Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Howl’s Moving Castle, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Destiny vs. Free Will
Appearances and Assumptions
Family
Magic and Coming of Age
Summary
Analysis
Sophie hobbles toward a large black door in the castle wall. Even though the castle is ugly and seems to give off a chill, Sophie isn’t afraid. But when she reaches for the door, her hand can’t get close to it. Annoyed, Sophie hobbles to the lefthand corner, where another invisible wall stops her. She heads right, around the corner, and finds another door—but it, too, won’t open. She’s angry now and shouts that she’ll speak to Howl about this. Continuing to the right, Sophie finds a third door. But just as Sophie reaches it, the castle moves away. Sophie runs after it, hits the door with her stick, and shouts for it to open. It does. Sophie barely manages to haul herself inside when she realizes there’s a boy in there, just a bit older than Martha. He asks what she wants as Sophie looks around what’s clearly a back room and spots the fire. Pushing the boy aside, Sophie settles herself in the chair in front of the fire.
Again, meek, fearful Sophie wouldn’t have been willing to forcefully impose on an evil wizard or his teenage apprentice. But as an old lady with seemingly nothing to lose, Sophie has no problem advocating for herself and bullying this boy. Additionally, she’s ready to shout at Howl for being so unhelpful—a far cry from how frightened of him she was only a few hours ago. The castle itself is clearly magical, and there’s a lot about it for Sophie to figure out—such as what’s around the walls where she can’t go, and why it moves like it does. It’s also unclear whether the castle is listening to Sophie and obeying, or whether Sophie is unwittingly working magic that causes the castle to listen to her.
Themes
The boy shuts the castle door, explains to Sophie that the castle is “bespelled” to hold together while it’s moving, and says that Howl isn’t home and won’t be back until tomorrow. He introduces himself as Michael, Howl’s apprentice, and offers to help Sophie. Sophie sighs that she’s certain Howl is the only one who can help her, so she’ll wait. Michael clearly doesn’t want Sophie to stay, but Sophie gives her name and then pretends to fall asleep. Sophie figures she’ll be gone tomorrow before Howl gets back, and she marvels at how polite Michael is. Surprisingly, Michael also looks normal. But Sophie reasons that things are just odd when it comes to wizards.
In this passage, Sophie reveals that she has very specific ideas about how wizards look, behave, and speak. She seems to expect Michael to be rude and unhelpful—and though he doesn’t want Sophie to stick around, he’s anything but rude and unhelpful. Sophie, however, isn’t yet willing to consider that perhaps Michael is just a polite and totally normal-looking teenage boy. Rather, she still expects there to be something odd about him, because in her mind, that’s what wizards are: odd.
Themes
Sophie sleeps through Michael cursing as a spell he’s working on burns him. She sleeps through Michael asking the fireplace if Sophie is the Witch of the Waste—the fireplace responds that it wouldn’t have let her in if she was the Witch. Finally, in the middle of the night, long after Michael has gone to bed, Sophie jerks awake. She’s sure she’s only been asleep for a moment; Michael must’ve learned to disappear and take light with him his first week as an apprentice. Nervous, she puts two logs on the fire and looks behind her to the skull on the workbench.
It creates dramatic irony when Sophie is unaware that she’s asleep—that is, it’s humorous that readers know Sophie has been sleeping but she doesn’t. However, this also provides more opportunity for Sophie to share her prejudices and beliefs about wizards and their apprentices. She remains unwilling to consider that Michael is a normal boy—and, judging by how he burns himself on the spell, is by no means a skilled wizard yet.
Themes
Staring dreamily into the blue-green flames, Sophie imagines she sees a long, pointy face in the fire. Talking to herself, she describes the face and then wonders if she should stay to see if Howl can lift her spell. But then, she says, Howl would eat her heart. The fire asks if Sophie doesn’t want her heart to be eaten. It explains that it’s a fire demon, bound to stay in the hearth by a contract. It then asks what Sophie is, since it can tell she’s under a spell. Suddenly interested, Sophie asks if the fire demon can remove the spell. After studying her for a moment, it identifies the spell as one of the Witch of the Waste’s, says the spell has two layers, and says that Sophie can’t tell anyone who doesn’t already know about the spell.
The fire demon is presumably what Michael spoke to in the previous passage when he asked if Sophie was the Witch of the Waste. Interestingly, the demon implies that Howl’s female victims might not totally be victims—suggesting that Sophie misunderstands what is going on between Howl and the girls he meets. That the demon can so easily identify that Sophie is bewitched, as well as the terms of the curse, suggests that Sophie might not be as alone as she thinks she is. There may, after all, be others who can also tell what’s happened to her.
Themes
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It may take a while, the demon suggests, to figure out how to lift the spell—and it suggests they strike a bargain. It will lift Sophie’s spell if she breaks the demon’s contract. Sophie is wary. She knows demons are dangerous and evil, and this one looks particularly evil. But when the demon points out that the spell has shortened Sophie’s life by 60 years, Sophie asks if the demon is in a contract with Wizard Howl. Whining, the demon says that’s correct; he’s bound to the hearth and does most of the magic. Howl, the demon says, is heartless. Sophie doesn’t doubt this—but she’s sure the demon is just as bad. She asks what the demon is getting out of it, and it says there are benefits, but it wouldn’t have entered the contract if it’d known what life would be like. It’s being exploited.
Just as Sophie has distinct ideas about what wizards are and what they do, she believes demons are only one thing: evil. But as an old lady with seemingly little to lose, Sophie is more willing to take risks and at least entertain the possibility of entering into a deal with the demon. This highlights how Sophie’s new, elderly perspective is making her more willing to take risks. The demon, for its part, seems to counteract its earlier suggestion that Howl isn’t all that bad when it says that Howl is heartless. At least when it comes to beings like the demon, Howl is more than willing to exploit others and behave selfishly.
Themes
Remembering Fanny, Sophie feels sympathy for the demon—so she asks what the contract’s terms are, and how she must break it. She’ll break the contract if the demon lifts her spell. The demon celebrates, and then it says that part of the contract is that neither it nor Howl can say what the contract’s terms are. Sophie is ready to walk away, but the demon says that if Sophie watches and listens carefully, she can figure it out. And the demon promises to keep its word; it’s still in the grate, so clearly, it suggests, it’s honest.
Suddenly, the demon doesn’t look all that evil—just as Sophie was being exploited in the hat shop, the demon is clearly being exploited here. Seeing this spark of recognition pushes Sophie to accept the deal. She seems unaware of it, but by striking a deal with a demon, Sophie’s life gets suddenly, arguably, very interesting—suggesting that she isn’t actually doomed to a boring life of failure.
Themes
Sighing, Sophie says she’ll need to come up with a reason to stay in Howl’s castle. The demon says Sophie will only have to stay for about a month, and it shouldn’t be hard to come up with an excuse—Howl is “pretty useless at most things.” He’s very self-absorbed. Sophie tells the demon to come up with an excuse and returns to dozing. She can’t quite remember, but the demon makes a couple suggestions and then starts singing a song in a language Sophie doesn’t recognize. She falls asleep, sure that soon, she’ll be free.
The demon implies that Howl, like Sophie, is pretty set in his ways and basically will buy almost any excuse he or Sophie can come up with. And interestingly, Sophie falls asleep believing fully that she’ll be free soon. This is important because Sophie clearly isn’t going into this deal with the demon believing she’ll fail. Perhaps she’s beginning to question how set in stone destiny really is.
Themes
