I’m feeling the pathetic fallacy of winter particularly hard at the moment; with the celebrations of Christmas and the New Year over, we face an interminable chill till Spring. There seems nothing to look forward to. And, you’d think, by re-reading The Grapes of Wrath (a giant of a novel by the way), watching Titanic, and generally moping around the house I would only be feeding the metaphorical (and literal, at the moment) cold I feel at this time of year. But, in fact, you’d be wrong.
The Grapes of Wrath, as anyone who has read it will know, is an account of human suffering. The fact that it is based on true, historical events is both desperately sad and completely unsurprising. As a species, it seems that we are always being punished; by illness, by death, by starvation, by floods, by droughts, the list of unrelenting punishment for humanity goes on. In The Grapes of Wrath we see a family and a nation constantly suffering, as if being punished by a wrathful, unforgiving Old Testament-style God. However, Steinbeck shows us that adversity, however hideous, is the thing that holds us together. When Rose of Sharon’s baby, which has been a recurring image for hope, is stillborn, she gives her breastmilk to someone in need of it; “smil[ing] mysteriously”, she gives away the only thing she has left to help a stranger, showing us that despite humanity being perpetually downtrodden, we pull through because, in the end, we are all the same, and all united in the adversities we face, however different they are. And that is why, despite the cold at present, metaphorical and literal, I am feeling particularly hopeful. The Grapes of Wrath, as with all literature, has articulated broad suffering in a single novel.
Another thing that has made me hopeful this winter, in spite of the dull and undramatic weather, was watching Titanic. As trivial as it sounds that a blockbuster from the 90s made me feel hope, it reminded me of another time that humanity has suffered on a huge scale. There is a moment at the end of the film, when the ship is going down, and Rose, the protagonist, looks into the eyes of a woman next to her, who is certainly working class while she is upper class. As my mum pointed out earlier, the film offers us a romantic version of a tragic disaster, but in this moment I think an audience watching becomes as close to understanding as possible what people on board the Titanic would have felt like: Rose looks into the eyes of a stranger and realises they are exactly the same. Moments before potential death for both of them, they are the same, regardless of social status. We shed our worldly qualities when it comes down to it - status, money, race, gender - and we cling onto the relief that in being all the same, we are not alone.
The thing we should carry through, from Christmas, from the cold…from Love Actually, is that “when the planes hit the twin towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge. They were all messages of love.” I am glad for the feel of the cold. It is a tiny hint at the adversity people suffer, and it reminds us that in the face of adversity, we often find that we are not alone. Not because of any wrathful omnipresent God, or any Hell, but because we have each other. For those of us lucky enough not to have suffered in extremis, narrative, be it films, books, even a song, can teach of something about the strength of love and unity amongst humans. And this worldly love that is in fact omnipresent in itself, when our backs are against the wall, is what has made me hopeful for the New Year.
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