Summary Of Year Of Wonders By Geraldine Brooks

YoW – Prac Essay #2
Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders is a bleak exploration of human suffering and cruelty. Discuss.
Geraldine Brooks’ compelling novel, “Year of Wonders”, explores the various facets of human behaviour invoked when experiencing a traumatic and deathly event; the bubonic plague. The negative side of human nature is revealed when the villagers collapse under the pressure of the plague and begin to lose themselves within their scapegoating, greed and witchcraft. Untimely deaths rack the village with suffering and fear, with people not knowing which moment is their last and having no hope for the future. However, through this plague, there are events of great significance and joy, such as births and solid friendships that strongly
Her story is filled with immense grief and pain, and the drastic consequences that result from the insanity of loving loved ones. The Plague is unforgiving and unbiased, as “wealth and connection are no shield” against it. Anna, a young mother of two, loses both children to the epidemic. She loved them ‘from the moment [she] reached down and touched the crown of [their] heads” and yet the place was ‘cruel’ and threw blows upon blows “so that before you have mourned one person that you love, another is ill in your arms”. The death of two young, innocent children is not only horrifying and heart-wrenching, but reduces Anna to “not really seeing anything. It is only the tragedy of losing her ‘babes’, husband, potential lover in Mr Viccar, that she turns to Elinor and begins to learn the arts of physick. An aspect of the time era this story was set in, was the people’s avid belief of medicine and herbs being the way of the witches. Instead of accepting Any and Mem Gowdie’s goodwill and knowledge that was “old before Mem Gowdie was even thought of”, they went to hire expensive physicians which ultimately give no help. Birthing places a woman in a fragile and vulnerable state, and yet “there were few who would do without Anys in their birthing room” despite many of them fearing that Anys was a witch. Although they hated the Gowdies’, ironically, when the death toll rises to where over two-thirds of the villagers lose their lives to the Plague, many people resort to witchcraft, believing the in the “ghost of Anys”. They place themselves through unnecessary punishment and pain, such as “boiling the babe’s piss” or passing a child “through the brambles”. Through desperation, flagellants also appear, desperate to please their God through self punishment. The villager’s lack of knowledge and unwillingness to accept views which lie