The Ickabog

“For some months after Mrs. Dovetail’s shocking death, the king’s servants were divided into two groups. The first group whispered that King Fred had been to blame for the way she’d died. The second preferred to believe there’d been some kind of mistake.”

Factionalism divides the kingdom, which is partly why the country can’t unite against a common enemy within their midst. The king really is to blame, but only half his subjects see that fact. This same factionalism will also divide Daisy and Bert for many years. Their reunion is the only hope for saving their country. 

“Naturally, these people were carefully screened by Fred’s advisors before they were allowed to see him. Fred never dealt with big problems. He saw people whose troubles could be solved with a few gold coins and a few kind words.”

This quote indicates the degree to which the two lords have insulated Fred from seeing real problems. His selfish behavior is partially attributable to the fact that others want him to only see his own concerns and not look any farther for trouble. The shepherd with the Ickabog problem is about to change all that. Fred is about to be confronted with a problem that doesn’t have a superficial solution. 

“‘No, Daisy,’ sighed Mr. Dovetail, turning back to his workshop, ‘there’s no Ickabog, but if the king wants to believe in it, let him. He can’t do much harm up in the Marshlands.’ Which just goes to show that even sensible men may fail to see a terrible, looming danger.”

Although Dovetail belongs to the faction that blames the king for his wife’s death, he still has blinders regarding the limited harm that the king can do. While Fred himself is ineffectual, he is being manipulated by Spittleworth, who is more than capable of running a kingdom into the ground. Dovetail’s shortsightedness will have grave consequences for himself and his daughter. 

“He’d considered correcting Spittleworth—he was sure he’d told the story differently—but his horrible experience in the fog sounded much better the way Spittleworth told it now: that he’d stood his ground and fought the Ickabog, rather than simply dropping his sword and running away.”

Fred has been ensnared in one of Spittleworth’s lies. However, this quote indicates that he is far from an innocent victim of deception. He wants to see himself as a hero, and a convenient lie convinces him that he is. 

“‘How…how did my husband die?’ whispered Mrs. Beamish. ‘Well, madam,’ said Spittleworth, speaking carefully, for he knew that the story he told now would become the official version, and that he’d have to stick by it, forevermore.”

Spittleworth is well aware that truth is irrelevant if everybody believes the opposite. The appeal to authority is a strong motivator. The official version will carry more weight than what individual people might say. Spittleworth is only worried about consistency in his version of events, not accuracy. 

“Spittleworth looked around at the soldiers who’d agreed to believe in the Ickabog. He liked seeing the fear on every face. He could feel his own power.”

Spittleworth has just bribed and threatened the guards to agree with his tale of the monster. The choice of words in this quote is important. Belief ought to be a matter of private conscience, not group consensus. Agreement about a belief gives it the ring of truth but has nothing to do with personal conviction. 

“Then he picked up the remnants of the shattered toy and threw them into the fire. As he watched the flames leap higher and higher, he vowed that one day, when he was old enough, he’d hunt down the Ickabog, and revenge himself upon the monster that had killed his father.”

Bert has been taught to hate a monster that doesn’t exist. He has just destroyed the toy Ickabog that Dovetail carved for him because he believes a lie. Everyone says the Ickabog killed his father, and Bert has no reason to doubt the adults around him who say that this is so. This is how prejudice is born. Fortunately, he will later revisit his beliefs and change his mind. 

“‘Yes, indeed,’ said Fraudysham, with another low bow. ‘We believe the Ickabog learned to speak Human by taking people prisoner. Before disemboweling and eating its victims, we believe it forces them to give it English lessons.’”

Fraudysham’s statement is intended to frighten Fred into approving a tax increase. The statement is outrageously idiotic, but Fred’s fears have been engaged. The logical mind becomes paralyzed in the face of fear. 

“He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before! He didn’t need to poison the soldiers at all! What he needed was to ruin their reputations.”

Spittleworth has just found a new weapon to add to his arsenal of deceit. Rather than spinning all the lies himself, he is about to make others tell lies on his behalf by threatening those they love. He is playing a public relations game with the citizens of Cornucopia by discrediting their heroes.

“‘Treason!’ jeered Mr. Dovetail. ‘Come off it, Bertha, you’re not going to stand there and tell me you believe in this treason nonsense? Why, a few months ago, not believing in the Ickabog made you a sane man, not a traitor!’”

Dovetail is articulating the stance of all reasonable people at all times in history when confronted with a witch hunt. The herd mentality of paranoia and fear has swept the country, and those few who protest are labeled traitors. As long as Spittleworth can continue generating fear, people won’t stop long enough to question the logic of the government’s outrageous policies. 

“Every girl was rechristened Jane, and every boy was renamed John. The way the child reacted to being given a new name told Ma Grunter exactly what she needed to know about how hard it was going to be to break that child’s spirit.”

Daisy strenuously resists the name change that Ma Grunter wants to force on her. Accepting it meekly means a child has abandoned all hope. However, Daisy has a fighting spirit and never surrenders. In fact, her resistance to years of oppression may have made her stronger so that she could convey that same hope to the Ickabog years later.

“Spittleworth only kept alive those people for whom he had a use: Mr. Dovetail might need to repair the Ickabog foot if it got damaged, and Captain Goodfellow and his friends might need to be dragged out again someday, to repeat their lies about the Ickabog.”

