Book: The Wretched Stone

Overview
Chris Van Allsburg’s 1991 picture book The Wretched Stone is told through the dated log entries of a ship’s captain, whose matter-of-fact voice chronicles a voyage that turns uncanny. What begins as a sea tale about a disciplined, literate crew becomes a fable about a mysterious glowing rock that entrances the sailors, saps their habits of reading and music, and ultimately reduces them to something less than human. The captain’s steady observations and the eerie illustrations gradually reveal the nature of the “wretched stone” and the peril it brings aboard.

Voyage and Discovery
The captain records a cheerful departure and praises his crew: they can read and play music, pass evenings with stories, and take pride in their skills. After days at sea, the ship reaches an uncharted island, lush with fruit and dense vegetation. While gathering provisions, the men discover a large, smooth, gray stone in a cave. It is heavy and strangely alluring, so they haul it back to the ship. Soon after it is secured below decks, the stone emits a soft glow. The light intensifies, and moving images seem to flicker on its surface. The crew drifts toward it, fascinated.

Enchantment and Decline
The captain notes small changes that quickly become alarming. Nightly music stops. Books go untouched. Laughter fades into a quiet, fixed attention before the stone’s light. The ship’s routines suffer, and the men become sluggish and inattentive to their duties. The captain berates himself for allowing the stone aboard and tries to draw the crew back to their old diversions, but the glowing images hold them fast. Then come stranger transformations: the men lose interest in conversation and gradually lose the ability to speak altogether. They grow coarse and wild-eyed. Hair sprouts; posture slumps. Before long, the captain is compelled to write that his crew has become ape-like, clambering in the rigging, howling at night, and returning again and again to the mesmerizing glow below decks.

Storm, Captivity, and Recovery
A violent storm lashes the ship. With no capable hands to help him, the captain battles the wind alone and fears the stone’s pull will destroy them all. He manages to drag the object into a storeroom and lash it tight under canvas. Cut off from the light, the apes rage and sulk. Seeking a remedy, the captain turns to the ship’s library. He begins to read aloud into the dark, tales of voyages, monsters, and heroism, his voice filling the silent corridors. One by one, the apes creep toward the sound of language. Over days, they linger to listen. Their eyes clear; their backs straighten. Words return in hesitant fragments, then sentences. Music follows. The captain writes that the crew is recovering its humanity as attention shifts from the hidden stone to stories, instruments, and the familiar work of the ship.

Aftermath
The captain secures the object permanently and names it the wretched stone. He vows that it will remain confined until it can be delivered to authorities on shore. The final entries restore the ship’s former rhythms: books circulate again, voices rise in song, and the crew sets its course with renewed purpose. The journal ends as it began, with a steady hand on the wheel, but now tempered by a caution learned at sea, about a brilliant, bewitching thing that can replace conversation, music, and reading with passive staring, and about the power of stories to bring people back to themselves.