Unrelenting perseverance and the glory of battle

I have been rewatching The Lord of the Rings movies this week, bit by bit, during marking and planning and in the evenings. The films are all now 10 years old at least, which is incredible as I remember very clearly the excitement of waiting for them to open at the cinema in three succeeding Decembers as a teenager.

I have always found the scenes with Frodo and Sam, in The Two Towers and The Return of the King, to be much more boring than the great battle scenes in Rohan and Gondor, with their repetitive scenery and conversations. Yes, Frodo has a tough time. Yes, Gollum is a bit suspect. Get back to the exciting bits already! I love the build-up to and the bravery of Helm’s Deep and Pelennor Fields. I remember feeling this way when reading the books, too, where it is much less broken up, and where Frodo, Sam and Gollum trudge their weary way for many, many pages of unremitting gloom before the focus moves back chronologically to see the story through the eyes of the rest of the Fellowship. My brother is reading the books now, too, and is currently stuck in the slog that is the end of The Two Towers, where these three seem to do little but walk, and I’ve told him to stick at it for the ‘good stuff’.

But it struck me just now, when the cameras move from Faramir’s return to Minas Tirith and Gandalf and Pippin’s relief at hearing he has recently seen Frodo, and focus back on the steep and weary climb into Mordor, that this is the point. The point is the unremitting gloom, or – as I suggest we see it – the unrelenting perseverance.

While we are excited watching the great battles and rejoice with the victory and sacrifice of individuals (who doesn’t want to stand up and cheer when, in The Two Towers, Theoden, Aragorn, Legolas and their men decide to ride out for one final push ‘for glory’ and are met with the blinding sight of Gandalf and the Rohirrim coming to save the day?), the main point of the story is Frodo and the Ring, and the task he has to accomplish. Gandal and the rest of the remaining Fellowship are aware of this, often gazing into the distance to try to ‘sense’ whether Frodo is still alive and if he is succeeding in his task. They gain much more of the immediate glory, but the reality is if Frodo does not play his unglamorous part, it’s all for nothing. For the enemy to be defeated, he has to keep on keeping on, down the difficult, dangerous road he treads – dealing with fatigue, squabbling travelling companions struggling with their own issues, hunger, despair, and the growing sense he has of being drawn into the enemy’s mind through the burden of carrying the Ring. This is the true courage that allows good to conquer evil – the epic handful of battles, while exhausting, are less meaningful in the long run than the constant epic of just keeping going when the easiest thing would be to lie down and give in.

Everyone wants to win a glorious battle. That’s what movies and storytelling and narrative are built around – something in us loves for events to build and build until they reach a climax of confrontation and eventual victory for good. I’ve often thought after watching films ‘based on a true story’ whether the tipping point really came where it does in the film, or whether this is heightened for Hollywood. Because in real life, aren’t we really a little more like Frodo and Sam than Gandalf and Aragorn? Most of us in difficult situations just plod along, dealing with our circumstances, our daily difficulties and the trials we face, large or small. Many of the people I am privileged to know who are in such seasons of life do not defeat them through a sudden great burst of courage, valour and skill but by picking up their courage every morning and facing a new day of trudging like Sam and Frodo.

As much as I’d like to see my life as a battle where one day I will just ‘get it’ and have a Dead Poets Society/Freedom Writers moment and ‘break through’ to that tricky class or that child I have personality differences with, I have been learning this year that I can only really take one step at a time. Sometimes we go forwards, sometimes we stumble back a little, and occasionally – yes – there will be a glorious battle. But I am seeing that in every day picking up and starting again, I am gradually gaining ground. It is not glamorous, but it is courageous.

If you are like me, and would much rather be in a few good ‘battles’ than suffer the seeming boredom of the constant difficulty of life, let this encourage you. What you are doing, the road you are taking, the ‘Ring’ you are bearing, is important. It is vital to the Fellowship. It is worth it. It will cost, just as it cost Frodo. But in the end, when you stand before the King, as Frodo and Sam do, you and the whole Fellowship will be able to fully appreciate the impact of your courageous, unrelenting perseverance.

