White Mountains by John Christopher

White Mountains by John Christopher

How the Author Makes This Book Interesting

John Christopher makes this book interesting in a few ways. The most important way is that Will chooses running away and looking for free people instead of being safe because he does not want the tripods to control his mind. Will is 13 years old and lives in a world that is run by the tripods. Will knows that "capping" is a ceremony that 14-year-old boys are supposed to have and that it means a metal cap is put on a boy's head. From then on, the capped person must wear the cap for the rest of his life because "the metal is joined to the flesh, so that it cannot be removed."[footnoteRef:1] Will begins to think there might be something strange about capping after Will's cousin gets capped and seems different. Then Ozymandias, who is a kind stranger, explains to Will that tripods cap people because the caps "Are the means by which they keep men docile and obedient to them."[footnoteRef:2] After hearing that, Will says, "Anger burned in me, not only for the Vagrants but for all the others - my parents and elders, Jack..."[footnoteRef:3] After that, Will decides to run away to The White Mountains to find the free people who live there. Running away means that Will gives up being taken care of by the tripods and being safe with a place to live and enough to eat. Will runs away anyway because he wants to be free. [1: Christopher, J. (1967). The White Mountains. New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. [Electronic book version on ePubBud]. Retrieved 01/01/2012 from http://www.epubbud.com/read.php?g=CQ5RJZGJ&p=1, p. 21.] [2: Ibid., p. 20.] [3: Ibid., p. 21.]

Another way that John Christopher makes this book interesting is by using the tripods and the vagrants. The book tells enough about the tripods so that we know that they rule the world, they are not people, they might be machines, or they might come from another planet.[footnoteRef:4] The book never tells exactly who the tripods are or where they came from, so we want to read the next volume to see if it tells more about the tripods. John Christopher also makes this book interesting by telling about the vagrants. All the normal people think that capping is fine and that it makes you an adult. The vagrants are people who were never capped or who were capped but did not change. In the book, the normal people treat vagrants like there is something wrong with them, but vagrants are freer than the normal people because their minds are not controlled by capping. [4: Ibid., p. 20.]