Heart of Cold: Siss’ Escape from Childhood
The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas takes place in a rural Norwegian village and tells the story of Siss and her short but powerful friendship with Unn. The narrative gives perspective into the events of Siss’ world as she struggles to come to terms with Unn’s death. At eleven-years-old, Siss is on the borderline of adolescence. Despit this, her environment and experiences are forcing her into adulthood too quickly for her. Throughout the novel, Siss tries to resist confronting Unn’s death as she desperately tries to cling to her youthful innocence. In the end, Siss’ inner turmoil finally melts when she goes back to the Ice Palace to confront her inevitable dive into adulthood; the excursion to the Palace marks Siss’ acceptance of growing up and the Palace melting signifies the end of Siss’ search for Unn and the burden of the unknown secret.
Siss realizes the expedition to the Ice Palace is more than just a chance to reunite with her school friends: it is the beginning of her acceptance of her aging process. Death has previously been presented as a topic too sophisticated for Siss, causing her to retreat from the her friends that were able to accept the death more easily. Siss was isolated from physically as well as emotionally. This separation paused her emotional growth and led to her desperate attachment to staying a child. As the group of children embark on their journey to the Ice palace, they first must go through a series of valleys. Crossing through the first of these valleys, “the sun had become strong and warmed the heather and last year’s pale grasses. It smelt like some magic morning when one was quite small, and now it lay like ballast, heavy inside them. All that one did not yet know. There was a little of it in that smell” (166). The sun is depicted as an opposing force, melting the ice that has covered the surrounding nature. The light is allowing for wildlife to be revealed in the same manner in which the warmth from the sun will thaw the ice that has frozen Siss into a state of isolation and depression. Although the sun is presented as destructive, it is uncovering the life beneath the snow. Siss must go back to the Ice Palace to reclaim her lost vitality. Even though it is initially harmful to her, it is necessary for her growth: the warmth will melt her childish fantasies and in return Siss will blossom into maturity. Every aspect of Siss’ surroundings, including the smell, are beckoning her towards adulthood. But, the sliver of childhood left in her is now weighing her down. The weight itself is unnatural and is the result of her unwillingness to accept Unn’s disappearance in addition to a degree of uncertainty towards her own future. Yet this artificially composed mass, which contrasts her natural environment, is stuck inside her, causing emotional burden that can not be removed until she grows away from her juvenescence. By using the impersonal from, Siss is removed from her situation and her transformation is not presented as unique to her. Everyone will be forced into maturity at one point. Although Siss may fight it, growing up is inevitable and furthermore essential to her recovery. The group travels closer to the ice palace passing through another valley where Siss realizes that “she wanted to be in this web in which she was entangled, she remembered. She told herself nervously what was happening: I’m going back to the others” (168). Siss’ description of her position mirrors that of a bug stuck in a spider’s web. She clearly feels helpless and out of control but her apprehension is not stopping herself from rejoining her friends. She is a victim of nature but for first time she is not trying to counteract these innate forces. Although the chaos and unpredictability of returning to her friends makes her nervous, she now realizes the importance of going to the others. Her friends have accepted Unn’s death and for that reason are more emotionally mature. Siss’ insistent separation from them, and her reference to them as different, highlights her prior resistance to believing Unn has truly died, and consequently, her failure to deal with the mature realities of death. Now that she is going back to her friends she can continue on the path to maturity that everyone else has followed. Each valley that the group of friends ski through brings Siss closer to the group and as a result further from Unn. Yet each valley reveals to Siss the difficult truth of accepting death as a part of life. Siss’ journey and the nature of her environment are very intertwined because the valleys not only mark a geographical low-point but also an emotional low-point in her descent into adulthood. Now that Siss is able to acknowledge her fate, she is more entwined with her surroundings.
