The Puppets of Spelhorst

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of death.

“There, the old man would sit at a table and stare past everything and everyone as if he were on the prow of a ship, looking out to sea.”

This quote foreshadows the fact that the old man who buys the puppets, later introduced as Spelhorst, is the same man who left his love, Annalise, in search of glory. His loneliness in the first chapter is not fully explained until the end of the book, when it is revealed that he left in search of something he would never find.

“There he was, a man without family, a man without children or grandchildren, a man utterly devoid of whimsy or wonder, staring at a toy store window, bewitched entirely by puppets.”

This moment serves two literary purposes. First, it develops The Importance of Community in Hard Times, though its full significance only becomes clear in retrospect. Just as Spelhorst once left to tackle life on his own, he tries to buy the girl puppet on her own instead of as a group. This time, however, community prevails: Spelhorst is not given a choice and is forced to buy the puppets together, so they get to embark on a journey together. Secondly, this serves as the inciting incident in the book: Even though the puppets don’t know it yet, this is the beginning of their story.

“But the heart, the heart is a mystery.”

The tailor and his wife cannot understand what an old man would want with the puppets. The tailor dismisses Spelhorst, but the tailor’s wife knows that there must be more to his story than meets the eye.