Talk:The Story of the Amulet

=Discussion=

No-time travel
magical trips that take no time at all in our world (though the latter trope occurs often in fantasy fiction, especially for children).

I am interested in knowing the basis of the judgment in the final parenthetical comment; to the best of my knowledge the motif is not particularly common (I cannot immediately think of any examples other than Nesbit and Lewis) and the salient point here would be whether it was common, or appeared in notable stories other than The Story of the Amulet prior to 1950; since later examples may very well be based upon The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. RandomCritic 07:22, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Just thinking of some examples. The one that comes to mind is The Tower of Geburah by John White http://www.amazon.com/Tower-Geburah-Book-Archives-Anthropos/dp/0877845603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272333813&sr=1-1 I think it's more the trope of waking up and it was all a dream - or was it? There are many books like this - eg The Wizard of Oz. Also there are many children's books that deal with time in some weird way - eg Tom's Midnight Garden. Oh and in adult fantasy - The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson and The Landover series by Terry Brooks.

Article needs cleanup for cites and objectivity
Article includes many examples of uncited statements, speculations, and writer's opinions. Let's clean these up as necessary, please. -- Writtenonsand 23:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Problematic section
"Perhaps the most intriguing chapter of the novel describes the children's visit to the future ... this chapter in The Story of the Amulet is the least plausible in the narrative: whereas all the other adventures in this novel contain scrupulously detailed accounts of past civilisations, the children's trip into the future represents Nesbit's wishful thinking for a Utopia based on her own desires for socialist reform. Among Nesbit's unlikely predictions: in the future, trousers will be obsolete and men will wear kilts!"

1) The chapter featuring Atlantis would presumably equally be "wishful thinking" on Nesbit's part.

2) Wikipedia is not a crystal ball WP:NOT. Characterizing the idea that in the future "trousers will be obsolete and men will wear kilts" as an "unlikely prediction" is simply the writer's opinion. (I can remember encountering in my own lifetime the statement that men in modern cultures ever wearing pierced jewelry was too ridiculous to consider.)

-- Writtenonsand 00:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I just removed the statement in question after independently coming to the same conclusion. It remained for over a year after the objection was raised.  Be bold.  Robert Brockway (talk) 02:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Anti-semitism
I've toned down and corrected the article's accusations of anti-Semitism. I've not been able to find any reference to E. Nesbit in association with anti-Semitism that does not arise from the Wikipedia. In that light, I feel that accusing her of broad anti-Semitic "tendencies" is not a neutral point of view. Emotive words such as "painfully" do not belong here.

Furthermore, to describe racist slurs as "disguised" suggests a deliberate concealment, for which I see no evidence. It seems to me that the "anti-semitism" is rather part of a broader pattern of casual racial stereotyping. For example, the sympathetic pre-dynastic Egyptian tribesmen are described as fair skinned and blue eyed, while their "terrible" assailants have dark skin and "blobby fat noses".

Nevertheless, the novel does contain negative Jewish stereotypes, and I've retained sentences that report that.

--AlexTingle 23:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Your counter-example to antisemitic sentiment, is actually another example of her antisemitism. The assailants with the blobby noses are "proto-Jews". They're depicted as reminiscient of another Jewish character. They are supposed to be the Hyksos, canaanites who ruled Egypt and were theorized to be the origins of the Jews. 2A0D:6FC2:6800:2200:C91F:66D1:8169:77FE (talk) 22:09, 6 November 2023 (UTC)