Spittleworth treats all the people in the kingdom like chess pieces in his own personal game. He is willing to sacrifice any number of pawns as long as he can capture the king. However, his need for these particular prisoners eventually leads to his undoing. 

“I’m sad to tell you that Spittleworth was now so widely feared, that apart from whispering their suspicions to one another, Eslanda’s friends did nothing to either find her, or ask Spittleworth what he knew.”

Spittleworth abducts Lady Eslanda and spreads a rumor that she has joined a convent. Like the English lessons for the Ickabog, this is a preposterous lie. Its acceptance indicates the degree of fear that people feel, both of the Ickabog and Spittleworth. 

“Yet it wasn’t only the thought of her mother and father that enabled Daisy to carry on. She had a strange feeling that she was meant to do something important—something that would change not only her own life, but the fortunes of Cornucopia.”

After years of abuse, Daisy has lost hope that she will see her father again. However, rather than succumbing to despair, she transfers that hope to another goal. She wants to save her country someday. Daisy has found the true value of hope and will transmit that lesson to the Ickabog someday, thus saving Cornucopia. 

“In all their time together, she’d never managed to convince Martha that the Ickabog wasn’t real. Tonight, though, Daisy wished that she too believed in a monster in the marsh, rather than in the human wickedness she’d seen staring out of Lord Spittleworth’s eyes.”

Daisy has clearly identified the real monster in Cornucopia. Because she is a fearless girl, she sees through all the fear tactics Spittleworth uses to blind others to the real danger in the country. Daisy, however, sees him clearly for the beast that he is. Her later encounter with the real Ickabog will prove less unnerving for her than this moment. 

“Mrs. Beamish turned the little wooden foot in her trembling fingers. It was as though a door had flown open inside her mind, a door she’d been keeping blocked and barricaded for a very long time. […] But now the uncomfortable memories she’d tried to shut out came flooding in upon her.”

Mrs. Beamish has blindly accepted the narrative that Spittleworth fabricated about her husband’s death. Any facts that didn’t fit that narrative were cast aside as irrelevant. It is only now that she holds the carved foot that Dovetail made years earlier that she reaches a new conclusion. A new conclusion requires the reevaluation of all previous facts. The ones that didn’t fit the previous story have all been brought back into play. 

“‘Oh, if there’s one thing you learn at cookery school,’ said Mrs. Beamish, with a shrug, ‘burned crusts and soggy bases happen to the best of us. Roll up your sleeves and start something else, I say. No point moaning over what you can’t fix!’”

Spittleworth has just thrown Mrs. Beamish into the dungeon. She faces the prospect of being executed shortly, but the other prisoners are amazed at her calm acceptance of the situation. This same trait will allow her to orchestrate a prison escape. A similar willingness to get beyond the fear of the moment will allow Daisy to do the same in saving the Ickabog. 

“She believed Mr. Dovetail’s broken mind might yet be mended, if only he could be brought to understand that he wasn’t alone, and to remember who he was.”

Throughout the novel, Spittleworth has successfully used a divide-and-conquer strategy. He isolates Fred from his subjects. He separates Dovetail from his daughter. He casts Goodfellow into prison and locks Eslanda in his library. Mrs. Beamish knows the value of community. People are stronger when they unite to serve a common cause. 

“‘For a long time, after my father went away, I made myself believe that he was still alive, because I had to, or I think I’d have died, as well.’ Daisy got to her feet to look up into the Ickabog’s sad eyes. ‘I think people need hope nearly as much as Ickabogs do.’”

More than any other character in the novel, Daisy has recognized the value of hope. After spending years as Ma Grunter’s prisoner, she never lost it completely. As the last of its kind, the Ickabog has been isolated, which makes it susceptible to the loss of hope. As in the preceding quote, the Ickabog returns to mental health when it realizes it isn’t alone. 

“Lies upon lies upon lies. Once you started lying, you had to continue, and then it was like being captain of a leaky ship, always plugging holes in the side to stop yourself sinking.”

Spittleworth comes to this realization very late in the story. The more lies he tells, the harder it becomes for him to control the narrative for the whole country. Of course, this epiphany doesn’t make him mend his ways. He simply kills more people and spreads more lies to deal with the problem. 

“Roderick was taken aback. He’d been taught by his father to expect the worst of everybody he met and that the one way to get on in life was to be the biggest, the strongest, and the meanest in every group.”

Major Roach’s son has just seen a demonstration of generous behavior that doesn’t square with the beliefs he was taught. The major was a greedy bully who came to a bad end. Roderick will choose hope over fear and won’t make the same mistake as his parent. 

“He realized at once that if these troublemakers, with their overgrown marsh monster, reached the capital, anybody who’d made pots of gold from the myth of the dangerous Ickabog would be in trouble.”

Basher John has just witnessed the procession of citizens heading for the capital. This quote explicitly states the motivation for most of the novel’s villains. They can only thrive in an atmosphere where everyone is afraid and isolated from one another. With citizens united, the evil profiteers won’t stand a chance. 

“But the cogs of Spittleworth’s busy brain seemed to have jammed at last. It was the joyful faces that upset him most. He’d come to think of laughter as a luxury like Chouxville pastries and silk sheets, and seeing these ragged people having fun frightened him more than if they’d all been carrying guns.”

Spittleworth deals in creating fear and isolation. His primary tactic of divide-and-conquer can’t work when people unite. It has even less chance of succeeding when people are filled with hope and joy. He doesn’t know how to counter such a reaction because he doesn’t understand hope himself.