'Then he said to them all: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?" '

*Disclaimer: I am, of course, using ‘battle’ in a loose, metaphorical sense. I am in no way suggesting that anyone should have recourse to violence or even to causing confrontation for confrontation’s sake – what I am thinking of in my own mind comes more from Ephesians 6:12:

'For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.'

I also see a great deal to value and which can encourage us within the battle scenes of The Lord of the Rings, and I'm sure one day I will blog about those too. But my point is - they're just a means to an end. The main reason they started out in the first place was to support the goal of getting rid of the Ring with Frodo.

Back to reality...

 The greater majority of my reading for pleasure involves fiction. I love to read newspapers, although as I rarely have the time, when I do I just get the ‘i’; I was also a subscriber during my NQT year to the TES (Times Education Supplement) but again, there just isn’t enough time... I also read a variety of blogs, and books about spiritual matters. Other non-fiction reading generally falls into four categories for me: societies/travel, literary, biography and cook-books. Sometimes those categories overlap. Here are one or two I’ve been reading recently...

The Secret Life of France, by Lucy Wadham

Bought for me by my old housemate for Christmas when we were both on our years abroad, this is a reflection on French society as expressed by a Brit who moved there in the middle of her university studies after marrying her Parisian boyfriend. Some parts are insightful and interesting, but on the whole I find it far too Paris-centric and struggled to recognise the French people I have lived and worked with in my two times living there in her description of the adulterous, pleasure-seeking Parisian bourgeoisie she knew in the 80s. There is also a massive amount later on about international politics which is only loosely related to the overall aim of describing French society, and which appears to be more about showing off about some of the high-up acquaintances Wadham made during her journalistic career. There are some sweeping generalisations, as with any book which sets out to describe a society, but the comments about French TV definitely made me smile!

The Brontës, by Juliet Barker

Believe it or not, I have had this book out of my local library since I moved to this flat last summer. By dint of returning the book every time I reached my renewal limit, and then immediately reissuing it to myself (tricks of the trade learned during my part time library job as a teenager!) this has been done with incurring only minimal fines when I couldn’t get myself organised enough to renew it on time. It’s a whopper of a biography, spanning 1000 pages (plus another 200 of notes), and a 90 year period beginning with the birth of Patrick Brontë. Despite the time it took for me to read it, it was genuinely fascinating stuff (particularly once you get past the very long quotes from the juvenilia!) and, despite not being so interested in the passages about local Haworth politics, I was mesmerised. Barker evidently feels a responsibility to set the record straight, particularly about Patrick Brontë, Arthur Bell Nichol and Anne and Branwell Brontë, arguing that their reputations were created by Charlotte’s embittered friend Ellen through Elizabeth Gaskell’s posthumous biography of Charlotte. She uses lots of really interesting extracts from letters, and even when she ventures into the realms of speculation is able to back up her ideas with other evidence which gives a good idea of the psychology of the subjects. Charlotte particularly comes across as very human, with her strengths and weaknesses shown very clearly!

 

Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady, by Kate Summerscale

I don’t think I would have chosen this book to read by myself, despite having read and been intrigued by The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, but it was one of two books we were going to discuss at my school’s book club, so I bought it (another lady bought the other), read it and we swapped. Like Mr Whicher, it’s got a very factual feel about it, which the other ladies at the book club didn’t like as I think they’d prefer to read a love story! Unfortunately the subject matter didn’t interest me much – the book centres around one of the first divorce cases in England after it became possible to divorce through the law courts, where the main piece of evidence was the woman’s diary. In this diary, Mrs Robinson (the lady in question) had written about an affair she claimed to have had with a married doctor, over a period of years. Summerscale’s interest appears to chiefly lie in the way in which Mrs Robinson seems to have used her writing as a tool – to create happiness for herself in an uncongenial marriage – and in the arguments put forward by the defence that Mrs R was ill and had imagined the events of the affair. Although I didn’t dismiss it quite as quickly as the ladies in the book club (!), the most I could say of this was that it was “OK”.

