Also, throughout the entire class, I was thinking about the title and its meaning, but also thought that because I had taken the entire novel a little too literally, maybe I did the same for this; or maybe this is the same amount of obvious as the first. Does anyone think its possible that the title meant the same as the last paragraph of the story? I took the title to mean, again, the "invention" of Hugo as the automaton (although I suppose it wasn't exactly an "invention" persay, especially because he was only repairing it). The "invention" of Hugo could mean the "invention" of Hugo as the machine that was addressed in the end of the novel as him being, not necessarily his adventures throughout the novel like I previously thought the title to mean.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Intrigued.
Apparently, some found it blatantly obvious that Hugo was the machine that created the novel, but I was one of those that didn't. I suppose the ending paragraph/words did in fact suggest it, but I guess I didn't put two-and-two together until book discussion today. In fact, I was focused on Hugo's "secret" project the entire time, the automaton, and his affect on the story; I just assumed that the ending was referring to Hugo's finished project and the automaton's portrayal of the story. I suppose I was taking the story, its plot, and setting a little too literally.
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3 comments:
The way I took this book was kind of similar to your literal interpretation. After reading the the story and especially the ending I thought that the book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" was the product of an automaton created by Hugo. I guess this made sense to me that Hugo created a new automaton later in his life that was able to produce this whole story therefore making the book the invention. However, I did see how other people thought it was Hugo that was the machine. One of the reasons I really liked this story was because of the many different ways it could be interpreted.
I guess there could be a lot of interpretations to the ending of this book. At first, I thought that Hugo was referring to himself as the new automaton because he would simply be able to tell this great story as he got older. However, Kaitlin brings up a very good point. If you think about the title of the book, there must be some sort of invention by Hugo right? The automaton was technically not Hugo's because he was just repairing an already existing invention. So, there must be something that Hugo created; hence the title of the book. So now, that's why it seem logical to assume that Hugo did invent a brand new automaton that was able to tell this story, that would draw158 pictures, and write an entire book with 26,159 words.....Hugo's very own automaton. This was a great book, I loved it!
The way I interpreted the last sentences of the story was that the invention of Hugo Cabret was, in a sense, himself. He transformed throughout the book from being viewed as a bad kid, thief, and many other things, to being a magician and a great kid. I also see how he invented the automaton that created the story, but I think that the sentence was both about himself and the automaton, not just one or the other. I really enjoyed this book. The use of the text and pictures was really great. It created unity.
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