Inside the barn of one of these boys, they began to touch her, violate her.  Touch her in a way that was even worse than what normally happens to normal people - normal women.  You wouldn't believe it, but how Trudi wished they did touch her the way they would touch a normal girl.  That way she would have been just like any other normal victims.  The way normal women get violated.

All of them did except Georg.  Yes, her friend Georg was one of them.  Although he did not touch her, he didn't do anything to stop them from violating Trudi.  Because if he did so, that would not be normal.  He would not be normal; thus, he would not fit in.

After all these, she went back to her secret place - her secret world.  The place that was witness to what was bound to happen.  There, she threw four stones.  One for each boy who did this to her.  She vowed to take revenge, and I think she couldn't care less how long it took.

Between The Lines:

In real life, she knew it was not that easy to tell whether the villains were, and even if you could identify them, they were not total villains.  No one was entirely all of one thing.  Cowards could be courageous in some matters, and love was not always declared and might not be pure love, but mixed in with hate and fear and powerful wish for revenge - like what she felt for Georg Weiler, who went to great efforts not to glance in her direction, even if both of them stood in front of their houses.

On Being a Freak

If you lost something you'd once had - a limb, say, or an eye  - people didn't treat you like a freak; they remembered you the way you had been.  But if you were born without arms or sight, you were a freak.  If your body didn't look like the bodies of others, you were a freak. And if you lived in a freak's body long enough, though you didn't feel like a freak inside - what could you do than to make sure your body wouldn't turn all of you into a freak?

Just Like Them

She stopped wherever other kids played hopscotch or ball, wishing they'd understand that, inside she was just like them.

On Friendship

The first sin he become proficient in was lying.  It became a necessity.  But he would never tell a lie to Trudi.  Not even after he'd grow up and marry Helga Stumm and lie to her.  He'd never tell a lie to his first friend, the only one who accepted his difference so much easier than his own, though he would come to betray her in other ways.

On Having

Georg was lucky when it comes to rolling the tiny balls into the hale he'd scooped into the damp soil between the two sets of steps, but he was just as generous in letting Trudi borrow marbles from him if she lost hers.  To keep playing was far more important to him than winning.

We All Pay

We all pay.

Gertrud told Leo.

But Leo did not understand.  He probably never will.  And it was Trudi who eventually knew why.  Hegi's style of revealing the story behind Emil and Gertrud is very unique.  The kind of thing that required the character a good imagination and the kind that requires the reader a better one.  It took me to reading, repeating it a few times in order for me to get the whole thing; to get what she's trying to say.  But, still, it feels like there is still something missing; something I am still missing.

The secret.

We all have secrets to tell.  We all hold secrets told by others.  Trudi held a secret at a very young age.  I wonder if she's too young to hold on to this one.  Because sometimes it feels like a secret becomes a burden, even to an adult.... too much to bear.  Sometimes, it felt like this becomes an even more burden to a child.  A guilt formed for knowing the story because they become part of the story, part of the sin.  A pain for being a child and not being able to do something about it, or rather, not being allowed to do something about it.

Only you were there.  Unless you told.

Her mother says.

And now it breeds more fear.

Sometimes it's better not to know.

Different

The agony of being different.

Trudi is different and she's in agony.

Aren't we all different from one another?

But she's indeed different.

But, I say, how different can we be to be considered different and be in agony?

The Good, The Bad and The Gypsy

The occasions made me a little busy though I should have been busier if not for the operation.  So, this means less time to read and more time with a lot of other things.  But I get to finish the book just a while ago.  I am kind of affected by the way things went on the last book.

This is in fact one of the most tragic books I have read by far.  This means that from the books I have read this year alone, and all those books I have read since I can remember.  I thought this was something fairy-tale-ish, since the thought that comes to me whenever I hear the title is those drawings made by Walt Disney.  Right now, I am still wondering what is the movie all about, considering what I have just read.

I am kinda sad because Quasimodo's life was never happy.  As it said in the book:

He mused on the wretched lot that providence had meted out to him - how woman, and the joys of love, were destined to pass under his eye without his ever being more than a witness to the happiness of others.

Everyone in that town sees him as a monster.  But with his actions, he never was to me.  Claude Frollo, on the other hand, was the good in the story.  Or, was he really?

Now, who really is the good?  Who is the bad?

The twist is that they both fell in love.  I was really quite surprised by the way each of them handled their emotions.  Not to mention the actions they took just to be closed to the one they love.

The mystery of the pink shoe was revealed but I must say that I had the idea of what this was all about at some point in the story.

The good, the bad and the gypsy all died.  Something that makes me wonder how the Walt Disney people presented this in the story, if they ever did at all.

As with Victor Hugo's style, I find it that, sometimes, due to the profoundness of the though of one of his characters, I feel that it was almost totally detached from the story.  That it looks far too perfect to be a part of the story and that it can be distinguished as the thought of the writer himself, and not the ordinary common character.

Some quotes:

I would rather be the head of the fly than the tail of a lion.

For, though one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one accepts the religion of the temple nearest at hand.

It's often our best friends who make us fall.

There are two sides to every human act.  One man gets praised for what another gets blamed for.

Memory is the tormentor of jealousy.