Harriet the Spy

This novel was excellent!  The character development was exquisitely crafted. I remember in school we used to learn about character development, we studied it as a formal thing to analyze and answer questions about. However, I approached this novel in a different way. Because I am beginning more and more to appreciate writing as an art form, I approached this novel on my own terms. Ok Ok, it supposed to be a novel for children, well, I think that good writing is good writing, it doesn’t matter who it was intended for.

The character development was good because the author did not rely on abstract descriptions. She did not say what Harriet was like, she showed what Harriet was like. The words thoughts and actions of Harriet, in context of other people and places, showed me who Harriet was. This style of character development is what made this novel stand out as special to me. It is easy to write things like -so and so is a wonderful person, she is thoughtful and always concerned about others. I mentioned that as an example, I am trying to show a standard way of describing people where we use adjectives. The thing is, a description based only on adjectives lacks substance, plus, the adjectives mean different things for different people. The author of Harriet the Spy did no rely on adjectives to describe Harriet. She showed Harriet’s thoughts, and Harriet’s mannerisms, and Harriet’s reactions to situations. Through these concrete descriptions of what Harriet does I got to know her. I was able to connect and understand Harriet and formulate my own understanding of how she could be described.

This way of thinking, preferring concrete images over abstract descriptions is a practice I learned in Susan Ingersoll creative writing poetry course in my third year of university. Ezra Pound said 'go in fear of abstractions.' Meaning do not write a poem that says ' they were best friends, instead, show the friendship, for example have one boy sighing, and then giving half of his firecrackers to the other boy. This example lets the reader understand the friendship on their own terms, lets the reader bring their own way of analyzing the event. When we say the concept only, that they were good friends, then the reader must bring with them their previous knowledge of what friendship means. The friendship the reader understands may be different than the friendship that these two boys experience. In poetry I believe this strategy is called imagism, and it was a movement away from romanticism. ( I might be un accurate here), But I think that poetry in the romantic period for example was heavy on abstract descriptions, using a lot of adjectives to describe something, like-  a terrifying meadow in the sultriest of nights where sulking spirits roamed and called with might. Imagism on the other hand would describe what was in that field, a wind, dark ripples on a shallow pond, rattling apple tree branches free from fruit with only dying leaves, and a sound not sure if its is wolves or .... . Both strategies for writing are valuable, but I found in very refreshing, and entertaining to read a novel that relied on the concrete to describe its characters.


 Something else that I loved about this novel was the precision of language. It is labeled as a children’s novel, but I think it can be respected as more then a simple text for children. The honesty and efficiency of the descriptions moved the novel closer to an experience of poetry than prose. I find that boring novels are heavy on description and elaboration. Harriet the spy bounced along from one specific and sharply described scene to the next. This precision of language made the novel very satisfying to read. As Susan Ingersoll said, a poet must be extremely efficient with language, not a word should be wasted, every word and even every line break should be intentional and a concentrated effort of the author, every word should have purpose and meaning. I felt the same way with this novel.  The author wasted no space in telling me how I should react to a scene, the author described the scene precisely by what exactly was happening, and the emotional reaction was mine to have. These terse and accurate depictions of what was happening, that focused on the concrete and real, gave me stronger emotional reactions to the novel. I laughed out loud at the hilarity of the world within which Harriet lived, and I also cringed at the changes she went through.

For example. the scene which describe the shrink with red hair was brilliant. Never did the author mention that he was a psychologist, not give any commentary on what a psychologist is like or how this one should be viewed. Instead the Author described what the man said and how he acted, through these descriptions I knew what he was like and I reacted to him in my own way based on my own previous knowledge and feelings about how he acted. People who know about child psychologists and counselors (of which I know very little) know there is a certain humor in the idea of active listening when it is taken to an extreme. An active listener rephrases what the speaker has said, and poses their own words as questions back to them (as one strategy) it is somewhat of an unnatural conversation because the listener is not adding any opinions or advice, they are putting all of their effort into drawing out the thoughts of the speaker. In Chapter 14 when Harriet goes to the 'doctor'  the author does not mention anything about this style of counseling, but through the ensuing conversation she shows the comedy and confusion of what occurs;
Dr. Wagner got up and went to a cabinet next to the door. When he opened it Harriet could see all sorts of games, dolls, doll houses, and trucks. She tried to be nice about it, but she was curios. "Do you sit here all day and play with all of those things?"
Wait til lher mother got a load of this.
He looked at her archly, "What do you think?
Do you think I sit here all day playing with these toys?"
"How do I know? You got a whole closet full of em"
"Don't you have toys at home?"
This was to much. "Yes,,: she shouted " but Im eleven."
"Oh." He looked somewhat taken aback, standing there with the monopoly board in his hand.
Harriet began to feel sorry for him. "Well," she said, "shall we play one game?"

It’s the exchange between the characters that reveals the silliness of the counselor and the intelligence of Harriet, the author does not have to explicitly state these ideas, instead she implies them though the seen, and lets me the reader formulate my own understanding and reaction to Harriet and the other characters.

Throughout the novel, the author lead Harriet over great changes, but never once spoiled my imagination by telling me how to feel. I watched Harriot change, and had to justify her actions and analyze her changes by my own terms. Perhaps the way I feel about Harriet is different then they was another reader would feel, and in this lies the brilliance of the work of Art that is Harriet the spy. No person can be described in two dimensions. We all have characteristics and life stories, but it is not easy for a third person to define us perfectly and tell the world what we are like. In the same way, the author did not tell me exactly what Harriet was like, who she was, and how I should define her. The key word here is that she did not tell me, instead she showed me. The author showed me what Harriet said and how she acted, and because of my observing Harriet it was up to me to react to her, i had to 'tell' myself what Harriet was like. I feel that this makes this novel multi dimensional, and most of all, it makes it honest. Because of this sharpness of description, efficiency of words, and honesty of presentation that I rank Harriet the spy not only as a good novel for children, but rank it as a good novel (period).

(P.S. Another thing that this novel reminded my from my school days was the point of view. In this novel I knew the world through Harriet’s perspective. I knew her thoughts and how she saw other people to be. This was cool to appreciate this facet of the book by my own accord and acknowledgment, and not as an exercise in school. My other creative writing poetry teacher, Don Mckay, told us that we could do whatever we wanted in a poem as long as it followed its own internal laws. I feel like the novel is the same way, it followed internal laws about whose thoughts I could know and what point of view people and places were seen from. Seeing the world through Hariet’s eyes helped my to love and sympathize for her, even at times when the rest of the world was against her. This crafting of perspective is another factor that elevates this novel to an appreciative work of art for me. )