Babar, the Elephant

Consuming children's entertainment as an adult is a fraught business. It's got its positive side, certainly - you finally get all the really good jokes in the Disney cartoons, for example. But you can also make discoveries that are hazardous to your understanding of the universe.

I don't often feel the urge to re-read books from my childhood, but recently I developed a hankering for Babar, the Francophone elephant king, so I checked out a few volumes from the library.

(Asides: a) There are a lot more of these titles than I realized. b) The children's room is hard to navigate - everything is too low to the ground for my rheumatically compromised joints. )

I hadn't counted on the three little picture books I brought home being so politically loaded. Let me recount Babar's story for you, in case it's been a while (keep in mind, original publication was 1933):

Little Babar lived with the other elephants in the "forest" (that's how it's translated from the French). One day, his mother is brutally murdered by a white poacher, and Babar runs away to Paris (?). He falls into the good graces of a very old, very rich lady, who becomes his benefactress and takes him to get a suit of clothes in a becoming shade of green, including spats and a bowler. Courtesy of a private tutor, Babar also receives a proper European education.

Eventually, Babar returns to the forest (in the old lady's motor car), where it just so happens that the old elephant king has just died (he ate a poisonous mushroom, and turned the same shade of green as Babar's suit). The elephant elders unanimously decide to make Babar the new king, seeing as how he's become a sophisticated, enlightened European and all. (Yep, we're totally going there.) Like any self-respecting European monarch, Babar then marries his cousin.

Babar sets about civilizing the elephant kingdom, and sets up a capital city with paved roads, modern homes, a school, and an opera house. The elephants dress in lovely western clothes and become doctors and cobblers and mechanics. They learn to read and write and play orchestra music. And then...they all live happily ever after.

Just...wow.

The Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Synopsis: Pi Patel, a boy with profound curiosity, creativity, and spiritual appetite, grows up in an Indian village where his father owns and runs the local zoo. The major features of Pi's boyhood are the zoo animals, religious practice (his enthusiasm leads him to adopt both Christianity and Islam and practice them simultaneously alongside his native Hinduism), and the political unrest of 1970's India. When Pi is 16, his parents decide to emigrate to Canada, and book passage on the Japanese cargo ship which is also transporting the bulk of the zoo animals to American zoos. Four days to sea, the ship sinks inexplicably, and Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific for many months, with an adult male Bengal tiger his only companion.

Enthralling, no question. Delightful, even. The above is so brief largely because I wouldn't want even to attempt to capture the spirit of the thing. It made me smile out of sheer pleasure.

But there's one significant problem, which I've observed to be common to many modern tales of protracted survival - where are the big questions? Pi has lost everything and everyone; survival is unlikely; life has been extracted from the context of the universe.

What is the purpose? What is the meaning of life? Where is God? Who is God? What is God? Is there God? Why has this happened? Why am I here?

These are the questions that face human beings in those times when crisis has eliminated all the distractions of life beyond subsistence. But Pi never expresses such thoughts in his narrative, a fact that is made even less plausible by the exaggerated religious fervor attributed to him in childhood. "I want to love God," young Pi tells his parents, attempting to explain his adherence to three world religious at once. So how does he relate to God in his months adrift? Martel makes passing mention of regular prayer and spiritual crisis, but for the most part, the faith and religious passion that were so central to the development of young Pi as a character vanish with the sinking of the freighter.

I can only speculate as to the reason for this failing - I know nothing of the author, his background, or his spiritual perspective beyond what I surmise from the postmodern expression of the book. But I suspect it's the result of a common lack of understanding, at present, of the spirituality of "organized religion". To any person of genuine faith, Pi would never ring true. One who had sought God in the way Pi was portrayed doing in the early chapters could not satisfy his spirituality with only an emasculated ritual of Mass and Salat when he found himself so utterly alone. He would be angry, like David. He would be demanding, like Job. He would be asking the big questions.

Regarding Harriet

Listening to an audiobook in the car this afternoon, I was surprised to encounter the third work in a row featuring a character named Harriet. This most recent Harriet was the other woman to the central character in a John Updike story. The previous Harriets were, respectively, a middle-aged cookbook author in Death of a Snob and the lovelorn ghostwriter-turned-bagelmaker protagonist of Isabel's Bed. Come to think of it, infidelity has been just as consistent a theme through these pieces as has Harriet. (Yes, yes, it's Updike. I know.)

I tried to think of other literary Harriets, and came up with a few; Harriet Smith, prime victim of personal interference in Emma; Harriet Vane, romantic foil of Lord Peter Wimsey; Harriet the Spy, though I've never actually read that one. There have been a few Harriets on the other side of the page, too; Harriet Beecher Stowe, of course, Harriet Smart, Harriet Taylor (the eventual wife of John Stuart Mill), and doubtless dozens others, since it's a common enough name.

I don't know whether I've ever met a Harriet personally, but if so, I don't remember her. At some point, there must have been plenty of Harriets in Hollywood, though I can't think of any except for Harriet Nelson. According to U.S. Government web publications, there are no Harriets in the 110th Congress. And, so far as I can discover, there is no Saint Harriet recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.