tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9138268.post-1102390909881219832004-12-06T15:41:00.000-08:002004-12-06T19:48:25.813-08:00by Mark Bartlebaugh <br /> <br />In my past work, I have made painstaking effort to show that the covers of Franklin W. Dixon's Hardy Boys volumes have just as much, if not more, to say than the text of the books themselves. Let the reader understand that the true towering treasure and hidden gold is found not in the text, but in the pictures depicting the events occurring in the text. Until this point, I have tried to demonstrate this based on analysis of volume covers alone. However, if Dixon so skillfully used volume covers to convey profound truths, should we not think that the illustrations within the text would be used for the same purpose? Moreover, this work will demonstrate that on occasion, Dixon is telling a completely different story in the illustrations throughout the book than he is in the actual text. In no volume is this clearer than in The House on the Cliff. <br /> <br /> The first illustration of the book, on the page opposite the title page, immediately tips the reader off to the theme that Dixon wants to illustrate through the pictures. It is a picture of a lowly, shabby man named Pretzel Pete. The caption has Pretzel Pete telling Frank and Joe, Maybe I can give you a tip where to find your father. This is Dixon at his best. Before the first page of the text, the illustration makes the problem clear: the Hardys are looking for a father figure. This is supported throughout the text of the canon as one examines the relationship between Fenton Hardy and his sons. The relationship, if you want to call it that, consists of little interaction. Though the Hardys often claim to be working for their father, he is rarely around and the reader is left with few options except to consider him a type of absent, workaholic father. The Hardys have not gone unaffected by this, and the illustration opposite the title page makes this clear. They have chosen to go to this lowly Pretzel Pete, a man represented in the picture as a bum, in search of a father figure to mold them and shape them as they move through the late stages of adolescence. <br /> <br /> Here the reader may object and say that Fenton Hardy has more involvement with his boys in The House on the Cliff than in many other of Dixonian works. But don't miss the mastery of Dixon! While there may be more interaction between the boys and Fenton in the text, the true story is told in the pictures and thus priority should be placed there. <br /> <br /> The lowliness of Pretzel Pete in the first illustration shows just how desperate the Hardys have become in search for a father figure. They are willing to be fathered by a man on the street because their own father has failed them. Nevertheless, Pretzel Pete doesn't want to be a father figure to these boys, so he sends the Hardys somewhere else with his "tip" on where to find their father or, more importantly, a father figure. <br /> <br /> The next point in the Hardys search for a father figure comes in the illustration on pp. 8-9. Pretzel Pete has apparently sent the Hardys to a cliff overlooking a lake. Whether Pretzel Pete told the Hardys to bring a telescope is unknown, but we can infer that the telescope is a sign that the Hardys want to see this man up close for who he really is. If they didn't really know their real father, they at least want to know their father figure and see him with all of his strengths and vulnerabilities. And indeed the Hardys see a vulnerability. This man, far from running to the Hardys as a loving father would, rowed his boat to a ship and is climbing up the ladder to get in the ship and avoid the Hardys. <br /> <br /> Where now will the Hardys turn? Not only had Fenton Hardy failed to be a father figure to them, but now Pretzel Pete and this man on the water have failed as well. There are no more tips, no other clues on where to find a father figure. <br /> <br /> The next illustration in the book on page 43 tells it all. Surprisingly this illustration includes Fenton Hardy with the boys. It is not clear if the artist intends for us to believe if Fenton Hardy was actually physically present with the boys in the picture, but the purpose for his appearance in the picture is clear. Frank, Joe, and Fenton, all dressed in suit and tie, peer in on a farming family. The family is bound and gagged. The illustration clearly conveys that while Frank and Joe desire a father figure from another family such as this farm family, and this family is willing to reach out to them. Frank and Joe are trapped in the white collar, upper class Bayport lifestyle that their biological father, Fenton Hardy, has given them. The contrast between the dress of the Hardys and the farm family is vivid and shows the gap between two lifestyles. Thus Frank and Joe remain helpless to find a father figure while the farm family, wanting to reach out to these young boys, is powerless to do so because of the reign that Fenton Hardy has over them. The family is bound and gagged. <br /> <br /> Thus the Hardys conclude that the only way to get out of this trap is to have their father murdered. Then they would no longer be slave to his reign of white collar, upper class sleuth work where their lives are in danger almost constantly and their education suffers because of the time they devote to their fathers work. And they could truly have a relationship with a father figure. <br /> <br /> This leads the Hardys to where we find them in the illustration on page 77. The Hardys are the home of an apparent hit man. It is not clear if the man by the tree or the man furthest right is the hit man, but there can be no doubt that one of them is a hit man by the facial expressions and posture given to them by the artist. Here, the boys hold out Fenton Hardys cap as a sample cap that the hit man can use to find Fenton Hardy based on his headwear. However, the caption has a woman shrilling, "He doesnt know anything about the cap". Apparently the woman is the spokeswoman for the hit man and saying that he is not familiar with this kind of cap. Here again, the Hardys are powerless not only to find a father figure, but to find a hit man to have their father killed so they can have a father figure. The artist leads us to believe that Fenton Hardy wore some kind of rare and expensive European leather cap that even a good hit man couldn't recognize. Thus the Hardys again are forced to deal with the gap between the extravagant lifestyle of their father and the rest of the world. <br /> <br /> If not even the best hit man in Bayport can get rid of their father, the Hardys conclude that there must be no way of getting rid of Fenton Hardy and thus no way of finding a true father figure. Hence the illustration on page 123. Here the Hardys and Fenton again are working together, all with their ties on and all in a dangerous situation where their lives are at risk. <br /> <br /> The story in pictures concludes on page 148. While Fenton has his arms around Frank and Joe, attempting to show them affection from his pride-filled heart, a smuggler shines a light on the trio and says, "You are my hostages." This is a brilliant caption. The Hardys are hostages not of a true smuggler, but of the representative smuggler, Fenton Hardy. The independence and identity of our two young sleuths has been smuggled away by Fenton Hardy, leaving the Hardy boys forever hostage to his domineering fatherhood and white-collar, upper class life of fighting quote-unquote crime. <br /> <br /> I conclude by contending that the observations drawn from this of pictures in "The House on the Cliff" are in no way inconsistent with the text of any book in the entire Dixonian canon. Does Dixon ever write about the Hardys having a father figure besides Fenton Hardy? We read much about the relationship between the Hardys and their chums and even Aunt Gertrude who is a type of mother figure. But there is no one else to be a father to the Hardys except the workaholic and often absent Fenton Hardy. Also, do the Hardys ever break out of the mold Fenton has created for them in any point in the canon? Never. Thus the reader is left with a dismal picture of the Hardys forever trapped in the lifestyle given to them by their father. We can only hope that the canon doesn't tell it all, but nonetheless, the canon is closed, and we can know no more of the Hardys than what has been revealed.HBLSnoreply@blogger.com