A Soup for Every Day: 365 of our Favourite Recipes, by the Covent Garden Soup Company

I love soup. Yum. So I bought this with a Waterstone’s voucher, and it is lovely. It looks delightful, and many of the recipes look really inspiring, tasty, and some downright unusual (chocolate and rhubarb ‘soup’? Hmm). I’ve only tried making one so far but have loved flicking through it to decide what to try next! As the soups are laid out one for each day of the year, care has been taken to choose ingredients which are seasonal, topical and would be at their best that time of year. During the ‘big snow’ in January I made the spicy sweet potato soup, which was lovely – most of the spiciness came from the rather large amount of ginger it contained! – but my only gripes were that it was really, really, really thick, and that the recipe said it would serve 4 (it served my American housemates and me, so – 3). I definitely followed it right!

Coming up in non-fiction I have...

Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl, by Donald Sturrock. Another doorstop book! I love Roald Dahl’s children’s books of course, but also his short stories for adults – although I do find many of them very creepy (‘Royal Jelly’ – yuck...)

North Africa, by Barnaby Rogerson. I have a longstanding interest in North Africa so am looking forward to finding out more about it – am hoping the writing style will be engaging and not too battle-based!!

Of course, this is while trying to read Ian McEwan’s Solar, re-read Les Misérables and keep up the light relief with a Dorothy L Sayers (Five Red Herrings) I’ve been trying to finish for ages!! Oh, and that little matter of a more than full-time job...

Les Misérables: Justice and Mercy

Les Misérables has long been one of my favourite musicals. When I was a child, the dance class I was in used some of the songs as part of a sequence at a show, so I feel like I have known some of the songs forever. I think it was when I was 14 that my mum took me to London to see the show and I loved it. Since that first time seeing it at the West End, I’ve seen it once more there with my brother (who I went to the cinema with last night), and once in an amateur school production with my friend Lucy as Éponine – a very talented cast. I have also actually read the 1300 page book. I was 13 at the time, and skipped over the 50 page description of the Battle of Waterloo and Thénardier’s involvement in it, but recently began to re-read it, and have been much more engrossed this time around. I will always remember the pastor of the church I was in growing up telling me that when he first saw it, it made him want to preach a sermon at the end. After seeing the film last night, I feel the same way.

The music of the film is wonderful – stirring and haunting (and the whole film is sung – for those of you who don’t know!!), and the acting and singing was fabulous. I especially loved the performances by Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman and Eddie Redmayne (he made me like Marius, which I had never done before!!) – and the production was terrific. Bringing the musical to film made it much more intimate, and much more detailed (great examples, I think, are Jean Valjean’s ‘Soliloquy’, the detail in ‘Master of the House’ and of course Valjean dragging Marius through the sewers!).

But really what gripped me once more, and moved me to tears on several occasions, is the story. I love the story of Les Mis, and I love the character of Jean Valjean – he is possibly my favourite character from anything I have ever read. It’s a story of freedom, love, mercy – and redemption. The story is explicit in its belief in the power of grace to transform people, and as a Christian this is something I firmly believe in – and it is beautifully displayed in the character of Valjean. Victor Hugo’s own position towards the Catholic church was constantly in flux, but he did seem to have few issues with the central positions of the faith.

Hugo spends at least 50 pages in the opening of his novel describing the Bishop who so dramatically alters Valjean’s life, carefully showing us a picture of his selfless, merciful and loving life, which I think can be summed up in this beautiful statement: ‘As we see, he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel.’ Previously, Valjean has been subject to a strict and pure Justice, which punishes him with imprisonment for the desperate theft of bread, and then for attempted escape. In showing Mercy to Valjean when the law was ready to execute Justice on him, as it had so many times before, the Bishop enacts a process of redemption:

‘ “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!” ’

In the novel, Valjean exhibits a final act of selfishness in stealing a small sum of money from a boy he meets on his travels, and this last minor incident culminates in a life-changing realisation what the bishop has done for him:

‘He beheld himself then, so to speak, face to face, and at the same time ... he saw ... a sort of light which he took at first to be a torch ... he recognise that it had a human form, and that this torch was the bishop.

