The misfit who is chosen

Unloved misfits 

Used for centuries as beasts of burden, strong and capable, yet ugly and uncherished, donkeys and their near cousins asses (the crossbred offspring of a pony and a donkey) are in many areas of the world rather like we regard electricity – vital but taken for granted.

An unlikely subject therefore for a poet to focus on. Yet, at the start of the twentieth century GK Chesterton did just that, creating in The Donkey a simple ballad with a surprising twist.

When fishes flew and forests walked  
   And figs grew upon thorn,  
Some moment when the moon was blood  
   Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
   And ears like errant wings,  
The devil’s walking parody  
   On all four-footed things.

Many suffering from body dysmorphia might identify with the Donkey’s self-description as having ‘ears like errant wings’ and a ‘monstrous head’. It likes neither the way it looks nor the ‘sickening cry’ of its voice. It regards itself as a primeval beast, a throwback to an unsophisticated, ungainly world, an animal which has remained stubbornly uncivilized despite the progress of the millennia.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
   Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,  
   I keep my secret still. …

As such it feels an outsider, a misfit in a slick world, unable to curtail its desires and self-expression to fit the mores of modern society. Because it its ‘crooked will’ others have rejected the Donkey, mocked it, ill-treated it and punished it (the scourge was a multi-strand whip with sharp stones or twists of metal designed to tear the flesh from whatever was being beaten).

Hidden joy?

But, amazingly, this Donkey has a secret hope, a memory that outweighs all its privations.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
   One far fierce hour and sweet:  
There was a shout about my ears,
   And palms before my feet.

It remembers going for a noisy walk…..

That’s it?!

One hour trotting near palm trees is enough to make up for society’s – and the Donkey’s self – hatred?

Missing the point 

Well, if we leave it there, we have entirely missed Chesterton’s point. But to feel the punch of the poem, we you need to know a bit more about the subtext (see previous blog, 4.3.15).

The Donkey’s ‘sweet’ hour was the occasion related in the New Testament when, a week before he died, Jesus chose an ass to sit on and ride into the city of Jerusalem. He was greeted rapturously at the time, with people waving palm branches and throwing them down, along with their cloaks, to create a ‘royal causeway’ for the man they anticipated as king (an event commemorated by Christians as Palm Sunday). An easy retelling of the story can be found at Crossref-it.info or you can read the original in Matthew 21:1-11.

For the Donkey, the amazing fact was that a monarch (the ruler of all the earth according to Christian belief) chose this rejected, unattractive beast for the greatest honour it could ever experience. Chesterton portrays Jesus choosing the unloved and unlovable ass and touching its life with glory.

The poet is reminding us that those we overlook or shy away from are actually special. If you think you are the misfit, remember what this simple poem tells you.

Palm Sunday is celebrated this weekend.

Western cultural influences on literature

Getting ‘in the know’

Don’t you just hate it when there is a facebook or text conversation full of abbreviations you aren’t quite sure about? A while ago the UK Prime Minister famously mistook LOL to mean ‘Lots Of Love’ when actually those ‘in the know’ realised that LOL stood for ‘Laugh Out Loud’. David Cameron was, accidently, not sending affection but mockery.

In almost every written communication there is a context which helps the reader to make sense of the words, and often a subtext - an assumption by the writer that the reader shares an understanding as to what is being referred to.

Context

For example, in one of Wilfred Owen’s poems, Hospital Barge, the reader of the poem understands that it is written from the perspective of a First World War soldier (Owen himself) in northern France, enjoying rare time away from trench bombardment. Sitting by a canal, he observes a barge take away those wounded at the Western Front – that is the context.

Subtext

The departure of the wounded, symbolised by the scream of the barge’s funnel, makes the poet think of Avalon and Merlin. Owen is assuming that, just by mentioning these mythic names, his readers will understand the subtext he is referring to – the legends surrounding the heroic British King Arthur. Owen had recently re-read a well-known Victorian poem by Poet Laureate Lord Tennyson, with which he might have been confident his original readers were familiar.

Unlike many of the upbeat legends about Arthur, the mood of Tennyson’s poem is one of grief and loss. It chimes in with the idea that Arthur’s chivalric code ultimately did not withstand human corruptibility. By drawing on this understood subtext Owen is therefore communicating that the valiant glory of battle/the First World War is superseded by the cost of suffering and loss… But if you aren’t familiar with the subtext, you will miss this additional layer of meaning.

The most shared subtext of all

In the Western literary tradition, the most shared subtext of all is the Bible. Every writer from Chaucer onwards has assumed that readers will ‘get it’ when, within their work, they create parallels or counterpoints to famous biblical narratives, that alluding to biblical characters or events will serve as a shorthand to a shared understanding.

• When in King Lear Edmund cheats his brother out of his father’s affection (Act 1, scene 2; Act 2, scene 1), playing on the infirmities of an ageing parent, Shakespeare would expect his audience to think of another brother who tricked his sibling out of his rightful status - Jacob cheating Esau Genesis 27:1-41.
• When Dr Frankenstein is aghast at the ugliness of the monster he has created (Frankenstein, vol 1, chapter 4), Mary Shelley expected her readers to see that as a counterpoint to the goodness of God’s creation emphasized by Genesis (Genesis 1:26-31; Genesis 2:2; Genesis 2:7. The contrast of narratives highlighted Shelley’s theme that any such human creation could only come to a bad end.

Light shining in darkness

If you already know this stuff, it’s like having a light to illuminate the texts you are studying. Yet many today do not have the time or brain-space to read the entire sixty-six books of the Bible. However, this week Crossref-it.info is adding to its range of handy paraphrases of famous biblical narratives. For example:

• To find out about the cheating younger brother, go to Famous stories from the Bible > Jacob cheats Esau
• The creation account can be found at Famous stories from the Bible > The biblical account of creation 

With ninety-six of the most referenced biblical stories on site, http://crossref-it.info/repository/bible-stories can give you the low-down on what most Eng. Lit. authors assume you already know – keeping you a step ahead of your peers. LOL.