So tonight my hometown is going against it's biggest sports rivalry: Batavia. So I thought I would take this wonderful chance and talk about rivalries and what they have to do with books.
Rivalries are important they give us a clear antagonist, but the also give our protagonist a chance for redemption. Take the series that I've been reading recently, Stravaganza. The main group of characters are rivaled with a powerful political family, called the di Chimici. And we are so introduced into the great conveniences rivalries create.
in the first book, the protagonist, a boy called Luciano, is actually kidnapped. So Number 1 idea of rivalries is that they often help introduce our conflict. If there is a rivalry, you can almost always count on it in being the cause of the conflict.
In the second book, the protagonists befriend their supposed rivals. So, redemption, getting over our beliefs and stereotypes is idea number 2. If we can look through our thick heads every now and then, we learn. Nice thing about rivalries, we can find allies in our supposed rivals sometimes, and that's a fact of life. My choir teacher and track coach are from Batavia, and they're perfectly lovey people!
So what can we learn from rivalries? A lot of things. If they come books, we can guess that either
A) a problem is coming, or,
B) our protagonists are going to form a positive relationship with them
Ok, but when do rivalries come up? Off the top of my head I can think of several Disney movies; Cinderella, Snow White, Pocahontas, Peter Pan, Hercules, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan. Then there's some older stuff: Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, anything concerning the Holocaust. So next time you pick up a book, ask yourself, are there any rivalries going on here?
And don't forget to root for Geneva tonight during the big game...
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