‘His conscience weighed in turn these two men thus placed before it, the bishop and Jean Valjean... as his reverie continued, the bishop grew grander and more resplendent in his eyes; Jean Valjean shrank and faded away. At one moment he was but a shadow. Suddenly he disappeared. The bishop alone remained.

‘He filled the whole soul of this wretched man with a magnificent radiance.’

The bishop has literally bought this desperate man. After having set the bishop up as a Christ figure, I think part of what Valjean is meant to represent in the story is a similar thing. The bishop has shown Valjean divine love – and this spark is fanned into a flame in him too. Throughout the rest of the novel, Valjean makes mistakes and errors of judgement (he is still human!), but instead of being compelled by hate and fear he is now compelled by mercy and love. Even his desperation to conceal himself in Paris is mainly for Cosette’s sake, as he remembers the promise he made Fantine to care for her. We constantly see him seeking to do the loving thing, even when it is not necessarily the right thing... and this extends to Javert.

Valjean, the man redeemed through Mercy, against Javert, the man ruled by Justice.

Christians often talk about the Mercy and Justice of God, and how these are seemingly opposing forces. God is just – therefore according to His laws He must punish sin. Yet He is merciful – and provides a Redeemer to allow us to know His love. Jean Valjean is like many people – he is familiar with the Justice of God, but until meeting the bishop, not His Mercy. Javert has never encountered Mercy, and he is so entrenched in his law-keeping belief that he can please God and man through Justice, that when Mercy is extended to him, he is unable to comprehend or accept it. It seems so unbearably UNjust to him to have Mercy shown to him, that he takes Justice into his own hands and metes out punishment on himself. When Mercy is extended to us, what is our response? Are we Javert, or are we Valjean?

A little light reading

Silence on this blog does not equal no reading, just that I enjoy reading more than I enjoy writing about reading. During my PGCE, most of my reading was about spiritual matters, as I undertook a discipleship and church planting school at my church. Among other things we read Celebration of Discipline (Richard Foster) - beautifully written book about spiritual disciplines; The Church Can Change the World (Jimmy Seibert) - an exciting adventure about the birth of the movement of churches we are part of; and Spiritual Authority (Watchman Nee) - a hard-hitting and thought-provoking classic. It was fantastic, but I am enjoying being able to read for pleasure again!

And for whatever reason, for light reading I have been drawn more and more to the 1920s-1950s, and to three writers in particular: P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Stella Gibbons. Let me tell you why...

I discovered P.G. Wodehouse as an undergraduate, having heard of Jeeves and Wooster and deciding I ought to see if it was any good. It was. However I actually prefer the one-off stories, mainly involving bumbling but well-meaning toffs in monetary and amorous scrapes. One of my favourites has been Laughing Gas (1936), where a young English earl visiting California switches bodies with a twelve-year-old boy movie star. Wodehouse's wit and humour is delightful, and I often find myself re-reading a passage or line that seems particularly appropriate or amusing. The dedication to The Indiscretions of Archie particularly struck me as a good example:

"The fact is, I have become rather suspicious about dedications. No sooner do you label a book with the legend:-
To my best friend X
than X cuts you in Piccadilly, or you bring a lawsuit against him. There is a fatality about it. However, I can't imagine anyone quarrelling with you, and I am getting more attractive all the time, so let's take a chance."

Simon Callow has recorded a lot of Wodehouse books for audio book, and compares reading his prose to singing Mozart, and I can see the similarity - frivolous but elaborate and careful craftsmanship. Try him!!

