I’ve been quite preoccupied lately that I can’t afford to update as frequently as I wish or respond to your comments promptly. Thank you all for your understanding! I’ll do my best to keep my blog interesting. 😀
As mentioned before, my friend has kindly bought me Candy Candy Final Story (CCFS) as her present. The novel is divided into the prologue, three major sections, and the epilogue, with the first two sections focusing on Candy’s childhood and youth plus her student life at St. Paul’s Academy. Section II ends at the time Candy decided to travel back to America as a stowaway.
However, Section III is written in a completely different way; it is mainly composed of Candy’s present recollections of events in her past plus a bunch of letters. Unfortunately, without the background knowledge of the Candy Candy manga, this section can’t be understood on its own, as though Mizuki had intentionally made this section a lot more complicated than the rest of the novel. The timeline in CCFS (Candy’s life after St. Paul) is very confusing because it’s not necessarily the same as shown in the manga. One example is that we had no idea how long exactly Candy and Albert had lived together as brother and sister in the House of Magnolia.
In a nutshell, in Section III, we read Candy had sent many letters to different people, but we don’t read their replies to her. Likewise, some letters had been sent to Candy, but we don’t read her replies to these people. Nonetheless, the majority of letters in Section III mentioned Albert for different reasons by various people (like Patty, Annie, etc.), and Candy almost always talked about Albert (to Dr. Martin, Great Aunt Elroy, George, Archie, etc.), including her unsent letter to Terry, which indicates that Candy and Albert were still in constant contact despite living far apart from each other.
My friend who bought me CCFS has raised a very interesting point. None of these letters is written directly to or from Albert. In other words, he was always mentioned by others. We don’t get to hear his voice until the epilogue.
That’s very true, but he did write very long and personal letters to Candy, and so did Candy to him. My friend said Mizuki could have put the correspondence between Candy and Albert (starting with her shocking letter right after he disclosed he was her prince) with all the other letters in Section III, but the author had deliberately singled them out and compiled them together in the epilogue. Except for the last letter to Anthony, the epilogue is primarily the letter exchanges between Candy and Albert, back and forth.
Some of you have already noticed there must be a reason why Mizuki gave these letters a special place of honor (the epilogue). 🙂 I have explained what an epilogue before, but I don’t mind repeating myself again here. From Epilogue Definition, an epilogue is part of the main story, revealing the fates of the main characters in the near future. In short, Albert is the other main character besides Candy, and with whom would Candy spend her life? Her Prince on the Hill, obviously. 🙂
But before I go on, let’s discuss “kono”, “sono” and “ano” in a general sense when a person is talking to another about something or someone.
Note that the subject must be present, and both speaker and listener can see the subject. This applies to objects, animals, people, etc.
If the subject is closer to the speaker, the speaker uses “kono” (この), which means “this”. To the man, that’s watch (1) when he talks to the woman.
If the subject is closer to the listener, the speaker uses “sono” (その), which means “that”. So when he talks to the woman about watch (2), he uses “sono” (その).
Finally, if the subject is far away from both, then the speaker uses “ano” (あの), which means “that over there”. That’s watch (3) when the man talks to the woman about the cheapest watch far from both of them.
Most of the time “kono”, “sono” and “ano” imply physical distance from the speaker and the listener, but sometimes it’s about familiarity rather than distance. When A talks to B about C, (C can be somewhere else now, not necessarily present with A or B at this point), if both A and B know C, then “ano hito” is used to refer to C. However, if only A or B knows this particular person, then “sono hito” is used. See this dialog for example:
A: I had dinner with Mrs. Smith.
B: Mrs. Smith? Who is sono hito?
A: Mrs. Smith used to be Miss Andrew, our music teacher in high school.
B: I see! I know ano hito, of course!
This page gives you some more examples of when to use “ano” and “sono”. From the given examples you can see that this does not limit to people only.
Now, do you see what I’m getting at? 🙂
Isn’t that Albert in Section III? Candy and a number of different people talked about Albert in almost every letter in Section III of CCFS. Thus, they could have referred to Albert as “ano hito” in their letters. 😆
Of course, this is merely my personal opinion, and I based my observation on Japanese grammar. 😀
Have a wonderful day! 🙂