The Puppets of Spelhorst

The boy puppet is a dynamic character whose character arc mirrors the one he acts out in the play, which is also the story of Spelhorst, but concludes differently. When he was being made, the puppet maker said he was destined for greatness, and he has never forgotten this. For instance, when the rag-and-bone man is selling them on the street, the boy objects and says, “I do not want to divert. I do not want to delight. I want to do something important in this world’” (36). More than anything, the boy wishes to prove himself and fulfill his destiny.

There are several moments when the boy thinks he is about to discover his purpose. First, Martha plucks him off the mantel and takes him outside. Then, a bird picks him up and flies with him through the air. Neither of these turns out to be his purpose, however. Martha grows bored with him and leaves him alone, and the bird realizes he isn’t edible and drops him in a tree.

When he is finally returned to the mantel, he is glad to be back: “The arrows […] were in the quiver on the boy’s back, and the boy was just as he had been before he spent time in the claws of a bird and the branches of a tree. Except that he was not” (102). He has gone out in search of greatness and still not found it, prompting reflection on what greatness truly entails. However, it is not until he is on the stage with his friends that he feels fulfilled. Unlike Spelhorst, who discovered too late what he had to be grateful for, the boy puppet learns early enough to live his life without regret.

The wolf puppet prides herself on scaring others. She says, “There is nothing winsome about me, […] I am ferocious. I am snarly, feral, incorrigible. My teeth are as sharp as sharp can be” (31). These teeth—a symbol of her fearsome and predatory nature—are her most defining feature, and she obsesses over them throughout the early chapters. When Martha pulls out two of her teeth, she is beside herself and doesn’t feel like anything else matters, as she has lost what she takes to be her identity.

The wolf’s dream is of being in the wintry woods, where she is both chasing something and being chased herself. This dream comes true when a fox picks her up and carries her through the woods. However, it is much more difficult in the wild than she realized, and she finds herself wanting to be back with her friends. 

The wolf’s realization makes her a dynamic character, as she changes over the course of the story. At the end of the book, Martha glues her teeth back in, and even though they are crooked, she is happy to have them back. More importantly, she discovers that in Emma’s play, she is scarier than she’s ever been on her own and that she has an important role to play, first as a flesh-and-blood wolf and later as a symbol of the old man’s regret. In lieu of being a flesh-and-blood wolf, she thus fulfills her dream by becoming a symbol of all that humans fear, figuratively pursuing them forever.

Despite his royal status, the king puppet is often overlooked by his owners and ignored by the other puppets. He has a lot of ideas about how he will rule his kingdom one day and can be commanding and inconsiderate in his demands. Nevertheless, the king has a good heart that comes to light more as the story progresses.

More than anything, the king loves music. When he and the girl puppet are left behind on the mantel, he says, “I want it to be a world where songs are sung every day. I want us to be together. I command the world to be different!” (69). The first song he heard broke his heart, and he has loved the power of music ever since. He turns to music when he feels lonely or helpless. For instance, when he is left completely alone on the mantel, he wonders if he could sing to himself since no one is there to sing to him: “Was such a thing possible? A king singing?” (97). Slowly but surely, he starts singing to himself while he waits for his friends to return. By the end of the book, he gets his wish: All of the puppets are back together, and they will sing songs together as they travel with Jane Twiddum.

The owl puppet is known among his friends for two things: his wise words and his real feathers. His heart’s greatest desire is to fly, like a real bird who flew past the toy store window one time. Every time he thinks about this bird, he thinks to himself, “Wouldn’t that be the most wonderous thing of all? To fly away like that?” (35). Unlike the other puppets, the owl does not speak about his wish to his friends but holds it inside. Still, he gets his wish momentarily, when Jane Twiddum cups him in her hands and holds him up, “so that his wings [are] outstretched, so that he [can] feel the wind move through his feathers” (94). The experience fills him with so much joy that he is left speechless.

The owl’s separation from the rest of the group gives the other puppets a newfound appreciation for his insight. At one point, for instance, she “wish[es] that the owl were there to utter a profound thought, to offer words that might help make sense of such a ridiculous situation” (74). The owl’s wisdom is shown during Emma’s play as well. At the end of the story, the owl says, “I uttered wise words, […] They were not heeded, but I spoke them. And I flew. I flew across the stage” (140). The play allows the owl to live out both his dream of flying and his potential as a sage counsel.

The Puppets of Spelhorst does not have a protagonist in the traditional sense, but Jane Twiddum comes the closest of any of the characters, as she both drives significant action and experiences a major arc. Jane is a young woman who works as a housemaid for Emma and Martha’s household. She is often around the mantel to stoke the fire or tidy up the blue room, where she can sometimes be heard singing a lovely tune, foreshadowing her gift for storytelling. It is not until the puppets arrive, however, that Jane thinks about her long-forgotten dreams and decides to act on them.

Jane is drawn most to the girl puppet and her stunning violet eyes. When the governess arrives to teach Emma and Martha their lessons, Jane sneaks the girl puppet away to a hill for the day. She tells the puppet, “When I was young-like, I thought I would take the river to the sea, and the sea would open up and give over the whole world” (92). Although she has what she takes to be a no-nonsense approach to life, she is starting to remember her childhood dreams and realize how much she wants to travel.

The success of the play is a turning point for Jane, revealing The Transformative Power of Stories. Her beautiful singing voice is showcased during the story, and Emma and Martha’s uncle tells her that it’s a voice that should be heard on the stage. During the play, Jane can’t help but think about her dreams of seeing the world. Her “eyes [are] open very wide. She [is] staring past Martha, past the walls of the blue room. It [is] as if she [is] looking out to sea” (127). That night, she sneaks into the blue room and takes the puppets off the mantel. She tells them that she has realized there isn’t much time on this earth and that she wants to make the most of it; she then leaves to become a traveling storyteller, demonstrating that she has embraced the novel’s messages about seeing what matters in life and embracing the imagination.

Emma is one of two sisters who is gifted the puppets of Spelhorst. She is the older sister and the one who writes the play about the old sea captain. Of the two, Emma is more careful and observant. When she first gets the puppets, “She [stands] back and inspect[s] them and then arrange[s] them so that the owl [is] next to the boy, and the girl next to the king” (43). She gets easily annoyed with her little sister, Martha, who is much more careless and oblivious with their new toys.

Emma is a key figure in reinforcing the theme of community since she insists that the puppets must remain together, as each has an important role in the play. When most of them go missing, she is the one who takes Martha out to find them. Although she is young, she also has the emotional capacity to understand what it means to Love Without Regret, and through her uncle’s encouragement, she communicates that through storytelling: The play that Emma writes captures the beauty and heartbreak of Spelhorst and Annelise.