54 pages • 1 hour read
Castle in the Air
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Chapters 18-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary: “Which Is Rather Full of Princesses”
Abdullah and Sophie sneak into a huge hall, where Princess Valeria is throwing a deafening tantrum. Hasruel is there with a much smaller djinn, Dalzel. They are at a loss as to how to make her stop.
A diverse group of women arrives, all ages and races, and dressed in all sorts of different clothes: They are the kidnapped princesses. One of them is forthright but kind; she gets Valeria to stop. Dalzel addresses her as his wife, Princess Beatrice—she sharply reminds him that none of them are his wives. They all leave except Flower-in-the-Night, whom Dalzel finds troublesome. Flower-in-the-Night grills them about what upset Valeria, as she will undoubtedly start screaming again soon. She determines that she took a liking to the cook’s dog, and she suggests they bring it to her.
Abdullah and Sophie follow Flower-in-the-Night back to the princesses’ lodgings, where they reveal themselves. Flower-in-the-Night is surprisingly cold toward Abdullah. The princesses are all looking after Morgan, and one of them is actually the soldier in disguise.
Chapter 19 Summary: “In Which a Soldier, a Cook and a Carpet seller All State Their Price”
The soldier explains that he asked the genie to put the baby somewhere he’d be looked after and send him after the djinn, but the genie took them both to the princesses.
Jamal and his dog arrive, revealing that the genie granted Abdullah’s wish by sending him to the castle in the air, as it was technically closest. He and Abdullah reunite fondly. Valeria screams that she doesn’t want the dog, but Beatrice tells her to pretend, as they want Jamal on board. Flower-in-the-Night suggests a spell to soundproof the room, which Sophie performs by telling the walls not to let through sound. Flower-in-the-Night says their only chance of escape is to find where Dalzel has hidden Hasruel’s “life.” Beatrice and Abdullah quietly admire her cleverness and resolve, especially when she comes from such a sheltered life.
The soldier threatens to reveal everything to Dalzel unless they promise him a reward: He wants to marry a princess. He picks Beatrice, as he likes her forthright attitude. She is actually quite pleased, as she wants to marry someone who likes her, rather than the unknown Prince Justin. Jamal says he just wants to be assured of a job afterward. One of the princesses who has enjoyed his cooking promises to employ him.
They ask Sophie and Abdullah if they want anything. Sophie doesn’t, but Abdullah requests five minutes to talk in private with Flower-in-the-Night. He asks why she is being cold with him. She isn’t sure he loves her, as he made pretty speeches but didn’t try to kiss her. He says he was nervous, as he’s never kissed anyone before. They are both reassured.
Chapter 20 Summary: “In Which a Djinn’s Life Is Found and Then Hidden”
The genie reveals that it was Hasruel who trapped him in the bottle. He fears he could do worse. However, Flower-in-the-Night convinces him to help them work out the location of Hasruel’s “life,” in return for them using a wish to free him.
Together, everyone stages a ploy in which they reveal Abdullah’s presence, claiming he got in in the shape of the cook’s dog. Meanwhile, the genie uses his power to detect that Hasruel’s “life” is hidden in his nose ring. They overwhelm the djinns by getting the children to scream loudly, which Sophie amplifies magically. All the princesses jump on Dalzel to incapacitate him.
The soldier, Abdullah, Flower-in-the-Night, and Jamal’s dog all jump on Hasruel to try to get the ring. Jamal’s dog accidentally swallows it. Abdullah announces that they are now in possession of Hasruel’s “life” inside the dog, so he must now do their bidding.
Chapter 21 Summary: “In Which the Castle Comes Down to Earth”
Abdullah instructs Hasruel to banish his brother. Dalzel cries that he didn’t do anything wrong, as he just wanted to get married. Hasruel tells Abdullah that his relatives fled Zanzib to escape the Sultan’s wrath, but abandoned the two nieces intended for Abdullah. They were desperate to find a husband, but the Sultan threw them in jail. He summons them, and they are thrilled at the idea of marrying Dalzel, who really likes them, too. Hasruel sends them all to a luxurious but remote magical island.
The genie shouts that he was promised freedom, so Flower-in-the-Night wishes that he is released. The bottle bursts and Howl emerges. Hasruel trapped him as a genie when he stole his castle, partly as a reprimand for using his magic to help Ingary win the war unfairly. Howl and Sophie joyfully reunite.
Hasruel sends his horde of angels into the dog to collect the ring when it emerges. He notes that he enjoyed being evil too much for the Good Djinns to allow him back. Howl suggests he find another world to live in, and he vanishes.
Howl wonders where Calcifer is, and Calcifer emerges from the flying carpet: Someone had to speak his name to free him. He steers the castle back down and into its original shape.