I had only heard of Dorothy L. Sayers from Suzanne, who lectures in British Christian writers between the world wars at l'Universite Catholique de Lille, and as a first year I proofread a series of radio lectures she had discovered in an archive of an American university, which was published as The Christ of the Creeds (2008). I was very impressed by the clarity of Sayers' writing, but only read one of her detective novels, featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, whom she is most famous for creating, last year - The Nine Tailors (1934). Although it took me a while to 'get into', I am now hooked and am slowly reading my way through all of these books. Having grown up on Agatha Christie it was a shock at first - Sayers' books are more detailed, longer, with more precise characterisation - but I now think Lord Peter a wonderful character, and particularly enjoy the constant literary quotations and references throughout the books (those which I am able to pick up, anyway!). I'm surprised these books aren't better known and appreciated, and that no one has decided to re-make them for television (the last production was about 30 years ago, and I don't think all of them have ever been done). I still love some Agatha Christie but am definitely enjoying Dorothy L. Sayers too!

I've blogged on Stella Gibbons before - particularly on Cold Comfort Farm. I think for a long time that's all I imagined she'd written. No! I'd heard a radio adaptation of Westwood a couple of times and decided it was time to read more of her work, so I got hold of Westwood (1946) and Nightingale Wood (1938) and read them both recently. They make an interesting comparison. Nightingale Wood is very light - a reworking of Cinderella - very frivolous, and Westwood doesn't allow for a fully satisfying happy ending in the same way. It is fascinating because it was written so soon after the end of the war - and indeed the novel is set in the war so you really see what it was like for ordinary people in London while it was still fresh in the memory. Perhaps this proximity to the war is what prompts Gibbons to refuse us the 'happily ever after' ending we feel we deserve. Gibbons' characterisation is biting - and at times borders on the cruel - in all of her books I have read so far, but her characters are human - the bad with some good, and the good with some bad, as in real life.


I'm starting to love this period, and these writers, and others. They are the perfect light reading for me - I feel embarrassed both borrowing or buying and reading most 'chick-lit' which I'm supposed to find escapist, and books from this era allow me a window into the past. Additionally, they are much less explicit in terms of bad language etc, which I appreciate. I recommend all of these writers, and welcome suggestions for others! (Please... not D.H. Lawrence... I've read a few and find him depressing and far, far too serious. Besides, who can take Lawrence seriously after they have read Cold Comfort Farm?!).


Of course, I've also been reading The Hunger Games - who hasn't?! But maybe that's a future blog post...

"Learning never ends"

As of this Wednesday, I am officially a graduate from the University of Sheffield with a 2.1 in English and French. It's taken me 5 years from finishing A levels, which I could never have anticipated, but I got there! It's been an unexpected 4 years in many ways (who knew I would end up doing half my degree in French?!) but also incredibly rewarding.

And I've come out the other side still loving literature. The day of my last English literature exam (Modern literature, on which I got a first - another surprise!) the first thing I did was to go to Sheffield City Library and get out a pile of books, and since the end of exams I've pretty much been reading between 3 and 5 books per week. Now's the time to make the most of it, since come September I'll be starting my PGCE (teacher training) to become a secondary school French teacher (who also now has roughly GCSE-level German!).

Why not English? Practical reasons: most of my experience so far has been in language teaching, there is a greater need for language teachers, I get a bursary for it (!). Also I imagine I will end up teaching English some time anyway. Part of me is a little worried at teaching English, that I wouldn't be able to get across my enthusiasm for the subject to teenagers. Also I feel like teaching languages is a more practical skill.

Still, if I ever take the step to do a Masters, I like to think it would be in English. I genuinely love the academic side of the subject, whereas with French I was only ever interested in upping my language skills. Although my favourite historical period in literature is probably now the Renaissance (the Victorian literature module somewhat ruined the period for me... apparently it's all about Darwin; who knew?!) my highest marks were in the 'Enlightenment Britain' and 'Modern literature' modules, which I enjoyed more than I ever expected to.