The excursion to the Ice Palace occurs during the beginning of spring and the consequent melting of the palace itself; the disintegration of the Ice Palace is able to dissolve Siss’ emotional distress caused by Unn’s disappearance and her secret that she never heard. The Ice Palace symbolizes Siss’ childhood wonder and the inescapable passage of time eventually melts these both away. The group arrived at the Palace where “a cold, raw wind was blowing off the falls. The group went as close to it as they could. Their clothes rapidly turned the colour of grey silk from the spray. The spray rose up from the middle of the palace and rained down again. The air vibrated” (170). The tremendous power of the Palace is notable because of the strong effect it has on the group of children. The Palace encompasses the children’s innocence which had gained control over Unn. The Ice Palace is furthermore a representation of the overwhelming friendship between Siss and Unn which Siss finally allows to fade away. The Ice Palace captivates the children, beautifully disguising them from the cold and harshness of their environment. Even the wind blowing off the palace profoundly impacts the children, but the effect is only exterior. The children’s inner drive to move past this death is more powerful than their desire to remain guileless. Even so, the landscape is overcoming everything else and the process of the ice breaking is sweeping the air and everything away with it. The spray itself is personified to reveal a human-like interaction between the children and the Palace. The Palace is therefore considered attached to Siss’ reintegration process in addition to containing Unn’s resting place. However, Siss recognizes that the Ice Palace is temporary and it “will soon be destroyed, and then it will look just as before, only the savage waterfall that concerns no one, that fills the air and shakes the earth and will never come to an end. Siss sat beneath a steep slope, so that the roar of the falls was deadened, but the air still seemed to vibrate with it. Wild and unceasing. Unceasingly new, unceasingly moving on” (170). The personification of the environment continues with references to the destruction of the Ice Palace. The Ice Palace is an immensely powerful entity, after it melts its cruelty will persist; although for now Siss is able to escape her psychological toll, the brutality of growing up will always exist and can not be tamed. A second allusion to air vibrations places emphasis on the fact that it is not the waterfall itself that is causing Siss grief, it’s her entire atmosphere, including the unstoppable passage of time. Air is part of one's environment but it is also essential to sustaining human life. Siss will never be able to run away from the misfortunes of life, because misfortunes are a crucial part of life. The sounds emanating from the waterfall are described as animalistic and barbaric, further proving that the mystique following children is deceptive and harmful. Although Siss escapes from the sounds of the waterfall, the allure surrounding the waterfall follows her and shakes every aspect of her surroundings. Siss could not escape the memory of her friend any more than she can resist growing up. Now that Siss has allowed for herself to grow up, she can finally tackle the thoughts of Unn’s death. There is a clear distinction between the adults and the children in the novel. The only named characters, Siss and Unn, are children. Moreover, in The Ice Palace adults are only shown in their interactions with Siss and not independently interacting with each other. This one-dimensional depiction makes it seem as if adults are merely supporting characters and possess little emotional conflicts of their own. In this Norwegian village, adults have no character motivation so they are not truly free or independent thinkers. Furthermore, the children are shown suffering and overcoming their own disorder; by the end of the novel, Siss is relieved to have been able to accept the consequences of growing up and she has found the courage to comprehend Unn’s demise. Whereas adults are never given obstacles or climactic hills, so they can not be free because the ultimately do not achieve anything. The novel eleganty demonstrates Siss’ viewpoint as she overcomes grief as well as the symbolic nature of her environment as it both helps her and stops her from maturing. The group of children have become more adult through visiting the Ice Palace and helping Siss realize her destiny. The adults, on the other hand, seem to have lost the remaining liveliness that the children still possess, and only Auntie is able to help Siss. Auntie, unlike the teacher or Siss’ parents, seems to maintain a childlike hopefulness and in many ways she mirrors Unn’s behavior. Fundamentally, the children in the novel are freer because of their greater sense of self and awareness in addition to their ability to face challenges.
Works Cited
Vesaas, Tarjei. The Ice Palace. London: Owen, 1966. Print.
I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid