Splendors and Glooms falls smack dab into the category of fantasy, so it's no surprise that there are magical things happening all of the time. For one thing, Grisini, the main bad guy, happens to be an evil magician who likes to turn little children into helpless puppets—literally. He turns Clara Wintermute into a puppet so he can hold her ransom for a considerable sum of money. And Cassandra—aka Madama—is a powerful witch with a very serious problem. She has a magical stone called the phoenix-stone that gives her a lot of power but is also destined to destroy her. Isn't magic complicated?
Questions About The Supernatural
- How has Grisini messed up the process of turning children into puppets and back again?
- What does Cassandra do in her Tower Room? What happens to the room at the end of the book? Why? To jump-start your thinking, swing by the "Symbols" section.
- Why can't Cassandra just throw away or destroy the phoenix-stone? Explain the magic involved but also dive into the symbolism.
- How does Clara fight against Grisini's spell in order to warn Lizzie Rose and Parsefall?
Chew on This
Clara finds Grisini's puppet show magical from the very beginning, but what she doesn't know is that Grisini is so skilled because he's a real magician—one who can do things like turn little children into puppets.
When Cassandra's tower crumbles to the ground, it's clear her magic has gone away, too. All of her power was in the phoenix-stone, and now that Clara has destroyed it, she's just a normal old woman—one who's afraid of death and has regrets about the lack of love in her life.