56 pages • 1 hour read
Jonathan AuxierSweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Friendship and Belonging
Friends who become family bring each other a sense of acceptance, love, and—above all—belonging. The Sweep and Nan love each other devotedly. Nan later learns from Charlie that the Sweep was contemplating death by suicide when he first saw the bundle on the ground that was the baby Nan. Taking care of Nan subsequently becomes his motivation to live. As the narrative states, “Every day the man knew he needed to stay alive because that little girl needed him” (333). As she listens to Charlie’s story, Nan considers Toby’s truism that, “We save ourselves by saving others” (333). The Sweep was saved by caring for Nan, who brought immeasurable love and purpose into his life.
Friendship and belonging is further explored in the relationship between Charlie and Nan, who find a sense of family and companionship together: a feeling that Nan has not known since the Sweep was alive. Just as the Sweep cared for Nan, Nan knows that she must now shelter and protect Charlie, who is deemed a monster by those who encounter him. Nan finds them both a safe place to live in the abandoned mansion that they call the captain’s house, where Charlie will be safe from prying eyes. In doing so, Nan creates a safe and happy home for herself as well, explaining to Charlie, “We need to make this place our very own” (83). Together, they allocate the myriad of new rooms for a variety of purposes: learning, playing, sleeping, and creating a life together built on their love for one another.
Toby and Nan’s relationship also strengthens during this time. Nan’s peace and happiness with her chosen family of Toby and Charlie, who care for her endlessly, is illustrated on New Year’s Eve, when Toby articulates the belief that one’s chosen activity at the stroke of midnight indicates what one will be doing for the rest of the new year. Nan’s satisfaction with her companions is also depicted in the novel’s descriptions of the Nan “sitting on a rooftop. Charlie on one side. Toby on the other. A clear sky above. The whole world below” (181). When Nan considers this tableau and thinks, “I could do worse” (181), the author implies that Nan’s life has improved significantly since Charlie first came to life; instead of enduring daily misery at Crudd’s hands, she gets to savor freedom, space, light, and love with her chosen family.
In a rather symmetrical conclusion, Miss Bloom and Nan are able to use the captain’s house to create a safe space of learning and belonging for all the retired sweeps. The school, where the former sweeps are “fed and clothed and taught to read,” (337) is juxtaposed with their previous lives filled with cruel and demanding sweep masters in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. With this conclusion, Jonathon Auxier suggests that all children deserve love and a sense of belonging.
Imagination and Magic
Imagination and magic originates in the form of the Sweep, who vividly conjures imaginative worlds and even creates Charlie, Nan’s magical protector, to look after her when he himself is gone. The Sweep nurtures Nan’s imagination as a useful distraction from their daily hardships; thus, he protects her from the worst effects of the poverty in which they live. Nan remembers looking at constellations with the Sweep, but—knowing the nature of fog-enshrouded London—she later wonders “if the stars had really been visible through the fog” or whether “the Sweep had just made her believe” (173). This statement is a testament to the Sweep’s magical ability to weave immersive and believable imaginative worlds for Nan. This dynamic is similarly demonstrated by the game of “word soup,” which they play to distract themselves from hunger on the nights when they have no dinner at all. Love, imagination, and stories are characterized as being just as nourishing as food in their own way, for as the narrative states, “Even though they had eaten nothing, the girl still ended her day with a belly full of story—which sticks to the ribs even better than mutton” (59). Nan is clearly encouraged to conceive of the stories as being satisfying and filling, and this idea distracts her from her hunger; thus, active imagination serves as a tool to create inner comfort that mitigates the miseries of the external world.
The Sweep also uses imagination to help Nan to endure the devastating loss of Charlotte, her doll, which is smashed by the cruel school children. By procuring the doll’s eye and claiming it to be a tool to witness a magical world, the Sweep cleverly turns a tragic loss into a whimsical game; Nan is distracted from her initial devastation and instead becomes entranced by the idea of finding secret places. As the Sweep encourages her, “Look in that alley, and see if you can’t find a fairy door we can escape through” (150). Furthermore, rather than admitting to Nan that he is unpicking his own coat in order to patch hers, he claims that he is using “thread from the air” because it is a “magic needle” (232). Nan is therefore protected from grasping the truly dire extent of their poverty. It is only when she is older and has the opportunity to recall these details with a more experienced gaze, that she finally realizes that “with every stitch he gave her, he lost one of his own” (234).