The soldier’s appearance changes. He now remembers that he is, in fact, Prince Justin. He was searching for Princess Beatrice when Hasruel took her. Hasruel said that seeing as he defeated her country with the unfair use of magic, he would turn him into a defeated soldier to see how it felt. He resolves to offer the defeated soldiers support. He and Beatrice decide they genuinely want to get married.
The king of Ingary arranges a double wedding for them and for Abdullah and Flower-in-the-Night. They invite the Sultan, but the Sultan threatens to execute Abdullah if he ever returns. The king makes two new diplomatic posts for them, and they escort all the kidnapped princesses home.
Abdullah admits to Flower-in-the-Night that he is not really a prince. She says she knows, as his story was the exact reverse of her own daydream, that she was an ordinary girl who watched her father’s carpet stall. The king gives them some land close to one of the locations of Howl and Sophie’s moving castle. Abdullah grows the beautiful garden he dreamed of for Flower-in-the-Night.
Chapters 18-21 Analysis
This section offers the resolution of the story, in which Wynne Jones reincorporates all elements and ties them together to create neat solutions. The executed bandits turn out to be angels who are happy to return to their immortal form, and Abdullah’s wish to protect Jamal and his dog turns out to have placed them in a position where they can help save the day. The magical beings conspire to rescue the rejected nieces from the dungeons, and they turn out to be delighted at the idea of marrying Dalzel.
Three characters are all treated unsympathetically by the narrative—the nieces are described degradingly for comic relief, and Dalzel is both the villain but also presented as pathetic—but even they are given happy endings. The previous section began to connect the events of Castle in the Air to the story of Howl’s Moving Castle, and this section completes that joining, fully incorporating the two worlds when it is revealed that Howl and Calcifer have actually been present all along; they and Sophie are instrumental in the story’s resolution. Wynne Jones creates an unambiguous happy ending in which all characters complete a journey, reflecting the modern understanding of the fairytale genre.
The theme of Personal Agency Versus Fate is central to the resolution, as agency is what all the characters want, including the villains (the djinns), the characters who would traditionally be passive love interests (the princesses), and the apparently inanimate objects (the carpet and the genie). These are all revealed to have their own motives and desires, which they are struggling to pursue despite other forces. Dalzel wants to get married but is restricted by being born as a weakling, and Hasruel is all- powerful except for his one weakness, exploited by Dalzel. The princesses, Calcifer, and Howl are all physically trapped. However, all manage to overcome these obstacles through a mixture of their own actions and the help of others.
Abdullah’s main aim is to be married to Flower-in-the-Night, but he also recognizes her right to choose her fate: When the princesses offer him a reward for his help, he could state that he wants to choose one of them to marry, as the soldier does. Instead, he asks to talk with her alone—he only wants to marry her if that’s what she wants too. This emphasis on agency is mirrored in the secondary characters of the soldier and Beatrice. Although their engagement is engineered at first, once it becomes their choice, they find they do actually want to get married.
The theme of The Importance of Learning from Experience is also crucial to these happy endings. Abdullah, Flower-in-the-Night, and Sophie all use the lessons they have learned to help engineer their triumph. Other characters also learn from their experience, with the idea of taking responsibility for one’s own actions being central in this section. Hasruel, the soldier, and Howl have all acted in morally dubious ways and have avoided taking responsibility by suggesting it’s not really their choice. Hasruel is coerced by his brother, and Howl and the soldier blame the broader political situation, even though the soldier actually has great political power (as Prince Justin), and Howl has enormous power as a wizard. Howl and the soldier learn how it feels to be helpless in the face of bigger forces, and Hasruel’s experience being evil teaches him about himself: He is not fundamentally good just because he is a “Good Djinn,” as he actually enjoyed his actions. They all accept accountability for their actions.
The theme of Navigating the Lines between Fiction and Reality is also important in this section. Abdullah gets his happy ending when his fictional daydreams become a reality. Unlike earlier in the book, this resolution is brought about by his own choices and actions, rather than by “Fate” (or a powerful djinn) teasing him for his passive fantasies. He makes the beautiful garden he imagined for Flower-in-the-Night, but it now includes bluebells, a flower he discovered during his adventures. The garden is less ordered than he first imagined, as he decides he wants to incorporate wild meadows.
Wynne Jones thus shows that reality is more complex than fiction. Life may not always end up as imagined, and trying to fit it into a pre-determined template is neither possible nor desirable. She creates a world in which fate is real but flexible, which reflects the choices the characters make and their openness to what the world throws at them. Characters make the most of their fate when they interact with it in an open and proactive way.
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