I suppose what's really fascinating about literature is the way it interracts with culture, history, society and everything else in the world yet creates something new in it and, in some cases, affects those things itself. We had a set of very confusing 'Modern literature' lectures about Modernist art (never Modernist music, oddly) which compared Gertrude Stein to art of the time by comparing syntax to subject and grammar to form (if I remember correctly), so that Modernists are obsessed by form. I still love the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, and finally have lost some of my T.S.Eliot hangups. No-one really understands the guy's poetry, it's all just posturing.

As our Pro-Vice-Chancellor ("tips hat") said on Wednesday, "Learning never ends." I've learnt lots about developing critical skills and analysis at university, but about enjoying literature for its own sake - well, I learned that years ago anyway.

The Word

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
- John 1:1-5

I'd never thought much about God as Word before. But it's vital. Words create. We do it all the time - billions of words creating novels, poetry, plays. Words directing destinies, as James says, for good or ill.

How much more the words of God? As our words create an imaginary reality, His words create in our reality, as if we were characters in His cosmic novel.

I'm convinced God loves language - etymology, neologisms, especially word play.

Poetry

So I just found this blog post that I wrote way back in July and never published on here, so here we go...

We’re back on poetry again. It’s been a while.

In my recent selection from Sheffield city centre library (which was incredibly Lit-geeky and which I’ve already blogged on two texts from – Planet Narnia and O Pioneers! ) I took a random book about poetry: The Strength of Poetry by James Fenton (2001). The contents page promised writing about Philip Larkin, W.H. Auden, Wilfred Owen and Sylvia Plath amongst others so I thought, let’s give it a go. The first chapter talks about Michelangelo and other Italian Renaissance artists; the way they learned from, or were secretive towards, each other. By the end of the first page we feel that Fenton definitely has a unique way of looking at things. His writing can be by turns beautiful and amusing, and he’s always brutally honest. He picks up on usual things about poets – Owen’s juvenilia (hilariously pompous), the way Larkin is credited with expounding things everyone thinks but no one says but how ridiculous that actually is when you think about what he is saying, Auden’s dual influences of William Blake and Henry James. Seamus Heaney’s Irishness is discussed, the influence of life on poetry in Plath and, running through all, what it means to be a ‘poetess’. Fenton points out that feminising nouns like this can completely change their meaning: a ‘priestess’ is not at all the same thing as a ‘priest’ as it has much more pagan connotations. Similarly a ‘poetess’ is not the same thing as a ‘poet’. He charts the struggles and differences of opinion amongst several women poets as to what it means to be a woman and a poet, quoting Germaine Greer: ‘The more women adored poetry, the less able they were to write it... It is less crucial for women to work out how men did this to women than it is to assess the extent to which women did this to themselves.’

All in all, it is at once varied and coherent as a selection of thoughts on modern poetry. It is also amusing, clear and – wonder of wonders for a book on poetry! – interesting. It also made me want to read more Larkin, Plath and Heaney and to discover new writers (for me) such as Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore.

While on the subject of poetry, let’s talk Donne (again). In the same lit haul I picked up John Stubbs’ biography Donne: The Reformed Soul (2006), which I’ve been after for a while. ... My main gripe with it is that Stubbs uses Donne’s poetry to prove things about his life. I can understand this in that it is difficult to write a biography about a man who’s been dead for nearly 400 years and who lived in an age where documentation was not seen as especially important (hence why we have so little information about Shakespeare). However we are always being told not to confuse the poet and the voice in the poem, and although it seems reasonable that Donne drew from his own experience and potentially parts of his own personality in his poems – which are known for their startling voices – to use lyric poetry as proof of some particular personal opinion on Donne’s part seems to me a fallacy. Poets don’t always say what they mean in their poems and are notoriously unreliable; we never know when they are using their own opinions or assuming someone else’s and unless we have other biographical evidence to prove our point I feel we would be better off leaving our insights of a poet drawn from his craft out of it.