Like the Sweep, Charlie, is selfless in his love for Nan, for he is a literal construct of the Sweep’s love for his adopted daughter. More than anything else in the story, he personifies the ongoing theme of Imagination and Magic, for his sudden awakening is foreshadowed quite early in the story as Nan imagines seeing his two eyes in the lump of char that the Sweep has left for her. Charlie’s awakening simultaneously saves Nan’s life and confirms that the Sweep himself did truly possess magical abilities in addition to the more mundane talent of conjuring up imaginative scenes. Charlie’s very existence implies that he holds inherent magic, and furthermore, this magic is designed to save Nan from whatever danger she may find herself in. This becomes clear when Charlie’s inherent magic saves Nan from the horrors of the chimney fire and allows her to escape without “one single burn” (63). Charlie’s magic is continually demonstrated in his development; he learns to speak, read, write, draw, and play. Lastly—and most significantly—Charlie fulfills his life purpose in protecting Nan when she falls from the top of the matchstick, for his immense magic allows him to save Nan despite her overwhelming and otherwise fatal injuries. Thus, while the novel depicts historically accurate injustices that were widely perpetuated in Victorian London, it also relies heavily on elements of magical realism to conjure a world at once enchanted and mundane, captivating and commonplace.
Poverty and Social Injustice
The impoverished conditions of desperate and destitute people in England’s rapidly industrializing capital led to abysmal working conditions. Unscrupulous business owners were able to exploit people’s desperation by offering positions that were underpaid, overworked, and unsafe. This pattern is aptly illustrated in the hazardous lives of chimney sweeps, and Auxier describes many harrowing versions of this life throughout the novel. For example, although the Sweep works long and demanding days, he barely makes enough money to feed himself and Nan on some days. To compensate for this monetary lack, he must often resort to foraging or even theft, gleaning food in the form of “ripe figs stolen from a low bough or quail’s eggs swiped from a nest or even (if they had money) day-old rolls from the baker” (13). The Sweep often needs to steal to feed them, which emphasizes how little his work as a chimney sweep provides. Even when they are fortunate enough to have money, it is implied that they have very little; they can only afford day-old (and therefore cheap) bread; furthermore, they move from place to place and never have the means to obtain a stable home.
The effects of poverty on creating unjust and tragic working arrangements is further illustrated through Roger’s traumatic origins, for his own parents sold him into indentured servitude in order to provide for the rest of the family. Tragically, Roger goes every year at Christmas and Easter to stand outside his family’s home and watch his parents and his younger siblings eat. Although Roger holds his parents responsible for this injustice, Auxier encourages readers to critique the broader system that leaves families with the impossible choice of either starving or selling children into indentured work.
Victorian England is quickly established through both Roger and Nan’s experiences as a society which tolerates and perpetuates social injustice. Nan, although she is a skilled chimney sweep, has no choice but to indenture herself to Crudd, for “no person would hire a six-year-old girl without a proper master” (24). Being indentured to Crudd brings Nan a life of cruelty and toil; she is often beaten, she is not fed properly, and she is forced to go into dangerously small and unsafe chimney flues, as is illustrated when she gets stuck in the chimney at the seminary. While Nan is saved by the magical char in her pocket which turns out to be Charlie, Auxier nonetheless implies that most young sweeps on the time frame were not lucky enough to be rescued from such a gruesome fate; for the thousands of real children who were caught in similar predicaments, the outcome would have been quite different. This grim reality is further stressed during the May Day march, when the children hold signs commemorating the deaths of their dead friends: “George Hicks, 6 years old, Chimney Fire,” “Eliza ‘Twigs’ Brown, 10 years old, Fall from Roof,” and “Philip ‘Preacher’ Wendell, 4 years old, Consumption” (310). By crafting the scene of the march, Auxier suggests that eventually, frustrated and disempowered workers will be pushed toward demanding reform. He alludes to the long overdue laws which were passed during the 19th century to improve working conditions for children and adults working in factories, mines, and chimneys.
Related Titles
By Jonathan Auxier
